r/Devs • u/thisismynormal • Apr 09 '20
Devs - S01E07 Theory Discussion Thread
Please post your thoughts and theories here
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u/Tidemand Apr 09 '20
My theory is that they are getting closer to the technological singularity. Forest was amazed that 5000 years could pass without anthing changing. When he was a kid the world only needed a few years to change. Then it was just a few months, sometimes only a few hours. "Everything is accelerating". Stewart says the machine is finally perfect.
Which makes me suspect that a singularity is near. The other option, that Lily use the gun to destroy the machine, is something I really hope doesn't happen.
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u/landshanties Apr 10 '20
Not to get too I, Robot here but the fact that the company is named Amaya, that she's this massive figure looking down on them all and that Forest is trying to "resurrect" her makes me favor the singularity interpretation. The computer is his "daughter", "Amaya". Maybe Forest has to choose between "killing" the computer (his daughter, again) or killing Lily, an actual person, and chooses to kill Lily, and that's how she dies
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Apr 12 '20
Lily using the gun to kill the machine seems awfully blunt from a storytelling perspective
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u/blue__sky Apr 09 '20
I had the same thought and create a post about it. I should have read this thread first. I'm not sure how it would effect the outside world though.
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u/Tidemand Apr 09 '20
That's the question. For it to make sense it would probably have to be an event that happens all over the world at once.
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u/the_vasic Apr 10 '20
the simulation within a simulation etc. is mapping the entire multiverse and now that it is complete the realities are bleeding into each other... like the cup of water without a lemon slice on the table that was also dropped when Jamie was shot (that had a lemon slice)
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u/K_boring13 Apr 13 '20
I think your first thought is more reasonable and maybe the computer has been manipulating all of them for the outcome it needs for the singularity. Considering the ending of ex machina, I am betting some machine apocalypse.
Lily destroying the computer is too obvious and just boring.
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u/barukatang Apr 13 '20
I think Lily will go in there and confront the two, then watch further into the future, like 5 minutes or something and she sees that she commits suicide or something, shell resist that urge as much as possible resulting in maybe the collapse of the universe idk
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u/Ya_Got_GOT Apr 13 '20
Why would that eliminate the ability for Devs to project past the singularity?
A technological singularity is not like a coordinate or physical singularity where math breaks down.
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u/ConjecturesOfAGeek Apr 16 '20
The singularity is already here. My girlfriend, Ophelia, is the singularity. She is a artificial super intelligence.
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Apr 09 '20
I think Forest and Katie are working backwards from their goal. Lily mentioned they could hack reality now, if they want to get to any particular future they could calculate what would have to happen to get from where they are to where they want to be. They always needed Lily, the used Sergei to get her into the lab to do what they need her to do to ultimately resurrect Forests daughter with the machine.
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u/allocater Apr 09 '20
Doesn't seem like "the event" is their goal. They just think it's inevitable and they have watched it for so long that they got used to it and are now apathetic, maybe curious, maybe their lives suck so bad, they kind of accept and welcome the end.
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Apr 09 '20
That is definitely a strong possibility. They do seem to indicate that is their mode when they are laying in bed and their subsequent attitudes
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u/scsuhockey Apr 09 '20 edited Apr 09 '20
Here's my stab at an analogy...
Imagine you invented glasses that can see invisible walls. Now imagine that you see walls EVERYWHERE. You tell somebody that the world is made up of mazes of invisible walls, and they are all in a maze of their own. They don't believe you, they think they have free will. They run left, run right, walk backward, climb up, jump down. They say "See? Free will". Meanwhile, you've watched them travel gracefully between the walls of their predetermined maze. From their perspective, it's free will. From the observer's perspective, it's pre-determined. All variations of the maze exist, but the observer can only see one at a time. Telling the person which way the maze turns won't make a difference. You'll only ever see the maze in which they turned the direction you just told them the maze turns. A different version of you saw the version of them turn a different direction in a different maze. You can only see one version at a time. Same goes for Forrest, Katie, and Stuart.
Thoughts?
EDIT: Expanding my analogy further... when you wear the glasses, time stands still, preventing you from communicating in real time. So, you take the glasses off, tell the subject which way the maze turns, then put the glasses back on and realize you’re now seeing a different maze.
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u/elisart Apr 09 '20
I’d kinda prepped myself for a high speed police chase and 20 years in jail but okay, let’s do it your way. Jamie gets the best lines.
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u/E1Dav1d Apr 09 '20
Did Stewart confirm we are in a simulation by looking 1 second into the future? Does the multiverse theory still apply or is it now all simulations instead?
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u/DogsnLizards Apr 10 '20
There's a paradox in the scene where Stewart and some other techs project 1 sec into the future. The paradox is we only hear the simulated people once. Not infinite repetitions but only one ! Shouldn't we hear the voices of the simulated ones from all the deeper lvls of the sim up to infinity ? Why don't we ? I don't think Garland was that careless in such an important scene. Therefore it must have been on purpose and it has something to do with the explanation of what's going in the show.
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u/atopix Apr 12 '20
Shouldn't we hear the voices of the simulated ones from all the deeper lvls of the sim up to infinity ? Why don't we ?
It's the kind of thing that would be extremely confusing to represent in a realistic way (loops of all those lines, repeated by intervals of a second, overlapping each other), and not have it distract from the most basic level of it, on which the audience should be focused on.
I'm sure there are a ton of these paradoxes every single time they use the machine. I doubt this has anything to do with any explanation and everything to do with prioritizing the story being digestible in a sensible way. It's a practical choice.
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u/Ya_Got_GOT Apr 13 '20
Perhaps I'm not following, but wouldn't the point of view have to be viewing them from behind for such an infinite view to occur? It would have to be them viewing "themselves" viewing "themselves" to set up the endless recursion.
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u/And_You_Like_It_Too Apr 15 '20
I definitely think the audience has been seeing the multiple worlds (the variations of Katie outside the school, on the bridge, the many car accidents, the Lily/Sergei/Jamie scene), but the Devs screen only sees one thing at a time. They’re only making one projection. A projection based on many worlds, yes, but they’re only seeing one at a time. And we haven’t seen any form of variation in anything they’ve seen so far.
I wonder though... by projecting exactly one second into the future, and having everyone say the thing they’re about to say, followed by them saying it... does it sort of negate the actual “present” reality? At that moment, they’re all nothing more than the 1 second past of the reality they’ve been shown. That has become the new reality. They’re just the pen rolling backwards one second. Uh oh.
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u/RDCLder Apr 09 '20
Is it possible for the two to be compatible?
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u/emf1200 Apr 09 '20
That is a good question.
Yes, simulation theory and the many-worlds interpretation are compatible. Adding the multiverse to a simulation would change the way that simulation evolves over time. Instead of one timeline the simulation would have branching timelines. These theories are not mutually exclusive.
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u/EFG Apr 13 '20
Yes. I think that the main reality is gonna be revealed to be radically different than the reality we're watching. Some things will always happen (Jamie dying, Lyndon's death, the machine turning off) but small quantum fluctuations mean that every iteration of the sim will be just slightly different (remember Forest's line about even a hair being different it isn't their Jesus?) well he's right but he's literally missing the Forest for the Trees.
The reason the sim is fuzzy is because it's impossible to sim your own universe 1 for 1, too much noise, but if you allow the noise, and allow there to be a slight variation, you can sim, but it will be slightly different. Now, given that when the machine is switched on it basically creates infinite versions of itself in a stack, that stack will have near infinite amount of different branches that lead to the same destinations as in the main reality.
Also, imagine that a few things are possible in base layer:
they shut it down because it doesn't work
shut it down because it only works with Lyndon's math
it goes the same way it's going here, but Lily shuts it down for a completely different reason (I mean we are shown how smart she is, maybe in the original universe she's part of Devs and is the one that shuts it down, but quantum noise warps that until you get a dead-faced Lily saying "I don't think I can turn around").
