Constants and Variables

[jvietor]

What I think many people are misunderstanding is the difference between constants and variables. Dan refers to them and says that the variables are the people on the island like Jack, etc. Then you have the other set of things called constants that are always there like an incontrovertible fact...it can't be taken away. Eloise told us about that when she had Desmond watch the man with the red shoes...no matter what they did that man was going to die. Eloise said to Des that he could warn the man, etc, but nothing would change that fact. We saw this happen with Charlie in that Des prevented him from being electrocuted, arrowed in the throat, etc yet he was going to die and he did. Thus, constants are things that are always going to occur no matter what happened.

Now we get to Dan saying that things in the past can be changed. Well, I guess you can change the past meaning you change the variables such as who gets killed, who gets saved, etc., but what cannot be changed is the constants. The trick in the whole Lost story is to figure out what is a constant and what is a variable. I think the constants in this case are the swan station being built and having an accident, Dharma coming to the island, Dharma getting purged, etc. Think of Lost as two different stories: the story with all events leading up to Ben turning the wheel, and then the new post-wheel story which sent the losties back in time. It is unclear if the losties are doing the actions that created that first storyline...maybe the first storyline did not feature any of the losties involvement for it to have happened. However, now that they are back in 1977 the past may be getting re-written with new variables but, this is important, the constants and thus the outcomes (swan accident, purge, etc) remain the same. thus the journeys to the outcomes have changed, but the outcomes have not.

I think the key variable now is Eloise. She admitted that for the first time she has no idea what will happen in the future, meaning that she knew everything that had to happen or needed to happen to get to that point. She couldn't have known the precise journey it would take (variables) to get to that point in the future, but she could know the outcomes (constants) and thus what needed to be set in motion to get there. Thus the producers are now setting the stage for a whole new series of twists and turns that cannot be predicted going forward.

If a constant is a set amount then the variables will always equal out in some way to equal that constant. Like using whatever grouping of numbers you want so long as they equal 10...(9+1, 6+4, 3+2+5, 1+2+3+4 ).

Christian has showed us along with Jin and Lapidus a future dharmaville that is empty and stagnant, clearly the others no longer live in the dharma compound. We have a new group (Bram and Ilana) and no idea what happened with the Oceanic group (Rose and Bernard). Throw in knowledge of the temple and smokie and a reincarnated John Locke, plus Christians contention that possibly Sun and Jin (plus maybe the rest of the 1977 group will somehow be reunited, thus I can only guess they will come together in the future in some way.

Keep your eyes peeled for things that may be constants throughout the story versus variables and maybe we'll get a better understanding of what is to come.

[tpbaxter]

first of all I think Variables and Constants are broken metaphors made by the creators of Lost. I think Constant was just a poetic term to refer to someone you can rely on. The metaphor I used in the past to explain my understanding of the use of the term constant in Lost is a ballerina spinning in a circle. Ballerinas are taught to keep their eyes fixated on a specific point to maintain their equilibrium. That's what they were saying in Lost. In order to prevent a nose bleed situation someone needed to lock on to a "Constant" to keep sense of things. It's poetic because it sounds romantic. Like when people say this person is my rock. And of course those episodes were all about Desmond and Penny so... Variable feels like it was just thrown in there because it's the logical opposite of Constant and it all sounds mathy, which makes it sound cool, but truthfully I don't think this has anything to do with math.

Secondly I don't put a lot of weight into what Faraday said in this episode. His actions seemed to indicate he was trying to create WHH, not prevent it. I think he was FULL OF IT. He told Jack that Eloise lied so he would start taking things into his own hands and begin doing things to cause the future we know must happen. Before saying that Jack was just sitting on his hands and we know he must have went back to 1977 for a reason. He was not going to accomplish anything sitting around feeling defeated. Faraday's comments seemed to have provided the impetus to spring Jack into action. He also told Chang to evacuate the area and he told Charlotte what he swore he would not tell her. Faraday went out of his way to create the future he was claiming to try to be preventing.

However I can expand on this Constant and Variable concept in Lost. I even have my own forumla. Let me think about that and I might post it later...