Well, the idea was Cablerunner's baby to begin with. I just helped fill in some gaps. Everybody here totally shot down the idea and said that we were crazy and reading science fiction into the show where there was none because Cuse and Lindelof said there was none. (Like they would let it out of the bag so easily and so early!) One year later and all of a sudden they admit that time travel was happening all along. Hmmm...makes you wonder what other sci fi. answers there are to Lost mysteries, don't it? (The real geniuses are always called crazy at first!-LOL!)


IN A NUTSHELL (or should I say "In a snowglobe"--heh heh heh):
Several timelines naturally happen at once, even outside life on the island. In each there is a Kate, Sawyer, Charley, Hurley, etc. but their lives differ very slightly in each. (Think of the 90s TV show called Sliders.)

Desmond's late entrance of the numbers into the hatch computer caused more than just the crash of flight 815. It caused an overlap of timelines when they normally exist independently of one another. The reason the plane suddenly appears in the sky over New Otherton when it wasn't there a second ago and why it bizarrely splits in 3 pieces even though there was no bomb or explosion is because 3 (or more) different flight 815s from 3 (or more) different parallel timelines suddenly overlapped in the same time and timeline at once. When the planes crash into eachother only 1 makes it to the island because only 1 version can exist on the island at a time. This is the flight 815 we know so well, not the one in the Sunda Trench.

Throughout history different people and things that have suddenly and mysteriously disappeared forever: Amelia Earheart (in Find815), the Black Rock, maybe the Adam and Eve couple, etc. These people/things somehow crossed out of their own timelines and into the timeline of the island, as 815 did.

The island is special because it's unique: it exists in only 1 timeline, hence the weird "magnetic anomalies" that exist nowhere else, hence it being so darn tricky to find. Because of the freak overlap of timelines and crash of several planes from different timelines, one landed on the island, another lands in the Sunda Trench. Both planes are real! Widmore tells his group that Ben Linus faked the crash in the Sunda Trench. Ben Linus says that Widmore faked the crash in the Sunda Trench. They're both lying. They both want to keep the secret of the island and want only to tell as little as they can get away with to the people who work for them. Only Widmore's documentation of a faked crash is fake. (The xeroxed receipts, photos of desecrated graves in Indonesia, etc.)

Many people on the plane died in all of their timelines. Some survived in one timeline, but only one timeline. (This is the Kate, Charley, Hurley, Walt, etc. that we got to know in Season 1.) Just like with things, there can only be 1 version of a person/animal on the island at one time. 2 versions of the same character/animal on the island and bad stuff happens, hence everybody's freakout in the Orchid Station Orientation Video when the 2 Bunny #15s were next to each other. (A resulting explosion or implosion from an event like this might be why Marvin Candle is missing an arm in the DHARMA Orientation video.)

In the same vein, Charley the drug addict actually DIED in the front section of the plane. He didn't make it to the island. If you recall, Charley was in a bathroom in the front section of the plane. Then Charley ran out and took the empty seat closest to him. That would still have been in the front of the plane. Everyone in the front section died during the crash, except the pilot who died the next day. The Charley who survived the crash was still a rockstar, but he never became a drug addict--that's why it was remarkably easy for him to go through heroine withdrawal. The Locke who survived the crash had never been pushed out a window by his father, and that's why he was able to walk as soon as he landed on the island. The version of Jack who survived the crash never stood up to the bully for Mark Silverberg and never turned his father in for being drunk during surgery. That's why in one post-island timeline Jack's father is still alive. This Jack never had those character-building events in his life and post-return becomes a drunk/drug addict. His father really IS upstairs in the hospital when Jack threatens to get him to prove to the Chief of Surgery that Christian is more drunk than he is. Christian is not dead in that timeline! (I have no idea who the Christian is who inhabits the island and who haunts Jack at the hospital. Probably not Christian at all, but the island trying to get Jack to come back.)

The island is like a hub at the center of a wheel with timelines at the end of "spokes" all around attached to the center. The center draws certain people from all the timelines, but only 1 version of the person can be on the island at a time. When a person from only 1 timeline survives the crash, they still have weird flashbacks to memories they had in all other timelines. This is why characters often look really dazed after a flashback.

SOME MORE SUPPORTING EVIDENCE:
1.) The loudspeaker announcement during the flight is different in each of the flashbacks in Pilot, Part 1 and 2 (Jack's, Kate's, and Charley's). Rewatch those 2 episodes and listen carefully. Each one is different not because each character has a different recall of the events, but they are actually 3 different timelines.

2.) In one timeline Claire and her mother were in a car accident that put her mother in a coma for years. In another, there was no car accident, hence Claire telling her babydaddy in Raised By Another that if her mother knew she was pregnant she would disown her.