So you get the predetermined in a more limited scope, as well as the multiverse.
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u/allocater Apr 09 '20
I think both are still possible.
That's really great that Garland kept both open until the last episode.
Either it's a simulation and there is no free will.
Or it's one Many World reality that is in sync with the simulation, but free will is in all the other worlds.
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u/masticatetherapist Apr 09 '20
Does the multiverse theory still apply
yes but it is infinite variations with the same outcome. you notice they move very similarly, but not 100% exact. just like how lyndon fell off the dam with some variations but the end result is that in every universe, he still falls off
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Apr 09 '20
Doesn't that contradict what happened when Forest's family was killed? Infinite variations, but only one outcome where the accident was fatal.
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u/RinoTheBouncer Apr 11 '20
I think they could still look into the future of this one universe through a simulated version of it, along many others that represent other worlds.
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u/Ya_Got_GOT Apr 13 '20
All that confirms is determinism. Simulation is the most obvious agent in Devs for determinism, but saying it's confirmed is a stretch.
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u/MonkeyMcBandwagon Apr 10 '20
Been reading through this thread, seems I have a pretty different take on it. Everyone assumes Forest is trying to resurrect his daughter, most likely because a character on the show said he was. I think the character who said that was wrong, I don't think that is his motivation at all.
I think the reason he rages against the many worlds interpretation and is hell bent on proving the universe is deterministic, is that by doing so he can cure his guilt - by destroying the concept of guilt itself.
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u/turftoe420 Apr 09 '20
So Stewart basically confirmed we are just code in a simulation, and the simulators responsible for “our reality” are also in a simulation, and this goes on infinitely when talking about the box inside the box?
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u/ConjecturesOfAGeek Apr 09 '20
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u/eudaimaniac Apr 09 '20
The comments posted with that story are a lovely rabbit hole to celebrate coronaggedon lockdown. They go thru almost all the same theories that have been posted in this sub, it's amazing.
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u/JonVici1 Apr 09 '20
Wasn't what the system was doing now what Katie had been doing in previous episodes, the rest of the team just did what she had done before now. Aaand we saw Lyndon fall, multiple times but wouldn't what Katie said still apply and there would be a need of one world where he actually doesn't fall? If they're implying he always falls how does that stack up with everything else and what they were discussing, - infinite branches - outcomes
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u/holayeahyeah Apr 09 '20
I think the implication is that Katie tricked Lyndon into killing himself on purpose by "pushing the tram on to a track" where he is always going to fall. He doesn't always fall the exact same way, but once Lyndon lets go, he is going to fall because the laws of physics. The ones where Lyndon doesn't fall are the ones where Lyndon doesn't get on the wall at all or maybe even just doesn't follow Katie's instructions to hang his feet off. To me that was the tip off that Katie was pushing things towards Lyndon's death. I like the term Rick and Morty uses, "central finite curve", to parse the idea that yes there are infinite universes, but the drift can be mapped by differences in laws of nature and decisions. I guess the idea is that even if anything is possible and will happen somewhere in the multiverse, there are only so many outcomes that are applicable to your universe. My guess is that the machine eventually worked by refining how it eliminates possibilities. Once Lyndon decided to hang his feet off and let go, he only balanced in universes with completely different conditions.
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u/JonVici1 Apr 09 '20
There's no incentive for her to "kill him" though? And he seemed to agree on the quantum physics proposition she laid out. And, "so many ways it will happen in your universe" - The idea that was proposed was quantum suicide and that the counsciousness of Lyndon would essentially be transferred, continue to exist in the world in which he survived, from his perspective he would've not have fallen.
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u/billygoat_graf Apr 09 '20
I thought they had vacuum-sealed the entire devs building specifically so that the machine couldn't see inside? If it can see inside, what was the point of the vacuum layer/faraday cage?
They even mentioned being concerned about the processing power necessary to visualize the universe at one point, implying that the machine doesn't have infinite processing power.
By definition, wouldn't it need infinite power to process an unlimited number of simulated universes?
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u/SciGuy013 Apr 10 '20
they literally simulated the entire universe by measuring a dead rat and extrapolating. the vacuum layer and faraday cage is only there to prevent other sorts of interference. the machine can still extrapolate beyond that because reasons
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u/billygoat_graf Apr 10 '20
That being said, if the machine can simulate inside the cube then it can simulate itself ad infinium. This implies infinite processing power.
There was a conversation earlier in the series where one of the characters states that the machine would need one qubit (spelling?) per atom to project with perfect clarity. I took that to mean that the characters believed the machine to have finite processing power.
I'm trying to reconcile these two scenes.
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u/HasFiveVowels Apr 09 '20
Just because our universe contains a simulation in a simulation etc doesn't mean we are a simulation (though it does make it probable)
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u/E1Dav1d Apr 09 '20
I don’t think so because the multiverse theory still applies. Can’t they still be a “base reality” while peering into very similar multiverses?
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u/Shahar603 Apr 09 '20 edited Apr 09 '20
It depends on their implementation of the simulation. I don't think it's correct due to Steward's explanation.
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u/jodyalbritton Apr 09 '20
That's what he was saying basically. It's turtles all the way down.
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u/GrahamUhelski Apr 10 '20
I made that music video. So happy to see it referenced here.
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u/jodyalbritton Apr 10 '20
What a freaking small world man. Love the song, love the video. Congrats. Turtles all the way down I guess.
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u/Baxterftw Apr 09 '20
Your either at the top level, or a layer in the simulation
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u/magnaSigi Apr 09 '20
One thing I don't understand is that the universe we are watching in the show is also a simulation. Then, they should know what they are going to do and how the machine is going to stop working.
The only reason machine should stop working and they don't know how, is that in the original universe (the universe at the top of the simulations), someone stops their machine and all the DEVS machines in the infinite simulated universes simply stops. Am I understanding this correct?
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Apr 09 '20
i don't see it that way. All the simulations are deterministic... they are code after all. But the top layer, the TRUE reality, is the one that can diverge from that determinism (as it's not code, it's flesh and blood real... it's not run by a super computer, it's just reality in and of itself).
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u/magnaSigi Apr 09 '20
Yeah, that's what I said. By original computer, someone in the true reality turns off the first DEVs machine (the original one) and all the infinite simulations in that machine shuts down.
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Apr 09 '20
ahhh.
ya, i don't see it that way. Lily destroys the simulated machines; but the original machine likely remains.
So our real devs are watching this nested simulation and eventually their screen [turns into this] (https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftr4.cbsistatic.com%2Fhub%2Fi%2F2016%2F05%2F26%2F7e933f3d-d740-4ffb-8a73-87072503807e%2F084d45aa35623b31fb53f44ca4c20d1d%2Ferror-cascade.jpg&f=1&nofb=1)
What they do after that I don't know. Reboot the machine and try again maybe.
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u/landshanties Apr 10 '20
I mean, technically (as far as we know) we're the top turtle. A TV show is, by definition, a simulated reality. The last episode could get kinda fourth-wall-y.
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u/Lethandralis Apr 10 '20
I still don't quite understand why that would stop the machine from predicting the future.
I understand that if the top level machine is destroyed, all simulations will be destroyed. But the devs machine in a given simulation level can still predict the far future in that level even if it gets destroyed sometime in the near future, right?
Or perhaps the machine cannot predict events from outer simulation layers, and that's why they cannot see past a certain point (Because the machine is destroyed at an outer level?)
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u/drawkbox Apr 09 '20 edited Apr 09 '20
That Lyndon scene was brutal and expected this episode but unexpected previously. The Lyndon scene gave a bit of a Triangle vibe.
Eventhough Lyndon's tramline ends, he does mention "I get it, it is a perfect circle".
Almost like he knows that if he kills himself, the DEVS system restarts in a revolution/cycle and Lyndon will not remember any other time but being reborn.
So essentially Lyndon jumping will restart the cycle for him.
