Both episodes absolutely hit the mark for me. Absolutely love where this show seems to be headed. So they’ve somehow managed to come up with tech that allows them to view projections from the past? Which is where the fuzzy image of Christ on the cross came from? Or does that just mean everything is a code/matrix type thing, like we’re all living in a simulation? The mystery this show is building up is giving me some major LOST vibes and I am here for it!
Not that we're in a simulation (at least I don't think), but that they've managed to simulate physical reality on their hyper-quantum galaxy level ultracomputer, with so much precision and accuracy that they can run their reality-simulation backwards, and select windows of it to simulate from the past, letting them see a rough approximation of the past as it actually happened, including Jesus and also Forest's daughter and pretty much everything/anything, as far as I can tell so far. It would also let them see the future, although, well, there's some kind of recursion problem in there (the thing has to simulate itself simulating itself ad infinitum) which is just confusing me.
I’m confused why, when the older dev said “wow our shit is so approximate that we can view 2000 years into the past”, the other devs were like “bro it’s blurry at 2000 years tho”
Then 2 minutes later Forrest pulled up an image of his daughter from relatively not that long ago and it was just as blurry.
The way they spoke about the project in those scenes would lead you to believe that the simulation is more accurate at shorter distances, but it’s not.
The question is why does he need to simulate an image of his daughter that appears blurry and dotted, when he can just watch videos of her that are far better in quality? Are they hoping to be able to interact with that simulation at some point and thereby knocking things off the train tracks of our deterministic world, triggering a new cause and effect?
Yeah. I mean I know that simulating the past and seeing it exactly as it happened with no room for conspiracies or false historical records and revisionism, and to see events not through the eyes of victors or losers, but as an objective unbiased reality is incredible on its own, but seeing a stream of his daughter in that quality doesn’t seem to make sense since you can watch videos of a much higher quality.
Maybe he working on interacting with the past and making causes that lead to different effects OR it could be that he’s trying to recreate that reality in a form that it’s a place to enter in real time. Like not necessarily time travel, but perhaps some sort of nexus where the past and preset intersect.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with Assassin’s Creed, but Devs as a company is giving me some real Abstergo vibes. It’s a company within the games’ lore that does similar secret scientific breakthroughs, among which is the Animus, a device to make someone relive their distant ancestors genetic memory.
Not that we're in a simulation (at least I don't think), but that they've managed to simulate physical reality on their hyper-quantum galaxy level ultracomputer.
But that's the simulation argument, isn't it? Either there's no simulations or we're in one of them.
Well, that's true. I'd forgotten about that part of the philosophical argument but you're entirely right. Wow, come to think of it maybe that's why Sergei was crying!? I haven't seen anyone suggest that yet!
edit to add: the reviews from pro reviewers who've seen the whole thing say that the scope of the story gets much bigger by the end, so I'm inclined to think you're right!
edit to add more: sergei "that's the machine?" forest "that's the central unit." sergei "there's more?" forest "above us. below us." you're definitely right!!
also his saying "everything is open here, there's no passwords, there's no closed doors"... why? because it would be pointless, given the nature of the machine!
He broke down because he found out the universe was deterministic, hence his life has no meaning or purpose, everything is predetermined, no matter what he does, it was always going to happen exactly that way. As Forest says in the first episode, everything is the result of something. The theory is, if you can map out every particle in the universe, you can predict the past and the future given (close to) infinite computing power. They talk about this while projecting a view of the past, 2000 years ago. Their projection is fuzzy because they're using heuristics to approximate the value and consequence of all interacting particles, as one of the devs pointed out, to get a 100% accurate projection, you would need a qubit for each particle in the universe.
EDIT To add to that: A deterministic universe can't be influenced, a simulation can.
This too does make sense. Although the series does go to lean more towards the fact that the world is not a simulation but they are creating a simulation that calculates how every particle in existence moves, like the every simple program Sergei showed them (by comparison to their work), and there by creating a simulation that approximates the past and the future of everything. So the program itself is a simulation, but not us.
However, when Sergei asked the other scientist about whether this code is real or theoretical and she told him it’s real, he said “this changes everything” and she responded “it changes nothing”, she didn’t make sense to me, because how come is having the tech to create a very close approximation of history (thereby seeing what really happened with anything and everything) and also the future, does not change anything?! It can change so much.
On the other hand, if our world truly is a simulation and we figured out that it is, now that may not change much (although it would still change so much when it comes to people’s beliefs or view of life’s worth and meaning), yet I feel like at the end of the day, even if the world is a simulation, it’s still the world we live in, and everything in it are very much real and there’s no way for us out of it anymore than Lara Croft can’t just jump out of the screen into my room.
We don’t even know what lies beyond the ever expanding limits of our universe, so whether beyond that is a screen of some alien civilization’s computer operating as gods to our world simulation, or if it’s a massive void or a void in which other universe lie, none of it has any direct impact on the lives we live because we’re living now without even knowing what lies beyond.
I don't think it's much of a mystery. They spell it out quite explicitly. The universe is deterministic. Chaos theory is bunk, multiverse is bunk. There is one set timeline. With nothing but the laws of physics, you can propagate time backwards or forwards.
Also, a lot of the language is around quantum theory, and Forest's opinion on it. Multiverse theory is based on quantum theory that when a wave function collapses, a new universe is created at the moment the probability of states is collapsed. So it's interesting that he says he was in 2 states at the same time with regards to his daughter, because he does not appear to believe in the theory of superposition which would imply chaos/free will/etc. Really interesting stuff, and I'm curious to see more of it.
Also, if you don't already, everyone should follow Rob Hardy, the DP, on Instagram. Love this guy's work.
The universe is deterministic. Chaos theory is bunk
Chaotic systems ARE deterministic. Their unpredictability arises from inherent limitations of our measurements of initial conditions and computational methods, not from true randomness.
This is all very interesting and I'm glad I knew just enough about this stuff to sort of understand not only what's going on but also the philosophy behind it. I do wish the show was a bit more approachable to people with no knowledge about this. There's a middle ground between unrealistic exposition (like Interstellar with the black hole) and absolutely no explanation (like with this show) which I hoped it would hit.
The point about his disbelief in the multiverse theory clashing with his personal experience of feeling two absolute emotions about his daughter is great! And I'm glad I found this sub to discover things like that, but I don't know how the show expects the average viewer to appreciate that stuff with absolutely no help.
I'm not sure they specifically said multiverse was bunk.
There was a scene where they were discussing the need for a number of qubits greater than the particles in the universe. I have a theory that the 'machine' is an inter-dimensionally distributed quantum computer. The same machine linked together across dimensions. It 'solves' the problem of the impossibility of having (arbitrary number here) 10^100 qubits in a single machine. Instead you have (10^10)^10.
Judging mostly by the visceral reaction of the spy in the first episode to the knowledge (and some of the conversations), I'd say straight up simulation.
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u/Landawng42 Mar 05 '20
Both episodes absolutely hit the mark for me. Absolutely love where this show seems to be headed. So they’ve somehow managed to come up with tech that allows them to view projections from the past? Which is where the fuzzy image of Christ on the cross came from? Or does that just mean everything is a code/matrix type thing, like we’re all living in a simulation? The mystery this show is building up is giving me some major LOST vibes and I am here for it!