How Many Watches…??!!
Henry is 40 years old. He travels back in time to when he was 20 years old and buries the watch from his wrist. He sends a letter to himself that he will not get until he is 35 years old. It will tell him where to find the watch. At 35 years old he is wearing the watch on his wrist……..so when he goes to dig up the watch…….will it be there? ….will he now have two watches?……..or can there only be one?
….if he does have two watches, and he repeats this with the two watches….then when he goes again ….will he have three?….
One watch at age 20 is buried. What is he then wearing at 21, 22, 23, 24 etc.?
He didn’t receive the watch until he was 30 years of age….
yes, yes, and yes
well, wait, yes and no, this doesnt exactly make sense, does it, because he would have to bury the watch for his younger self to find…sorry, had to reread
yeah, the secon answer
re-read…
-gets watch when 30…
-travels back in time to when he was 20 and buries watch
-recieves a letter at 35 saying where the watch is at 35, goes and finds watch
………………………………………………..unless there is a ‘change’ that occures, this would have already happened and he would have two watches when he was 40 to begin with.
This would be an example of multiple timelines, or branching timelines, because it shows a change in the past…
Yes this makes sense to me….I just want to see what people make of this scenario …..that could alter my views….
end the semantics, where are you going with this?
Im interested…
multiple watches makes sense,, or alternate/branching timelines make sense?
alternate/branching timelines
gotcha…I am past being on the fence, in one loop I went with alternate timelines, in the other I went with no change ;]
im so exited to see what this show will do next to blow my mind!
It all depends on your theory on the consequences of time travel. There are many different theories.
For instance, under whatever happened, happened AKA immutable time theory AKA fixed time theory; if the 40 year old man about to travel through time didn’t dig up a watch 5 years ago, then nothing he does in the past will make it to where he will dig up the watch when he is 35. Maybe he never gets the letter, or doesn’t believe it, or whatever.
Perspective…
Looking forward to these discussions.
He would have 2 watches from ages 35 to 40 until he went back in time to bury one of them. He always had 2 watches during that time though, at least in my perception of Lost time travel rules.
wouldn’t he only have one watch the first time… until he reaches 40 to go back and bury it?
He would not have the watch at 35 until he dug it up, then at 40 he would go back in time and bury it, one watch.
he has the watch at 30 when he receives it.
Where does 30 come from?
We meet the protagonist of your story at 40, he then went back in time and buried the watch when he was 20, he then did not have the watch until he received the letter at 35 and digs it up, he then has the watch from 35 to 40 where we began. One watch – a time loop.
I thought we would agree on something, I thought we would sway each other, I thought we may even come up with a few of the same ideas…but I never thought I would ask for help on this subject from him….sigh…highbrow, can you please jump in somewhere here…
I dont have the strength for this topic anymore…
prosperoburns…I think in the original theory, he was supposed to say that he got the watch at 30…the first time, however that would work.
Abd if that is the case, back to one of my ‘am I wrong’ posts, it works in with my idea of if change occures, there is no timeloop…if change doesnt occure, the watch must be there over and over.
What is trying to be determined, is did he already bury the watch first, or get the watch at 30 first..
am I correct on this? or shall I keep the Batlight on for highbrow?
….and you are here…good..
just because he buried it in the past does not mean it happened first.
prosperoburns- I am suggesting that He received the watch as a gift at age 30.
chicken or the egg…if theres no change in the past it had to happen first…
if the past changed, than it didnt happen first, he recieved the watch first, and it would be the true first iteration of this repetativeness occuring……?
he receives the watch first at age 30….this must happen first….for everything else to play out. He can’t bury a watch he doesn’t have.
In his timeline he recieves the watch at age 30…but if there is no change in the past, a future self has already returned and buried…your other watch…before he even gets it at 30…
he has to get to that point first, he has not traveled in the past yet. this scenario will only work the first time around. when he gets to full circle. (when he goes back in time).this will be the start of a time loop……however there will multiple Henry’s in the past unless he somehow travels back to the future a minute after he left.Then you would have a perfect time loop. but the question still remains can there be multiple watches
If something occure that would not allow him to bury the watch to begin with.
By all rights, he should have 2 watches, when he digs the other one up at 35…the one he is supposed to go and bury…
See, thats the problem. There is only one watch, with different ‘selves’. past, presnt, future.
Either there is a starting point when he gets the watch at 30, meaning by him going and burying the watch, he changes the past, by doing so.
Or, it is a loop, in which he has always changed the past, the future has already played out in your multiverse of sorts, and the watch has already been recieved and buried as you stated, only to be done over and over.
It depends on how you see it.
This scenerio, it is actually more difficult for me to understand, without the details of Lost.
I see what you’re saying…I think, and I am not sure if I believe in branching/multi dimensions, or change that would just constitute change and no multidimensions, or if I dont believe change can happen at all…
okay so now we have established a time loop..(sort of)..now the only thing that changes on each loop is the watch. it increases by one every time. eventually Henry will get to a point where he is trying to bury too many watches. will this alter the loop. Like say when he has 200 watches. technically if he found a away to carry the watches he could have a googleplex of watches. Or sell them all cheap and make some real money.
no, because if he doesnt bury the watch, it wont be there to multiply…
regardless….whats his number, i need a new qatch anyway…maybe if i buy the origial watch befare he goes back in time, ill never have this discussion
LOL
So if it is a loop or multiple timeline thing…what happens at 41? Because isn’t that kind of where Highbrow has said once someone does whatever they are supposed to do, they can then die or move on or whatever???