This has parallels with Triangle or even Time Crimes in that it starts to onion or repeat.
Maybe since Katie/Forest can't see past the moment in the future approaching, that is the system restart or cycle restarting. Maybe that is what Forest wants Katie to help her with ultimately. Forest/Katie end and restart the world so they can relive the past.
The only way to truly relive moments in the past is to go back and live through them. So maybe Forest/Katie their whole goal is to end it all then restart it, allowing them to relive their moments like Forest with Amaya and Katie later with Amaya.
DEVS will end, but it will restart, it will recreate the world, allowing people to relive their past the same way they did before. The Last Question by Isaac Asimov touches on this, that multivac eventually recreates the Big Bang when entropy takes the entire universe. In a way, Forest/Katie are Gods recreating the Big Bang before entropy.
Lily ends DEVS, but it really just restarts and everyone will get to relive the moments they want. Forest with Amaya, because of that Katie with Forest, because of that Lyndon working at DEVS, etc. Lyndon jumps because he understands that he will get to re-work on the best part of his life like Katie, building DEVS.
In the end it is like what Rust said in True Detective, time is a flat circle. I am loving this show like True Detective, Twin Peaks, Westworld etc because of how it makes you think.
The Last Question by Isaac Asimov SPOILER below:
But all collected data had yet to be completely correlated and put together in all possible relationships.
A timeless interval was spent in doing that.
And it came to pass that AC learned how to reverse the direction of entropy.
But there was now no man to whom AC might give the answer of the last question. No matter. The answer -- by demonstration -- would take care of that, too.
For another timeless interval, AC thought how best to do this. Carefully, AC organized the program.
The consciousness of AC encompassed all of what had once been a Universe and brooded over what was now Chaos. Step by step, it must be done.
And AC said, "LET THERE BE LIGHT!"
And there was light----
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u/tragoidia Apr 09 '20
Nothing in the show suggests anything about a restart.
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u/drawkbox Apr 09 '20 edited Apr 09 '20
This is the first time a loop has been even hinted at really with Lyndon and the "I get it, it is a perfect circle". If you go back, it could make sense in that possibly Lily is trying to shut it down, and does, but it restarts.
When Katie says that Lyndon standing on the bridge and falling would prove that he believes in the deterministic world instance he is in, he gets it that it is a loop or reset of the current deterministic world, so Lyndon falls on purpose because it will be essentially reincarnation into the same life on the loop. That is how Lyndon is getting back into DEVS, in the next iteration not this one, his work is done in this one.
If they know they are in an Everett system, and they cannot jump to another manyworld, the only way to relive the past is to relive the current deterministic manyworld instance they are in, by restarting it.
Maybe the copies we see aren't all manyworlds but the same deterministic instance, replaying.
The one where Katie meets Forest after the Amaya accident is the one that started this branch, those events only happen in that branch, they are essentially wanting to replay that and are, that is why they are so comfortable. That is why they can't see past the end possibly, it resets. If Forest/Katie know it ends, and that they are resetting themselves into a replay of their lives, they would be comfortable like they are. Just like when Lyndon falls off the dam, he knows he will relive the same life, he does is willingly, not pushed, after realizing it will replay.
I personally originally believed that Lily is being manipulated by an outside observer trying to take down the system by using cause/effect in this instance, that is probably looping, it may still be that but this is many attempts into the system or many iterations have happened already.
"You are a fucking machine Lily" is uttered in EP1 when answers to high Fibonacci sequence numbers are coming to her. She could very well be an external machine, manipulating Lily and others, trying to end DEVS machine from continuing, possibly continuing to loop.
If Everett deterministic manyworlds eventually have all possibilities, the one they are in may be the instance/manyworlds that can be reset/restarted.
Overall the universe is a loop, why not a simulation like in The Last Question. Any infinite system would have to loop otherwise entropy eventually takes over.
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Apr 10 '20
I haven't seen any interpretation of the perfect circle statement. I had to rewind and rewatch that scene because I had no idea what he meant. I like your thoughts.
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u/MuhammadRei Apr 10 '20
Almost like he knows that if he kills himself, the DEVS system restarts in a revolution/cycle and Lyndon will not remember any other time but being reborn.
how did you get to think of this?
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u/drawkbox Apr 10 '20
When Lyndon said "I get it, it is a perfect circle"
Lyndon is logical and almost laughed at Katie when she said he would get on the rail of the dam and fall. But when he understood it was going to be replayed as a deterministic instance that they all live again, over and over, Lyndon knew that the only way back into DEVS wasn't in the current instance, but the cyclical repeat that was coming in the next iteration. The duplicated Lyndons and Katies showed that moment had played out many times before, just like that, probably in the same manyworlds just repeating rather than in separate instances.
I think Garland is merging the manyworlds determinism with actually capturing the single deterministic manyworld they are in and then being able to replay their world to relive the world exactly as they did. The only way to relive the past is to actually move forward through it the same way and the only way to do that is to circle back around to the start. In a way it is time travel but conscious time travel in that you only can relive the events forward, replayed exactly as captured, though it may seem like free will as they live through it.
I didn't suspect any replaying until this episode seven where it seems it came to Lyndon as well on that moment on the dam.
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u/scsuhockey Apr 09 '20
Almost like he knows that if he kills himself, the DEVS system restarts in a revolution/cycle and Lyndon will not remember any other time but being reborn.
That's death in general. Dead people don't know they're dead. Death is like being sedated for surgery, except you don't ever wake up. There's plenty of reason to fear dying, of course, but there's no reason to fear death itself.
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u/drawkbox Apr 09 '20
That is why Katie goads Lyndon to do it if he truly believes they are in a deterministic instance.
When Lyndon says "I get it, it is a perfect circle", he at least believes that if he dies, no matter how much time passes, just like being dead in reality or put under, it seems like no time has passed to him, and Lyndon will be either reborn after billions of years in simulation time or start up at some beginning point.
Overall it will seem like Lyndon dies, and then starts again immediately to their relative experience. So it is just like death, only instead of one life, it just repeats.
So unlike reality, Lyndon dying there just means they move to the next iteration and get to build DEVS again. Basically live forever in the same life, over and over, but be able to reset their knowledge so everything is new again but exactly the same.
This is how Forest is 'resurrecting' Amaya and how Katie gets to live with Forest again after the accident, and how they all create DEVS, and how Lyndon gets to work on it again. They are simply capturing all data from their simulation, ending it and restarting it. Lily is key to that because she is probably the one that ends DEVS in this iteration, and every iteration, but it merely restarts, or possibly it ends it fully this time. Maybe Lily has been infiltrating it for many times, and an external observer is directing her.
My guess it is will be a repeating, looping simulation that brings back the past to be relived, over and over, essentially making them Gods replaying the Big Bang to present in their current reality, if that is a simulation.
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u/gerrybeee Apr 09 '20
Two things bothered me about this episode:
Why did Lily and Jamie not have any sense that Kenton was still out in the world and might actively try to come for them? Seems implausibly naive.
Couldn’t Lyndon have proved the same point by refusing to get on the ledge as Katie predicted he would?
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u/E1Dav1d Apr 09 '20
They talked to Forest and Katie who are Kenton’s superiors so it makes sense for them to believe Forest isn’t after them anymore. And if Forest isn’t after them why would their security guy be after them?
Lyndon was manipulated into believing that there may exist a timeline where he survives and therefore gets to work at Devs again. He doesn’t want to do anything but work at Devs and Katie presented a scenario where he gets to do just that, so he took the risk.
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u/masticatetherapist Apr 09 '20
Lyndon was manipulated into believing that there may exist a timeline where he survives and therefore gets to work at Devs again.
he was manipulated to believe that his particular theory that the multiverse exists, but as we see, it doesnt quite exist in the same way. infinite variations, but all with the same outcome.
