"You can't change the future" is what Daniel told Desmond in 1996.

when Daniel was looking through his book and saw that he had written something like "Desmond Hume will be my constant", he was surprised to see it, as if he hadn't written it before. This means that the Daniel that Des met in 1996 wrote it. This means that you CAN change the future.

What implications could this have on the rest of the show, with the flashforwards and everything?

I think that's why there is the character Ms hawking with Desmond. I believe the future can be changed, but perhaps there are those who don't want it changed. I mean, do we really want to end the show with a main character addicted to drugs and so 'Lost' in life as Jack is, when we've seen him at least try to be everyone's leader. I think that the future will be changed from the one that we have been shown since season 3's finale.

I like the drug-addicted jack. it is fitting.

What i dont get is why Daniel does not remember writing this back in 1996, since technically it already happened. Also i found it kinda funny when he first meets daniel and says "Well... why didnt the future me help you? Seems like a lot of trouble to go though... ya know... time travel..." Thats a good point, why didnt daniel explain that he needed a constant, why did 1996 Daniel have to tell him that?

__________________
Ted Striker: My orders came through. My squadron ships out tomorrow. We're bombing the storage depots at Daiquiri at 1800 hours. We're coming in from the north, below their radar.

Elaine Dickinson: When will you be back?

Ted Striker: I can't tell you that. It's classified.

If Daniel can't consistantly remember 3 cards, I think it would be a mistake to rely on his memory as proof of anything.

I posted this question elsewhere, but since we're on the topic of Daniel's memory:
Are his memory probs due to the fact that he didn't shield his head during his experiments? And what kind of scientist fails to shield the very part of his body that the experiments affect?

Zed, when Daniel asked Des that question, he thought it was a prank by his colleagues, so I wouldn't take that part seriously. And Daniel didn't protect his head because he is so into his experiments, it's a wonder he even protects his body. There is a story that Einstein would leave his house without pants if he was in the middle of perplexing conundrum.

In the book The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula K. Le Guin, the main character, George Orr, can change the past through his dreams. But since your subconscious is in charge while you are dreaming, the changes he makes to are simple and direct. His therapist starts hypnotizing his and tries to use George's gift to solve the world's problems, but with mixed results.

George comments that, "Suppose you hypnotized me and told me to dream that there is a blue dog in the office. When I woke up, there would be a blue dog there, but it would be because something blue had splaches onto it, or, way back in prehistoric times, something happened which made dogs evolve to be the color blue. What I am saying is, when I wake up, only I will remember that before I went to sleep there were no blue dogs. To everyone else it would seem perfectly normal. You have to frame the instructions simply."

Example: his therapist tells him to solve overpopulation. George dreams that he is on a bus and there are hardly any people on it." He wakes up and finds that ten years ago a plague had hit the human race and kill three quarters of the population. And it is still killing 2 out of 5 newborns.

They try to solve racism...the "color" problem. When George wakes up, there are no colors. Everyone is grey. Our eyes never evolve to see colors. The different races are still there, however. And there are still wars. And killing.

The Future reshuffled as his change rippled forward, changing the past, until it reached the present.

Perhaps Daniel, due to the fact he was on the island, with the built-in time delay factor, was able to notice this.

ADDED LATER: In Flashes Before My Eyes, Desmond bought the ring and threw it off the bridge. Two things he did NOT do the first time around (according to Mrs Hawkings). But the acts weren't big enough to change the outcome (marrying Penny).

__________________
charlie98210
"Whoa!" she said. "Cry 'Havoc!' And let loose the dogs of war!"
And, like Banquo's ghost, they just won't go away.

When Des first talked to Penny on the freighter you could kind of see a light go on inside his head - where he was finally grounded to the future (his new present time) and he remembered everything. I think the message in Daniels book wasn't there prior to Des' visit to Daniel. So...when Daniel finally read the message it was like a link to that new past and then it was his awakening to what had previously happened. Once he read the message he recalled the new events of the past as if they had happened all along. It was his link. I don't know if that makes sense, but it was just my gut feeling on what happened when he read that Des was his constant.

__________________
...embrace the senile genius...
watch him reinvent the wheel...

BeefJello- good thoughts...you may be onto something. This episode really has some thinkers in it...even writing "new past" requires a little thought for me.

__________________
"See ya in another life, brotha"

I had this epiphany where I thought Ben's man on the boat was Sayid. I still can't explain it exactly, but I have this weird feeling that it will make sense. I think Ben has a better handle on this time stuff. He can go off island for a year and come back to the island and it would have only been a week. So, can he go get Sayid (rescued, O6 Sayid) and send him to the boat somehow using different coordinates? Does ben have that much control? I don't know. Anyone have a better explanation or am I just crazy? Both?

-------

Edit: Okay, now I know I'm just crazy...sorry. If Sayid was the man on the boat (future Sayid or otherwise) the crew would have recognized him. Oops...just over thinking things and then under thinking things. Oh, well. I guess I'm in the Michael is the man on the boat camp. Although, this is a discussion for another thread anyway...

__________________
...embrace the senile genius...
watch him reinvent the wheel...