3.) Sawyer says to Kate early in Season 1: "I know all about girls like you." Kate replies: "Not girls exactly like me." She's in every timeline, but not exactly the same in each one. She doesn't know it, of course, and it's ironic that she says it. Or maybe she does know it on some level she's not aware of, and it's still ironic. Later, in Season 3, Kate says to Kevin Callis, "What am I doing here? I don't do taco night!" She wakes up in the wrong timeline disoriented. She's a dangerous fugitive, not a housefrau. Or is she both. In one timeline Kate never blew up stepdaddy.


Or ask Cablerunner. He's got this waaaay more figured out than I do.

What do you think?

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"Helen, do you remember that authentic Australian walkabout I told you about?"

Here's what I think..

I need some explanation as to how multiple timelines can exist independently. With 'normally exist', you mean their usual fashion is to occur simultaneously, off the island and regardless of the 108 accident of Desmond? If that's the case, that means different timelines take place simultaneously/ all at once. Yet 1) There can't be a number of present or future-s (every present is past, now is never and same with the future, for it falls to now and thus now to past, right 'now' as we read, type and discuss). 2) If time isn't a flux (rather then the linear temporality human mind assumes due to the latter's simplicity and convenience for everyday pragmatics), that would mean there can be several you's or I's simultaneously. That's a contradiction for the masses (bodies) in existence (since Aristotle). So I'm thinking if such a thing is plausible (multiple timelines) it got to be a temporal anomaly- not as how things are with time on usual terms.

I rather take it as this: the actuality-potentiality difference is messed with Desmond's 108 accident, instead of multiple timelines merging into one another. Under 'normal circumstances' what is real/ realized is that which holds the potentiality most compossible to turn into actuality. When that happens (say, for a given x), the principle of non contradiction suggests that other potentialities (for x), not compossible enough to become actualities, are ruled out. (again Aristotle, and Leibniz) I'm thinking Desmond's late entrance of the numbers messed up this principle, and brought together incompossible potentialities to life. That of course, amounts to messing up of time yes, but I don't see it in terms of 'timelines'.

Don't understand how they 'crash into each other'? Also again, under normal circumstances only 1 version of a given x can exist in a given time and space That's regardless of the island, being on or off it. There's only one version of a given person at a given time- neither two of the same x in the same time nor one in two timelines simultaneously (hail to Greek philosophers here).

Doesn't the EM qualities of the island render it a time traveler/ manipulator etc? I rather think that if we are to keep up with the timelines theory, the uniqueness of the island got to be about being able to accommodate or trigger multiple timelines (that might be the reason why Richard and Mikail are the mysterious guys they are)

We were given shots of Charlie going through serious WD symptoms, both physiologically and psychologically (serious shivering, fatigue, insomnia, edginess, paranoia etc)

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"Bear...? Is that you?"-- Hurley S03E4

First things first potpies, you said that sometimes the characters looked dazed after a flashback.

I've had a discussion (not on this message board) about whether or not the flashbacks are actual flashbacks the charaters are having at that moment, or if they are just an insight to their motivation/backstory for what is happening in the "plot" of the show.

We determined that it was the latter as opposed to the former. They weren't actually thinking back to these events in their life it was just a literary technique used to quickly reveal some charcter traits of the individual in question.

I am correct in thinking that you disagree with my point of view on this?

Flaneuse, you clearly know more about physics than I do. Wow! By a long shot! I don't want to offend, but it sounds like maybe you are taking Lost too seriously. I don't think it's necessary for any 1 theory about what's going on in the story of Lost to fit perfectly with every theory of every real-life philosopher or physicist under the sun in order for that theory to work beautifully on both a symbolic/plot-level and on an enjoyment level, in just the same way that I don't need to see an entire retelling of every element of The Wizard of Oz in Lost to notice, and believe, and enjoy the fact that there clearly there is a significant Wizard of Oz theme going on that is deliberate and that works beautifully. For example: Even without a yellow brick road analog and a lion analog in Lost, the references "The Man Behind the Curtain" episode title, the red shoes worn by a person crushed under a fallen structure, the pseudonym "Henry Gale," the hot air balloon, and the idea of being lost in a strange new world together are enough evidence that there is a strong Wizard of Oz theme going on. I could still have a whole list of other "readings" of Lost, and other "lenses" with which to pinpoint meaning in Lost, each of which might not answer everything totally, but each of which work. A theory about what's going on in Lost doesn't (necessarily) need to incorporate or account for theories by specialists at the San Diego Zoo on polar bear behavior and with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. writings on African American history to understand Michael's psyche, and with a full botanist's understanding of the plants in Sun's garden, etc. to work. (Wow!--How fantastic if it does!!) That's a level of depth that's great, but unnecessary, to me, anyway.

I'm sure it sounds like I'm being snotty and talking back to you in a disrespectful way, but I don't intend it that way--Really! I admit I don't know the meaning of a lot of the .50 words in your response (compossible???), and I know next to nothing about physics. But I have always preferred the humanities to the hard sciences because with solid evidence, multiple interpretations are possible. It just seems more democratic somehow. Maybe I'm right. Maybe I'm wrong. Whatever is revealed by the last episode of the last season, I'm having a ball making connections and reading everyone else's!