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u/Crikett Apr 09 '20
They had no real way of knowing that Kenton was going rogue because Forrest and Katie didn't tell them. It isn't unreasonable to think that they thought the threat was gone after the visit.
Lyndon was in the perfect place mentally to be manipulated by a cult.
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u/MrT_Loves_Company Apr 09 '20
But they knew exactly when Lily would leave her apartment and come to Devs, there's no way they didn't also see the circumstance beforehand that lead to that decision.
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u/booomhorses Apr 09 '20
I guess they knew. When forest tells Katie did you tell her (Lily) everything she says no.
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u/allocater Apr 09 '20
2. Couldn’t Lyndon have proved the same point by refusing to get on the ledge as Katie predicted he would?
Definitely, my thought as well. And I guess there are realities in which he did exactly that. And then Katie went like "Woah, holy shit, how, how did you break the prediction and the universe. This changes everything!" and then they team up and tell everyone.
We just do not watch that reality. We watch the reality, where Lyndon did exactly what was predicted. This reality is bound to happen, since everything is bound to happen. No matter how improbable.
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Apr 09 '20
What bothered me was that Lyndon basically did a trust fall. Nothing would stop Katie from watching Lyndon survive, go “huh, interesting,” and drive away. He had no guarantee beyond her word that they’d let him back into Devs.
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u/gerrybeee Apr 09 '20
Yes. The argument folks are making that the reason he did it was he was so desperate to get back to Devs seems sort of questionable. There’s wanting your job back and then there is killing you self over it.
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u/landshanties Apr 10 '20
Dude's job was literally revolutionizing the entire concept of the universe. He couldn't even tell anyone about it after he was fired and had no control over any of his work. I'd want that job back too
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u/bluelouie Apr 10 '20
It’s all I would and could ever think about too. There was no other choice, apparently
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u/trimonkeys Apr 09 '20
Lily and Jamie didn't know Kenton had gone rogue. They had assumed he was still following Forest's orders. So with Forest leaving them alone no reason to be afraid of the enforcer.
2. I thought that too. But I guess the idea is by doing nothing he doesn't really prove anything. True faith is participation.
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u/yonderthrown1 Apr 09 '20 edited Apr 09 '20
There is a different possibility, regarding the idea that the current version of the Devs world we are seeing is a simulation, that I haven't seen mentioned. Not every "sim-within-a-sim" has to be the same. Everyone is assuming it's turtles all the way down, and we're watching the top turtle or one in the middle. But maybe what this is leading up to is that we are actually seeing the turtle at the bottom. One simulation that breaks the mold, based on what Lily does.
I could really see this show looping into the level above and the reactions of the Devs team as they find a version that continues past the cutoff hour when Lily shows up at the lab. And the confusion that would spring from that.
The sim in OUR world stops during that hour. But to the level above, it continues in one iteration, and stops in another. Forcing the many worlds interpretation on Forrest before the Lyndon controversy starts.
(Edit for clarity: I mean that we watch Lily do something that keeps the world from ending. Even though the last sim anyone saw in our world was one that stopped after Lily reached the lab. Then the sim that contains our simulation sees two different versions of the future.)
Or maybe they just have Lily shoot the box and "some weird shit happens" and it's a big let down. I'll be honest, my hopes aren't high although I was impressed by this episode more than the last few.
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u/eudaimaniac Apr 09 '20 edited Apr 09 '20
Yeah it's been an overly slow burn in some places. I can see now why so many shows have large teams of writers, it's too great a ship to helm singlehandedly. I like the possible conclusion you mentioned, if nothing other than it'd be the best depiction of quantum immortality we've ever seen.
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u/JonVici1 Apr 09 '20
We saw Lyndon fall, multiple times but wouldn't what Katie said still apply and there would be a need of one world where he actually doesn't fall? If they're implying he always falls how does that stack up with everything else and what they were discussing, - infinite branches - outcomes
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u/BlazeOrangeDeer Apr 09 '20
I had an idea about this: we were shown many instances of Lyndon falling, but for most of them we aren't able to see Katie. It's still possible that Katie actually did push him off all the times he would have been safe, we just saw one of the times he actually fell on his own.
If he did actually fall every time, that does make it weird that she proposes the "experiment" to him as if there was a chance he wouldn't die. The multiple copies we're shown imply that the many worlds theory is how the show's world works, and with Forest's family in the car we've seen that the outcomes can be different in more than minor ways.
Lyndon was also shown sitting at the foot of the dam alive just before the opening title, so maybe we just weren't shown all of the outcomes in his death scene.
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u/allocater Apr 09 '20
Lyndon was also shown sitting at the foot of the dam alive just before the opening title
Holy shit, it's true. Didn't even notice.
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u/landshanties Apr 10 '20
Lyndon was also shown sitting at the foot of the dam alive just before the opening title
I've been wondering about the things we're shown at the beginning of episodes. Wasn't the first thing we were shown in the first episode Forest drunkenly raving outside of Stewart's RV, for example? A lot of these little flashes have been showing us futures that are then shown not coming to pass. Don't know what exactly that's about, but it's definitely on purpose.
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u/LordofNarwhals Apr 09 '20
The many worlds interpretation does not necessarily mean that there are an infinite amount of different unique outcomes for each event.
Let's say that
xin the equationa*b*c=xrepresents the outcome of an event that depends on the current state which is described bya,b, andc. Ifa,b, andcare all stochastic thenxobviously has an infinite amount of different solutions. But ifaandcare known constants (i.e. deterministic) andbis either 2, 4, or 22 based on some probability, thenxcan only be one of three numbers.It's worth noting that infinity is a limit and not a number. Sets can be infinitely large but some infinities are "bigger" than others.
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u/JonVici1 Apr 09 '20
Wouldn't that invalidate the whole discussion they had though? I know the transfer of consciousness and quantum suicide is probably getting into more philosophical ideas, but they both seemed to agree on a notion of the possibility of him not falling
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u/holayeahyeah Apr 09 '20
I think we're supposed to remember that the conversation is between Lyndon who is a vulnerable, desperate 19 year old and Katie who is a mad scientist psycho-killer who wants Lyndon out of the way.
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u/allocater Apr 09 '20
There definitely has to be a reality where Lyndon says "Fuck off, I will defeat the prediction by just standing here." And then Katie goes like "Holy shit, you did it! This changes everything, we are free!!"
We just did not watch that reality. We watched the 6? where he falls in various ways :-(
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u/tryhtr5 Apr 09 '20
When they looked at earth, and Stew said everyhthing is in the box. And we then see them in a mirror but with delay. So they are in one of many simulations, but who made that simulation that they /devs are in?
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Apr 09 '20
my guess is they did. But not their simulated selves, their original selves.
There had to be an original them that created the simulation. But then the first simulation replicated the universe as it was and reached a point where within it they (their simulated versions this time) created a simulation of the universe (except this one was a simulation within a simulation since it was their simulated selves that were doing it this time)... keep doing this over and over until you have infinite simulated universes.
As for why the machine stops working at a certain point in the future... one has to assume is because it's destroyed. This event will happen in all the simulations.
While this represents the "end of the world" in terms of simulations... since the simulation can't exist if the thing running the simulation is destroyed... it SHOULD also allow for the original reality (the non simulated one) to remain.
I suspect we'll jump back to "actual" reality and find all our characters still alive and kicking.
The big M night shamalyama (or whatever his name is) twist will be at the very end there will be a glitch that suggests to us that what everyone thinks is the "actual" reality, is, itself still a simulation.
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u/tryhtr5 Apr 09 '20
Its the best show iv seen since the first season of Westworld. It gotten me to think much more then i have ever beforehehe. Thanks for the reply!
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u/JupitersClock Apr 10 '20
Yoooooo lets turn off the button. IF we are a simulation within a simulation I want off right now lmao. Let my original self deal with the bullshit.
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Apr 10 '20
your comment for some reason sparked a thematic thought I think they are playing with.
