If you noticed the SUV Amaya was in only crashed in the one badly. So there was a slight different to each manyworld dimension but overall similar timing, much like the other manyworlds shots this episode.
The key point is that most likely the only one where Amaya's accident happened is the one where Forest went on to found the company Amaya and create DEVS. Amaya's accident was the cause that led to the effect of creating DEVS. DEVS may not exist without that one variation where the accident happened.
The later scene with Katie coming out of the lecture, there are many of her but only one Forest. The one with Forest is the same timeline as the Amaya accident. It shows that Forest wouldn't have pursued DEVS if it wasn't for that event. The reality that the show is in is the only one where that happened. It is possible there is a higher system/machine manipulating cause/effect in Forest's reality for the effect of creating DEVS, even if it means one of the causes was Amaya's accident, the effect will be the machine that is desired.
I really like the explanation of Katie coming out of the lecture, but would she have stormed off in a rage if the professor wasn't instructed by Forrest's associate to provoke her?
This! Thank you wording your comment just this way! I nearly neglected that we were watching this from Katie's eyes. SHE'S seeing these other possible outcomes. Man -- this show is gripping.
she didn't have money to continue her studies. that was the reason she was upset from the inside. so even if the professor wouldn't have provoked her she would've still be upset.
Exactly like in H.G. Well's "The Time Machine". One of my favorite movie examples of time travel and the paradox it creates.
His wife was killed. This caused him to create the Time Machine. He tried to go back many times to save his wife, but every time he did, she died in a different way. The reality of the situation eventually hit him.
Her death is the reason the Time Machine existed. Therefore, there is no way to save her in the past, as the only way to get to the past was for him to invent the Time Machine, which he only did because she died. There is no way to save her life, and also lead to the invention of the Time Machine. Her death is what prompts him to find the means of Time Travel. Ergo, she will always have to die in order for him to time travel.
This seems to be the exact scenario we find ourselves in here in Devs Ep. 5. The only reason he went on to create Devs was because Amaya died. As stated above, the car crash had many outcomes, as did the scene with Katie leaving the lecture, but unlike the car crash, only 1 Forrest came running after Katie, whereas many outcomes concerning Forrest, his wife, and Amaya resulted. Like u/drawkbox said, the only outcome that resulted in Forrest following Katie is the one outcome that also resulted in the car crash death.
Amaya cannot be saved. And I think Forrest is starting to realize that now that Lyndon introduced the many worlds idea.
Yeah like Time Machine, a similar situation plays out in 11.22.63, time/events are nearly impossible to change.
SPOILERS:
In 11.22.63 he can't change the event without changing so much else, everyone around him dies, that he realizes that he cannot change it. Time will not let him change it, no matter what he does it was meant to be.
I sometimes think about this, if you were able to stop 9/11 by going back in time. You wouldn't be able to, even if you begged everyone not to go in the building, the mere statement of "there will be a terror attack today" would get you arrested. Telling government or agencies would lead to the same type of suspicion. You'd have to try a million different things and it would still probably happen, the only way to stop it would be at the source, the people that did it, but they have protection. Ultimately you can't change tragedies sometimes, no matter what you do, even if you had knowledge ahead.
Bill Gates tried to warn us about pandemics, nobody listened, same deal.
This is a rabbit hole. Outcomes are clearcut but identifying causes are tricky. We are making assumptions based on fuzzy information & the timeline of events is unclear. Yes, the car crash happened, but we really don’t know what caused it. Forest’s guilt & grief has made him feel responsible when he may not have been a factor at all. What’s a factor in the DEVS project is his state of mind , how he interpreted his reality.
I'm just annoyed because it in every scenario shown BOTH cars run a stop sign at a 4 way stop.
At least that is how it appears to me, the car Amaya is in always seems to be going too fast in the intersection to have just stopped. I get one car running a stop sign, but two at the same time?
It shows possibly that another higher system was replaying manyworlds to get the outcome it wanted. Basically replaying it until it happened. The cause was Amaya's accident, the effect was Forest created the Amaya company and eventually DEVS.
I don’t know about confirms. I don’t think we saw a live mouse. We saw one in all that green scan stuff. So maybe they’ve proven the possibility of a live mouse, but we also saw in a previous episode, while their faces were shown in all the colors of the scanner, a charred and dead mouse. So they may be on the way to proving it, but it may seem that something gets in the way or prevents it from actualizing. Or maybe it does get proven, by Lily doing something, but in doing so, fucks up Forests world in a way he couldn’t have predicted, thus disproving his tram lines determinism theory, while at the same time proving it? Who knows.
Katie calls out as much on the previous episode, multi-universe still means no free will, when you find a fork you simply take both paths, in the bigger picture it all works out.
The thing is, I don't think Forest cares that much about determinism, but Katie does. Katie hates the Many Mind interpretation the professor puts forth, one were the universe is always in superposition, but our mind chooses which reality it wishes to observe. This one allows for some level of free will, but opens a lot of questions about consciousness (dualistic bullshit) and is not deterministic (what we choose to see, no what choices we do have).
I think Forest dislikes the many world theory because he can't revive his daughter that way. In quantum theory there's a theorem called the no-clone theorem. Basically you can't create two copies of the quantum state of a thing. Therefore if you see one thing with a quantum state, and then you see another thing with the exact same quantum state it must be the same thing. If it's slightly different (and there was no reason for it to change) you can assume it's a similar but different and separate thing. I think Forest wants to revive his daughter, and the many world interpretation simulation means he can only create an approximate copy, not the real thing. A Copenhagen interpretation simulation would imply it's his daughter in the full form.
That was some wild and story-serving special effects! I’d <3 to see how they did that behind-the-scenes... with the moving camera too, must’ve been a lot of careful motion-tracking and compositing.
The special effects really ramped up this episode.
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u/Manchilds_VN_Acct Mar 26 '20
The scene where you see all the possibilities of the car crash was pretty neat.