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"Helen, do you remember that authentic Australian walkabout I told you about?"

My intention with contributing to any thread on these forums are the same with everyone else's, regardless of the content of discussion: to learn and have fun. If I were to make inferences of people's motives and attitudes instead of trying to engage with the content of what they wrote, I'd be wasting precious time and miss opportunity to learn something I haven't heard or thought before. Good thing there's Internet, because it allows me to look up a word or idea I might not be familiar with when reading other members' posts (That's how I came to learn about some authors as well as theories of time vortex, warp etc machine issues that steph or others discussed here many times)

Interesting that when it's information regarding mythology, religion or literature, interpretations I (like anyone else) sometimes come up with, meet no such "taking it a little too serious huh?" response. Yet when it's about engaging in a theory revolving around science-related issues, contributing with relevant information and friendly questions are met with rash inferences. Regardless of who wrote what response to whose ideas, I'd prefer if people could have taken it in a less personal way and find it thought-provoking that a TV show allows so many different time-honored issues of arts and sciences to be considered and discussed. I am sorry you find what I've had to say intimidating.

Forums, of this kind, are places to share and discuss information. Especially when a sub-forum of theories is of concern, it's only natural that a line of thought suggested to hold a consistency (aka a theory) gets to be scrutinized. Again, even though it should be taken as all natural when a theory is questioned, I am sorry if what I had to say provoked the reaction it did instead of further thought.

I'm not all content with writing this but since not what I posted but 'why' & 'how' I wrote it seems to be of interest: I never had, on these forums or elsewhere, the intention to put on to display what I (might think I) know about certain disciplines. Interesting you mentioned social sciences, because the arguments I had in my previous reply to only contribute to the timelines discussion are of philosophy (yeah one the favorite sources of inspiration of LOST producers), which is what I've studied and made part of my line work today instead of physics.

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"Bear...? Is that you?"-- Hurley S03E4

I really didn't mean to offend you, Flaneuse, but I can see that I did. I'm honestly very sorry for that. I was not trying to infer anything about your character from your post. It seems like so many disciplines can be used to interpret Lost. Different posters on Losttalk have a different idea of where the limit is beyond which a Lost interpretation is taking it too far. Sometimes it's particular disciplines or a level of knowledge of particular disciplines that goes way beyond the average viewer (even the average Lost viewer), or the number of disciplines, whathaveyou... Certainly a poster here can get really excited to share an idea that he/she has really been studiously crafting. It is a bit of a bubble burst to hear that the idea characterized as taking it too far, when the author was expecting as much excitement from his/her peers on Losttalk. I get that. I have been accused of taking my interpretations too far, myself. I'm just trying to gauge where my limit is, and I think it's in a different spot than your limit, is all. I went overboard in the length of my earlier response to you, and maybe that seemed snotty. If I had had more time to spend on it it would have been much more concise, and therefore probably seemed less personal. Of course, you are entitled to your interpretation.

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"Helen, do you remember that authentic Australian walkabout I told you about?"

I kind of like the idea Potpie it does seem plausable,multible timelines has been in a lot a post and people are talking about it,plus i'm going back to check the differences that you talked about.. Does everything have to have a real scientific explaination it is a television show I mean we really like having some hardcore answers that are scientificly true, but it's not that i have to have that to enjoy the show some mystory is good t.v. too

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what are you guy's talking about,who's your favorite other
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Sawyer

Yet again another assumption as to my personal take and why it is such and such- No I am not offended. I don't post here to receive affirmation or excitement for my line of thought either, so it does not matter much if disagreements occur. Following the line of your inference of bubble burst, aren't I inclined to think the exact same thing, logically- that my questioning and friendly suggestions were taken the way they were because they somehow didn't convey the expected awe? If engaging in a time-related discussion with references to names and theories that made possible the very question of time and space is 'taking it too far & expecting conformity with every possible thought under the sun', that's not only a short-sighted response but also very personal one rather than being simply preferential.

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"Bear...? Is that you?"-- Hurley S03E4

I never gave much credibility to the multiple timeline theory, but I must say that CPP did bring up some things which I previously not thougt of. I wonder just how much we must suspend of our beliefs in the end to have this series end. I cannot wait to look back on all of this rhetoric, which I LOVE, and see what, and who, was right.

You ask a really good question! Sometimes I think it makes sense to assume that characters are actually remembering those moments, yes. Sometimes there are strong clues to that effect: Sawyer reading the letter and then the flashback to Young Sawyer hiding under the bed or Claire kicking Charley out of their little family and then the flashback to Lucy Heatherton telling Charley that he'll never take care of anyone. (I hope I'm not reordering episodes in my mind!) Other times I think the flashbacks are inserted because, in the 1st 3 seasons, flashback events mirror island events and set a precedent for the choices that characters make on the island.

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"Helen, do you remember that authentic Australian walkabout I told you about?"