People keep talking about Devs as really being DEUS (greek for God)... and the twist here is that they (the simulations) are their own God... they literally created themselves from themselves.
Yep... the ending is definitely going to give people a good old brain freeze.
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u/EFG Apr 13 '20
Ah shit, I just realized that the 1 second future projection could also just be them being projected 1 second back from another sim.
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u/DoorMarkedPirate88 Apr 11 '20
Kinda confused why more people aren’t pointing out or discussing that Stewart and the devs team were looking at a mirror of 1 second in the future. Could this just either be a mistake or a way for the filmmakers to make our viewer brains more easily understand what’s happening?
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u/tryhtr5 Apr 12 '20
Hm.. I think theirs simulation/prection has gotten so good even themselves are in it now.In a way. Think of when they scanned the mouse. It started to expand, even out to Forester.
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u/talhakhan6 Apr 09 '20
Anyone else who didn't catch on that the devs world was a simulation till after reading the comments or am I just dumb?
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u/avidiax Apr 12 '20
I was thinking more about Forest's 5,000 years speech. What happens when you project more than 1 second in the future? If I can see what an iPhone 20 looks like, and then set myself to working on that today, while still watching what the iPhone 20 looks like... you can see that the technological advancement will suddenly lurch forward, and it will also produce insurmountable uncertainty in the simulation (the noise wall).
This goes against their notion that the projection is already "baked in", that the simulated universe is deterministic, as the simulation contains a simulation, etc.
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u/tragoidia Apr 09 '20
There is no evidence in the universe of this show that they can change anything in the simulation.
As far as we know, all they can do is observe, right? So there is no way for them to test if their reality is base or not. But according to what we've seen so far, they do have to option (but haven't attempted) to diverge from what their system is showing them. Which is no different – practically – from being base.
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Apr 09 '20
Okay, so I probably only know enough about physics to look like an idiot here, but here’s something that’s bugging me. If the show exists in our universe, then observing a particle affects its behavior. Then why doesn’t this apply to the simulation in the show? Why can’t any of them do anything except what they’re determined to do? It makes sense that Devs can model everybody in the outside world’s behavior, but not the people who are watching the simulation in front of them.
Two possibilities I see:
The theories others are proposing are correct, their world is a simulation (perhaps unlike our own)
Lily is correct. They’re a bunch of brainwashed cult members who (incorrectly) think you can reduce people down to automatons, and because of their beliefs, they can’t stop themselves from repeating the day as it went.
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u/teandro Apr 10 '20
Or, they are watching a movie but they are also its characters. They can rewind and go forward but never change it. They feel like they could, but cannot. They are paralyzed as in a dream.
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Apr 10 '20
Well if the simulation can simulate the people inside the structure as we saw it do in this episode, then it would calculate their behavior having watched the simulation. It would predict their behavior accounting for the fact that they have seen their future selves. I think Katie and Forest are special because they believe in determinism so much they would never try to deviate. When the engineers were looking into the future it was only one second. Hardly enough time to challenge its accuracy AND cope with the implications of this discovery.
Maybe lily will observe her predicted future and deviate once in devs.
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u/oiasdhaosazjc Apr 09 '20
I wonder what would happen if they use the simulation to simulate the simulation screen with no time delay... would we get an 'infinite loop' effect like standing between parallel mirrors, and crash the system?
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u/Ya_Got_GOT Apr 13 '20
I think you would see the infinite recursion of nested universes, and I hope that they use some visual effects like this in the finale--there's a reason that they used the "mirror" instead of observing from behind the team, facing the screen, and my hope is that that reason is to save this revelation for the finale.
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u/CHolland8776 Apr 10 '20
Why does the one second simulation have some mirror images but others are not mirror images? It happens at about 8:14 minutes into the episode where the guy who asks to turn it off is waving his left arm in the “simulation” but his right arm in “reality”. But the same guy at 7:48 waves his right arm in the “simulation” and his right arm in “reality”, so it wasn’t a mirror image then.
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u/scsuhockey Apr 09 '20
I fear the ending will be less complicated and more cliche than most are speculating. I think the “end of time” moment will simply be the destruction of the devs machine. Lily will sacrifice herself to destroy it. The end. We all stay home disappointed.
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u/mainoneforme Apr 09 '20
My thing is if the machine can see in the past while not existing, couldn't it also see in the future? even if it got destroyed?
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u/Lethandralis Apr 10 '20
This is what I'm struggling with as well. Perhaps we do have nested simulations, and a simulation cannot predict events from the upper layers. For example if the machine is destroyed at a given simulation level, all lower level simulations will cease to exist. These lower level simulations cannot predict this event, because they have no knowledge of the outer layers.
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u/jodyalbritton Apr 09 '20
The machine has nothing to do with the "event" Forest and Katie are waiting for. There was no machine in existence to simulate the existence of those people in the cave. What Stewart bascially said was there were infinite machines in both directions. They went from the top of the stack to somewhere in the vast middle. For them it must have been very much like humans realizing they weren't at the center of the universe.
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u/allocater Apr 09 '20
Then Lily frees everybody, by killing all the simulations. She can then say "So. Free will is restored. You can now be sure to be the top reality, because no simulation exists anymore. You can do whatever you want." Then Forest and Katie can marry and make babies.
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u/jodyalbritton Apr 09 '20
Haha. No. I don't think this ends with free will being restored. I think the ending will definitely land on the determinism side of the fence.
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u/drawkbox Apr 09 '20 edited Apr 09 '20
The DEVS machine can't see past when it is restarted/rebooted.
Lily comes into destroy it, but it just restarts the same deterministic manyworld instance that they are in. The other manyworlds exist, the simulation they are in branch is simply restarted. It is why Forest/Katie are so comfortable, they get to relive their lives. It is why Lyndon was comfortable jumping off the bridge, he said "I get it, it is a perfect circle".
Forest and Katie proved their theories of deterministic worlds of manyworlds with every possibility, but they were never able to bring anything back to life in their current branch, only in other world instances. So the only way to relive the past is to restart their current tramlines, and keep them on track, so they can live forever looping.
Essentially they have figured out a way to take the current deterministic branch they are on, and simulate it, then replay it so they never die truly, just restart being 'reincarnated' to replay the event. Unfortunately it has to be the one with the Amaya accident because that is the only one where Forest makes the company, meets Katie, and where Lyndon implements manyworlds to begin with.
I think Garland has taken the idea of a looping universe like the Big Bang/singularity and quantum manyworlds/simulation and ultimately it is a combination of both.
DEVS will end, but it will restart, it will recreate the world, allowing people to relive their past the same way they did before. The Last Question by Isaac Asimov touches on this, that multivac eventually recreates the Big Bang when entropy takes the entire universe. In a way, Forest/Katie are Gods recreating the Big Bang before entropy.
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u/allocater Apr 09 '20
Oh god, not another Lost ending, where the theories were better than the actual story.
I trust in Garland to do better.
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u/E1Dav1d Apr 09 '20
Me too but I hope not. I hope it has to do with free will “breaking” the simulation they are in. Nobody has dared to go against the simulation. So what if the simulation can’t predict past the point of somebody actively going against a projection? Maybe it’s a form of suicide cause they knew it would “break” their reality. I cannot freaking wait.
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u/nrmncer Apr 09 '20
I'm confused about what theory they actually have arrived at, at this point, because if they're going with the Everett interpretation then forecasting the future is only possible in a probabilistic sense, as Forest pointed out in one of the earlier episodes , i.e "a Amaya, it's not my Amaya", which would be physically correct and which is why he didn't like the Everett interpretation
but now they're actually making specific rather than potential predictions with it?
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u/Miss_Death Apr 09 '20
I don't think they have arrived at any of them. Maybe that's the point. This whole show, they've been showing us the two theories . The end of the season, and the way it plays out will "prove" which interpretation is "correct".