Because if there are multiple timelines or a loop even for that matter, at what point do the lines ‘align’ or the loop break? (Is that even possible?) Is it a fixed event or is it the idea that whatever is supposed to happen finally happens?
In this scenario, I think I can follow the parallel, likening it to a character like Sawyer or Jack. Because in their case, they have already lived in 1977. So this 1977, although it is their present and was their future even though it was a year in the past they had already lived through. Like from Sawyer’s PERSPECTIVE, he went December 24, 2004, to his next ‘future’ date (albeit unknown to him) to living in days such as June 24, 1977 that he had already lived in.
So in this watch scenario, was the time that he hit 40 and traveled back to his 20s, now the second time that he is in his 20s?
Because this HAS to be Jack’s and Sawyer’s second time in 1977. Right?
So enter the watch and I’m done trying to figure it out for now…
if he comes back 1 minute after he left he would go on with his life from that point on..
okay lets twist this up a notch……pretend the watch has a super battery in it………..would all the watches read the same time…..
pretend the watch has a super batt…?…are you trying to make my nose bleed?
Is this some dare to make A.E.S.’s head explode?
…now that I just refered to myself in third person, Im going to take a break from this post…
Now you’re killing me! I can’t even think about the time on the watch!
So seriously, is this Henry’s first or second trip to his 20s?
his last if i ever meet him…
Always the funny one AES.
But you referencing yourself in third person, might be because you are trying to talk like Jacob/Ben “are you happy now, me?” …
Okay, sorry.
i dont try to talk like anybody but A.E.S.
and maybe sometimes snoop dogg…fo shizzle…but thats another story….
I cant deny it though…the thought of that being true gives me goosebumps…
Ok, I will say this…you kept my mind going on the day of rest, which I appreciate, usually I let it turn to mud…
So, I’ll try once more to answer these and put a stop to this…
..lol..
I can see how there could only be one watch. I could also see how there are multiple watches, but I can’t see just two.
….I think all the watches would have the same time on them, providing Henri didn’t change the time when he goes back in time…..haha….
…with multiple watches though….there would also be multiple Henri’s arriving at the same point in time…. which is the minute after the minute he went back in time.
Didn’t read the comments. Sorry. AES asked for my two cents and here it is.
He has one watch until he’s 35. Then he has two watches until he’s 40. Then he buries one and has one watch from that point forward.
highbrow-if you get a chance , read comments and add some input.
….If he has two watches at 40… then when he returns to the past he could bury two..
Right, he CAN bury two. But he doesn’t. This is the composibility theory that was discussed in another thread. Can he bury two watches? Yes, he is certainly capable. Does he? No, he doesn’t. He isn’t doing things more than once. One time when he was 35 he got a letter directing him to dig up a watch. He gets the watch and either finds that it is an older version of a watch he already has or later he comes to posses the same watch (a younger version of the one he dug up). When he’s 40 he buries the younger watch in the past and sends the letter.
Those things happen only once so they never change. He could bury the older watch and make it an even older watch when it gets back to him but he doesn’t. He doesn’t because he didn’t. That sounds flimsy but it’s actually fairly solid.
When he’s 40 he could decide not to go back in time just to see what would happen if he didn’t give the watch to his past self. He already has the watch that he left himself so he must receive it. If he didn’t that would be a paradox because receiving that watch was essential to him making that decision to not give it to himself. What he might find if he refused to go back and give it to himself is that someone actually stole the watch from him when he was 40 and sent it to him in the past with a forged letter saying that it was from himself.
Ok. Again, we need to be careful about the term timeloop. Does the watch go through a timeloop? Sort of. Is it a closed loop forever repeating? No, it’s not. So it doesn’t deserve a mention in this. Are there multiple timelines? It doesn’t matter. If there are 30 timelines then there are between 0 and 60 identical watches existing in the same time but in different timelines (as many as two in each and as few as zero since in some they may be destroyed). The thing is that the watches in different timelinec cannot interact with each other. So the only watches that matter are the ones in the timeline we’re observing.
So timeloop? Yes. Closed, repeating timeloop? Absolutely not. Multiple timelines? Doesn’t matter.
Well done Highbrow. I know you believe this to be the way Lost is working. Just wondering if you believe that actual real world time travel, if such a thing would ever exist, would follow fixed time theory? (AKA whatever happened, happened)
And, with time travel there can be an infinite number of the exact same object or person at any given time.
Would the world even ever realize, if this did occure anyway, or would it all just be…a dejavu type exerience?
I believe the timeline we all live in here in the real world is immutable.
And yes, with time travel there is the possibility of a loop creating an infinite number of some object. It CAN happen. But it doesn’t. It hasn’t. It won’t. The fact that I’m typing this right now is proof of that.
I’m not sure you answered my question. Because if you are 100 percent sure that timetravel cannot exist, then obviously the timeline would be immutable.
However if it existed, I see no reason why it would be immutable.
In real life this is a much more complicated subject then it is on Lost…
…thank you…