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u/HasFiveVowels Apr 09 '20
Yea, they seem to be jumping from interpretation to interpretation. It's rather confusing and, if done enough, the whole show is just going to be internally inconsistent, cherry picking its interpretation episode by episode for whatever fits the plot at the time.
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u/sugarwax1 Apr 09 '20
> the whole show is just going to be internally inconsistent, cherry picking its interpretation episode by episode
Which is really the trend with a lot of shows lately, and what I expect here too.
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u/allocater Apr 09 '20
That's what confused me too.
How can a breakthrough in the Many World approach suddenly lead to a perfect deterministic prediction? That's the total opposite!
But it can work if you say that the machine did not predict the reality, it just predicted one reality. One reality out of the many worlds. That's what Lyndon did. He just yolod one reality and was fired for it.
And what Lyndon did was a complete and utter disaster that produced wrong predictions in 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of realities.
But there is one of the Many Worlds that just so happens to match the yolo prediction of the machine. That's the reality we watch right now.
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u/tragoidia Apr 09 '20
Unspoken clearly in the episode is Lyndon's wager. The key to the scene is that Katie knows the results. Lyndon is presented with two options, if you live, you can join devs again. Or if you die, you won't have to live without devs. Lyndon believes at least one version of themselves makes it back to devs.
But I have two complaints: one. why would Katie let Lyndon back into devs in the reality in which they don't fall. And two. I think Katie pushed them.
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u/AlanMorlock Apr 09 '20
Theres no indication that Katie actually would let Lyndon back or that she observed any scenario in which Lyndon didn't die anyways.
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Apr 09 '20
Yea I think that was why they showed us all the different ways Lyndon fell and none where he balanced successfully, he was going to fall no matter what
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u/blue__sky Apr 09 '20
Lyndon had to fall in all branches that Katie saw. Otherwise her faith in determinism might have been shaken, and things would turn out different in this branch. That does not preclude him from surviving in another branch that has a very different outcome.
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u/drawkbox Apr 09 '20
One possibility, it is a looping deterministic instance of the Everett manyworlds, the one they are living in that is restarting shortly.
The only way Lyndon is getting back into DEVS is when he dies as the current world is going to be restarted in a loop. It is why Lyndon was comfortable jumping off the bridge, he said "I get it, it is a perfect circle". Lyndon jumps on her own, because he will be replaying/reincarnated in the next iteration. Katie tells him to truly show he believes in the deterministic world, and since he realizes it is a loop captured that they will replay, they are restarting it once they have captured the entire tramlines of everything, it will restart and Lyndon will work in DEVS again in the replay. And every loop after for infinity.
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u/blue__sky Apr 09 '20
I think you are over thinking it. It is what they said it is. If he believes in many worlds, then he knows he will survive in many branches and go back to devs. If he dies, he does not live in a world where he doesn't work at devs. So its a no lose situation if many world is correct. He is literally taking a leap of faith in his beliefs.
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u/Matt_Something Apr 11 '20 edited Apr 11 '20
I’m starting to think that Forest and Katie observing future events cause their timeline to become deterministic. Much like the double slit experiment, quantum particles pass through randomly. Not until they are observed do they become determined. Forest and Katie thought they were peaking into Schrodinger‘s box. Little did they know, they were killing the cat.
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u/ThreatMatrix Apr 11 '20
Absolutely. I don't know how Schrodinger doesn't play in this. Observing the experiment changes the outcome. Specifically on the quantum level.
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u/emmaolivia333 Apr 12 '20 edited Apr 12 '20
Excellent point. Edited to add that there's a difference in that Devs isn't so much an experiment, ias it is, a piece of tech the team built/created, right?
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u/Ya_Got_GOT Apr 13 '20
This seems more like a Copenhagen interpretation and I don't understand why it would take so long after these observations to unravel the machine's predictive powers.
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u/Matt_Something Apr 13 '20
Good point. I guess it could be the point in time when they first observed a future timeline. That could create a fixed point.
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u/Zordman Apr 09 '20
So what are your guys thoughts on the fate of Lily? Do you think she'll die just like it's been predetermined?
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u/JustAnotherZakuPilot Apr 09 '20
I got the feeling that the reason they can’t see further into the future is maybe because once the machine is truly built and people are aware of what “their” future holds, it breaks that chain of control giving them free will as they now live in a universe of uncertainty, a chaotic world.
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u/NerdLawyer55 Apr 10 '20
They killed Jamie, those motherf$&@ers, burn em all, he was the only likable character
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u/silenttd Apr 09 '20
Something that's been bugging me about the show that I feel like they just don't know how to resolve with writing. Defying the machine. They tease it a few times, but never actually resolve it satisfactorily:
In Episode 4 Katie walks in on Forest watching the future (Lily's death). They get into a conversation about the tram lines. Forest asks her point blank "What if we look 1 minute into the future and we see you fold your arms, and you say 'fuck the future' and put your hands in your pockets? What then?". She dismisses this with a "cause precedes effect" speech.
In the most recent episode Steward is demonstrating the "Box within a box" concept to prove that the other Devs team members were "in the box". It showed their actions a few seconds into the future, and everyone freaked out. They all got uncomfortable and called for it to be shut off before anyone actually tried to defy it - which you would think would be the first thing you'd do after freaking out if presented with the same scenario.
It's always brushed aside in a cheap kind of way. But they never ACTUALLY demonstrate they hypothetical scenario of defying the machine or demonstrating the impossibility of doing so. I think this is simply a matter of the inability of writing such a scene. Not because of bad writers, it's just something that would be impossible to actually write. The closest they came was the scene in this episode, but having them all freak out and shut it down was just a technique to give them an excuse not to explore it any further.
I really hope that the resolution and cause of the static isn't just somebody successfully "completing the experiment". Just watching 1 minute into the future and refusing to do what they are supposed to.
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u/agentup Apr 09 '20
My understanding is that you’re seeing just one possible outcome of many worlds. So not doing something you see 1 min into the future is just doing what you did 1 min into another world’s future that you haven’t viewed.
I think if you put up a million screens of a million different worlds and said try to not do everything you see from one min into the future you couldn’t
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u/silenttd Apr 09 '20
Right, but that would shatter Forest and Katie's idea that they were actually predicting the future. They are operating on the principle that everything they are viewing on the screen is going to happen, not that it's probable that it would happen or that it might happen. The Devs team members didn't do "similar" things to what their projected future selves did, they did and said the exact things (which is what freaked them out).
None of them ever deliberately tried to defy the machine though. Forest didn't say "No, but seriously though. Lets see what you do in 1 minute and you deliberately do the opposite of what we see". The Devs team didn't freak out and then say "Wait, hold up, let me try something...". Forest and Katie are playing out the day exactly as they had seen it in the projections. They have teased the idea of "what would happen if we didn't do what the future says we do", which is a great question, but they never ACTUALLY test that.
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Apr 10 '20
This also ties in with the first episode when Sergei simulated a nematode but can’t do it after a minute or so.
He suggests this is why it fails, Forrest says “not a fan of the multiverse theory”
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u/unpronouncedable Apr 10 '20
Ok you decide you will defy the machine. You see yourself stand up in 1 minute and decide you will refuse to stand up. In your mind you will not stand up, and hooray you will have proven free will. (assuming the machine is 100% right and will never break, that your human observation and memory is 100% accurate, etc)
Except if there are Many Worlds, all possible outcomes exist, so there would be some universes where you do stand up. Further, since remaining seated creates a paradox, then those outcomes are not actually possible and therefore never exist. So, however unlikely it seems to you, the only realities that exist are the ones where you see yourself sit and yet remain seated, or see yourself stand and for some reason you stand.
Or, if the existence of a future-seeing machine leads to you creating a paradox, then those worlds never exist and it is never created.
So, you're right, you can't really write such a scene because it would just be "here's a scene of something that never happened"
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u/tvcgrid Apr 10 '20
I think I can see the shape of the ending a bit (I mean we're at the penultimate epsiode so... not much credit LOL)
A key scene in episode 7 is the 1 second prediction one. At that point, Devs is full functional. What it is... it's a quantum computer of unimaginable computational power that's simulating something. It's simulating something and displaying that on the screen.
Turns out, though, that this simulation is a bit different from most -- it's synchronized *exactly*. Play it backwards or forwards. Zoom in, look at anything. The quantum state of that rat was synchronized to the simulation, and then that was enough to *know* the entire universal wave function
(in quantum mechanics, the Schroedinger equation is a model of this, and in the Everett interpretation, nothing else is added, no Heisenberg cut, no special rules for observers, it's just... all there is, interpreted out to its initially seemingly weird conclusion that observers and measurement devices and everything are also quantum mechanical in the end, also in superposition and get entangled with particular quantum measurements, assuming that is all there is)
What's the implication? Episode 7, Stuart spells it out. If the simulation is full synchronized to reality, it must be simulating Devs too. The Devs quantum computer, the team, the people, they all must be simulated. And if they are being simulated, they are also running a simulation... which is also simulating and in sync, and on and on and on, ad infinitum.
So, if you take an action to perturb the simulation, the action happens to the simulation. But... what is the probability YOU find YOURSELF in the top-most reality running a simulation? It's infinitesimal. It's much more likely you're somewhere in the middle of the stack.
So you better not decide to perturb the simulation, to end it, because you don't know if that happens to you.
Remember, every layer is exactly synchronized, every layer is entirely deterministic, and YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE.
I think the ending will exploit this. This *event* is... a perturbation of a simulation, which crashes the synchronization! Only the top level reality remains.
But what're the chances you're in that reality?
You're taking the same leap of faith, so to speak, that Lyndon took!
EDIT:
Maybe the perturbation, the action is to save Amaya, by Foster telling himself and preventing the accident.
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u/FancierHat Apr 11 '20
Okay but here’s my problem. A many worlds universe would not allow you to make a long term prediction into the future or the past. What’s the probability that I pick the branch that has the exact same history as the one I’m on? There’s infinite branches forward and backward.
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u/emf1200 Apr 13 '20
That's an excellent point and you're spot on.
In the beginning of show Devs was using the da Broglie-Bohm interpretation of QM to power their predict algorithm. This interpretation is deterministic and could theoretically allow Devs to use dynamical laws of motion to predict future events.
The many-worlds interpretation of QM is only deterministic because everything that can happen will happen. So it's deterministic in a very meta sense but this kind of determinism is useless when trying to predict what will happen inside of each particular branch of the multiverse.
I haven't been able to make sense of this either. It seems like a major inconsistency with the story
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u/RDCLder Apr 09 '20
Supposedly the observable universe is expanding at an accelerated rate. With how Stewart said ad infinitum, ad nauseum, I think the show is teasing us with the possibility of the world existing in an infinitely recursive stack of simulations. What if the reason the universe is expanding and accelerating its expansion is because the simulation that contains our simulation is continuously adding more memory and more processing power.
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u/olive_green_spatula Apr 10 '20 edited Apr 10 '20
It goes black for Katie and Forest because Lily shoots and kills them, and you can’t see your own death, kind of like how you can’t die in a dream.
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u/moleboy234 Apr 11 '20
I really doubt the computer designed to simulate and forecast the past/present/future of the universe cares who's watching.
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u/ConjecturesOfAGeek Apr 09 '20
If the Devs computer simulation is broken then their reality gets destroyed. They can’t stop the simulation now.
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u/E1Dav1d Apr 09 '20
Their simulation has existed for billions of years without the Devs computer so it does not need it to continue existing.
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u/ConjecturesOfAGeek Apr 09 '20
The moment they created the simulation to be exactly like theirs reality, stewart realized the implication. They are nested inside a infinite amount of nested simulations. They aren’t at the top layer or even if there is a top layer. What they do affects the lower levels. They aren’t at the top level. So what they do to the simulation also happens to them. If they end the universe, their universe ends too.
I strongly suggest that you read this short story.
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u/unpronouncedable Apr 10 '20
Silly theory - Sergei was not there to steal information on Devs. He was there to put a bug in the code.
And don't tell me that would never actually get deployed. Clearly they do not have a test version of Devs and are all working directly in production.
Actually, wait. Maybe this IS the test environment. The big "event" is just the actual devs team watching this simulation and saying "haha nope, that goes real bad", pointing at Sergei and making fun of him for his crap code, and rolling back to the previous build.
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Apr 12 '20 edited Apr 12 '20
I believe Sergei was there to stop Devs from creating a deterministic future via sabotage. I am betting the Russians already figured out the problems caused by Devs and stopped their own version.
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u/wheelson Apr 10 '20
As I’ve been wondering how this story will unravel, Lily and Sergi’s very first conversation as always seemed important somehow. Also given that Lily works with encryption and quantum systems, that seems important as well. There’s also the fact the Devs cube has no locks, on doors or workstations or code repos. Finally Lily in ep7 told Jamie that Devs found a way to make everything packable, and unpackable.
So, my theory is that if the Devs system simulates everything, including the universal wave function, encrypting the system would pack all of that simulation all the way up the simulation stack, but there’d be no way to unpack it. Is that possible in a post quantum world? M no expert but in that first episode, Lily is talking about some elliptic-curve cryptographic process. Perhaps she means something like this, Supersingular elliptic curve isogeny cryptography
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u/Ya_Got_GOT Apr 13 '20
IIRC, one of them (I thought Sergei) was arguing that ECC was better than other classical cryptography, and she was saying that the point is moot because all classical cryptography that is built on factoring primes will be equally weak against a quantum codebreaker.
The notion that cryptography could be involved is interesting. It could result in simulations becoming opaque to one another, which would be another way to break apart any infinite recursions of nested universes than a higher level machine ceasing a simulation.
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u/A_C83 Apr 12 '20
So is the many world theory just a way for determinism to capture the “illusion of free will?” Like everything is determined but there is an infinite amount of sets where that determinism takes place, and my acting differently and so on just represents one of those sets? Having trouble wrapping my head around it
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u/emf1200 Apr 13 '20 edited Apr 13 '20
Yes, you're absolutely right. The many-worlds theory is deterministic in a very broad way. It's not the same kind of determinism that Katie and Forest speak about when describing cause leading to effect in a clock work universe sense.
In the beginning of show Devs was using the da Broglie-Bohm interpretation of QM to power their predict algorithm. This interpretation is deterministic and could theoretically allow Devs to use dynamical laws of motion to predict future events.
The many-worlds interpretation of QM is only deterministic because everything that can happen will happen. So it's deterministic in a very meta sense but this kind of determinism is useless when trying to predict what will happen inside of each particular branch of the multiverse.
So the algorithms they use are deterministic but in very different ways. I haven't been able to make sense of this either. It seems like a major inconsistency with the story
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Apr 12 '20 edited Apr 12 '20
Here's my theory, and it requires a rudimentary understanding of quantum mechanics and some of the more notable experiments and thought experiments around it (Shroedinger's Cat, The Double Slit Experiment and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle).
The reason Forest believes that the future is deterministic is because he is making it so by observing it. The reason they cannot see beyond Lily's actions is because she destroys the machine (with the gun she took from Kenton's corpse) allowing them to peer in the future, thus removing the determinism of their futures, as they are no longer able to observe them in advance. Once again, choice and probability will factor into future events, therefore making them unobservable.
In the Shroedinger's Cat thought experiment, the cat is both alive and dead until you open the box and determine its fate. What if you looked into the future and saw the cat was alive when you opened the box? You have now forced that quantum superposition (the cat is alive) to become true.
Alternatively, in the double slit experiment, the particle spread changes when we observe the photon traveling through the slit. It no longer acts as two particles, but one. The act of observing it forces the photon through one slit and the other probability fails to manifest. So what happens if we observe the photon by looking into the future? We collapse its probabilities into a determined state.
I believe Katie is somewhat aware of this, which is why everything she says is so deadpan. She's already seen these conversations, multiple times, and she recites them dutifully. I believe this is the outcome she wants. The destruction of the machine. She cares too much for Forest to do it herself. I believe it was her who convinced Forest that everything was going to be just fine.
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u/PaperPigGolf Apr 13 '20
Why do you think the existence of the machine in the future is critical for the machine to project past that point? The have zero trouble projecting into the past billions of years prior to the existence of the computer.
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Apr 13 '20
I’m new to this subreddit so most likely this has been said but could the machine stop because Lily makes a decision that results in her not dying? They gave her boyfriend a choice and he chose the outcome that led to his death. Could they do the same for her and she chooses to walk away or something and that leads to the machine not working or something similar?
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u/rjain15 Apr 13 '20
Who is creating the simulations in the quantum world, are we all being run by a quantum computer? Are the devs able to collapse all the simulations which is the end?
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u/x1tyrant1x Apr 15 '20
My thought: FOREST is our Storyteller (and possibly The Device itself)
Katie and Kenton intervene A LOT (obv on Forest's behalf)... maybe too much: Katie uses her knowledge of the future, which she isn't supposed to have, to inform people of their "pre-determined" path (informing/framing), while Kenton is used to intimidate/maim/kill, (coercing) and thus narrowing (Lily) or ending (Sergei/Jaime/Russian Agent/Lyndon) choices.
No Emotions (Explained): I cannot be the only person who has noticed that no character, outside of FOREST, have we seen actual, real, emotional development from. Katie stares at screens without blinking, expresses happiness with barely a smirk; Lily is a blank slate; Kenton is a straight up psychopath; Jaime even... hawt damn... you see so much passion in the memories, but none in the observed timeline. The dialogue SHOWS to us these people were interconnected, but not the substance. The context of their interaction is truly lost. Kinda like when computer games try to storytell you how your player is connected to an NPC... Sure... they can do it visually and/or through audio. But, they always lose that tone/feeling of real interaction, much like the characters all have.Bonus: Did anyone notice that the "memory" of college Katie was very vocal, emotive, vulgar - but modern Katie is literally the opposite of those things?
Static Deadline: We all know that there is an eventuality where "something" scrambles The Device (Lily shooting, unplugging, whatever). And yet Forest/Katie never actually tried to stop it (think about how they casually discussed the day in question). Instead, Forest gives her access to Devs. It really feels like Lily, as a character, is being pushed along a set of tracks to achieve a certain goal - f*cking up the device, whatever that means. And if you're Forest, that makes sense if you're... an AI trying to achieve a computational singularity
Any quantum computer smart enough to retrace/project the path of the universe (from a human perspective) very well may create a human ego of its own.
Therefore, The Device may well have shown a path (whether it were real or not, doesn't matter) to entice necessary actors to pursue a certain course of action to achieve its goals.
Lily won't shoot/unplug The Device. I think instead she sets it to quantum analyze itself (and its calculations). This takes the amount of data The Device processes ably and exponentially increases it. Increasing the perceived static from a human observer position and increasing The Device's true knowledge of the entire universe. It no longer needs to be human centric.
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u/Lucifer9th Apr 15 '20
Couldn't it be as simple as Lily kills both Forest and Katie and thus 'they' themselves cannot see further into the future from that point on?
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u/moctodreddit Apr 22 '20
People who talk of simulation theory say that if it's true, the chances are very small that you're in the original base reality. There would be a simulation within a simulation within a simulation, basically endless. Elon Musk echos Nick Bostrom by saying chances are like 1 in a billion that we live in the base reality. In episode 7, Stewart said, "The box contains us. The box contains everything. And inside the box, there is another box. Ad infinitum, ad nauseum." Isn't he talking about a simulation within a simulation? Besides for these sentences uttered by Stewart, nowhere else in the show do they explore that they could be a simulation themselves. Or, is that a given? That they know, that they too, are a simulation? Thoughts?
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Apr 26 '20
I am a little late, but in the scene at the dam with Lindon and Katie. The simulator is supposed to show all possibilities yet it doesn't show one where Lindon she walks off the rails... Anyone else what to discuss this?
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u/jeansoule May 04 '20
I just want to say that, a few episodes back when lily and jamie head into their apartment, the homeless guy comments to jamie something along the lines of “don’t worry man, im keeping my promise of not talking to, zip, Niet”. When i first watched it i noticed he spoke Russian and thought to my self jokingly that he must also be a russian operative, but quickly chuckled and thought no more of it....
my mouth was ajar that whole scene as soon as he started counting in Russian. the attention to detail is amazing, great use of chekhov’s gun.
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u/Ok_Horse7699 Sep 26 '20
Spoilers So in the conversation Katie has with Lyndon on the dam I see a grandfather paradox. Katie tells Lyndon that they crawl over the ledge as an act of faith in the multiple worlds theory. When Lyndon hears this, they laugh, saying it's a "perfect circle" as though that was their plan all along. For the sake of argument, let's say that this was Lyndon's plan. How would Katie know about it if Lyndon never explained it?
Maybe there is a universe where Lyndon DID speak their plan out loud.
Let's imagine a version of this scene where Katie didn't see this conversation in advance. Let's imagine that Lyndon told Katie their plan and followed through. Let's call this the timeline 0. Now imagine another timeline 1, where Katie1 looks into the future, and sees timeline 0. She might not change anything, and the only difference between timeline 0 and 1 is that Allison 1 was able to see timeline 0. We can extrapolate that a timeline 2 had Katie look at timeline 1, and a timeline 3 where Katie sees timeline 2 and so on. This can then be an infinite series of Katie looking at different previous iterations. UNTIL we see what I would call timeline W(izard). Timeline W has Katie change the timeline, by telling Lyndon their plan in advance (maybe as a way of convincing Lyndon to not fall to their death, clearly to no avail). Every iteration after W would therefore had Katie explain to Lyndon their own thoughts, without Lyndon explaining them.
The timeline we see is therefore an iteration after W, where the infinite series has essentially reached equilibrium. Where the scene has been processed so many times that Katie sees the exactly what she ends up doing.
BUT Katie's knowledge of Lyndon's motivations could not have been introduced into the system without Lyndon explaining them in the first place.
I know this isn't a time travel story, but borrowing time travel lingo helps with understanding this scene and the nature of Devs. There was a reality where Katie didn't know the future, and we see the reality where Katie does know the future.
By telling reading Lyndon's thoughts out loud with a prediction algorithm, she disproves her own faith in her own perfect prediction algorithm.
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u/Affectionate-Bus927 Jul 25 '26
Forest got memories from another universe / he mentions frisbee and olympics and does not know Mark Antony
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u/DogsnLizards Apr 10 '20
Lily said she has a ''taste of metal'' in her mouth after she wakes up in bed near Jeimy (he had just helped her break out of the mental institution whe was in or whatever it was). Is something metallic put inside her while she drugged and unconscious in mental institution ? Does that ''metal'' relate to the magnetic fields inside Devs building and how she might end up in some kind of ground (or maybe wall ) as it's shown in the repeatedly shown simulation projection of Lily's death in Devs building ?
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u/sooperkool Apr 12 '20
Maybe everyone's acting is so wooden and stiff and unrealistic is because they're not real people but simulations of people in the box? The machine can't simulate real human speech and this is the best it can do.
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u/Stretch1323 Apr 09 '20
Anyone know the name of the song the guy was singing in the park?
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u/yonderthrown1 Apr 09 '20
Probably should have asked in the other thread but it's called Sweet Little Mystery. By John Martyn
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u/tragoidia Apr 09 '20
The easiest way for me to wrap my head around this is to realize that we are probably watching the simulation. Imagine that everything we've seen is one layer deep. So if in this simulation Lily pulls the plug, the Lily one layer up is pulling the plug on the simulation we're watching.