When the Sopranos ended its television run, it did so in such a fashion that it had its fandom up-in-arms, cursing and wondering what the hell happened to their favorite show. It ended with a hard cut to black. No one knew what would have happened next even though the episode built up to a climatic ending. Boom, without warning, the series ended.
With this type of controversial ending now possible, LOST fans worried that its show runners would also try to pull a large "fake out" to avoid answering the calls of diehard fans for answers to the key mysteries.
The writers did try to get out of years of story layers when they thrust upon us the flashforward universe, where the characters were living different lives but apparently in the same island time frame. It began to call into question whether the flashbacks were actually truthful portrayals of the characters prior to the crash landing on the island. For if the flashforwards were not "real" in the sense that that universe was merely a holding world until the souls of the friends could reunite in the after life, then the same could have been true of the flashbacks (which contained some serious medical and legal errors). If the flashbacks were a dream state, what was the island? A collective dream state or purgatory as speculated by some season one viewers.
LOST viewers never got the clarity from the producers about the last season. We were merely told that the show was always "character focused" so they did not have to answer the complaints.
After many years of debate, Soprano fans got their answer. From recent NY Post article:
The Sopranos” creator David Chase accidentally spoiled the finale during a leaked interview for his book celebrating the Emmy-winning HBO mob drama.
At the end of 2007’s final episode, titled “Made in America,” Tony
Soprano (played by the late James Gandolfini) is eating out with his
family amid a turf war between the New Jersey and New York Mafia
families while an enemy hit man waits in their midst.
The screen then fades to black as Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’ ”
blares on the soundtrack, leaving it ambiguous whether the show’s star
gets whacked — until now.
Spoiler alert: In the roundtable discussion, co-author Alan Sepinwall
asked Chase, “When you said there was an end point, you don’t mean Tony
at Holsten’s [the diner], you just meant, ‘I think I have two more
years’ worth of stories left in me.’ ”
Then Chase, 74, dropped the bombshell: “Yes, I think I had that death
scene around two years before the end … But we didn’t do that.”
Noticing his epic leak, co-author Matt Zoller Seitz chimed in: “You
realize, of course, that you just referred to that as a death scene.”
“F - - k you guys,” replied Chase upon realizing his blunder.
Showing posts with label flashforward. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flashforward. Show all posts
Saturday, June 13, 2020
Sunday, May 15, 2016
FLASH OF LIFE
One of the mysteries of The End was the last flash of light when Christian opened the doors in the sideways church.
What was that flash of light supposed to represent?
We were told that the characters were "moving on." To what? Where? How? and Why?
A wild yet intriguing science article could shed some "light" on the ending.
Scientists at Northwestern University have found that human life begins in bright flash of light as a sperm meets an egg. This flash is caused by a sudden release of zinc when the egg is fertilized which causes light to be seen under the microscope.
The reports state that an explosion of tiny sparks erupts from the egg at the exact moment of conception.
Scientists had seen the phenomenon occur in other animals but it is the first time is has been also shown to happen in humans.
One of the early issues in the series was the theme of the island stopping conception or babies being born. We were never told why the island with alleged "healing" powers (such as seen to Rose for cancer and Locke for paralysis) could abort a fetus.
What was that flash of light supposed to represent?
We were told that the characters were "moving on." To what? Where? How? and Why?
A wild yet intriguing science article could shed some "light" on the ending.
Scientists at Northwestern University have found that human life begins in bright flash of light as a sperm meets an egg. This flash is caused by a sudden release of zinc when the egg is fertilized which causes light to be seen under the microscope.
The reports state that an explosion of tiny sparks erupts from the egg at the exact moment of conception.
Scientists had seen the phenomenon occur in other animals but it is the first time is has been also shown to happen in humans.
Researchers noticed that some of the eggs burn brighter than others,
showing that they are more likely to produce a healthy baby.
What could be the possible symbols for light? Light is energy in a pure form. Light is a positive influence. Light can be representative of god in many religious contexts. Light can represent life. It could represent a soul. And now science adds conception to the list of possible symbols for life.
When a egg is fertilized, the human DNA of two people merges to create a new life.
Was the fact that both Claire and Sun birthed their children for the second time in the sideways world, a clue that the characters were precursors to conception?
It is possible when the show writers grappled with their big question, what is life and death, that they masked the symbolism too tightly in reality.
Each of us carries the genetic material of our parents. That genetic material is code. Code that creates the complex biochemical factory called the human body. Code that is similar to that of a computer operating system.
Many fans thought LOST was merely a computer video game with the characters being avatars of the players. But instead of looking at the show as an illusion of a video game, look at it as symbolic embodiment of the genetic material of each characters' parents. For example, Jack was not Jack a human being. Jack was the collective code of his father and mother's life, traits, predication, personality, faults, emotions and intelligence. Jack was a double helix compiling his parents data into his own data set just prior to "conception" with another double helix (specifically Kate's ancestry).
Other scientific studies indicate that many people are predisposed for disease, alcoholism, illness or athletic because of genetic disorders hard wired in a person's DNA. Each of the main characters traits and characteristics could represent a genetic pattern for that future human being.
The idea that the sideways church is merely a vessel for the fully developed sperm and egg DNA of ancestors reaching puberty (the waxing and waning of hormones) is an interesting concept. The last flash of bright light in the final episode could have marked the real beginning of the story.
Friday, August 21, 2015
DEJA VU AGAIN
We don't know exactly because it’s difficult to study—you can’t induce
déjà vu in most people.
But scientists have theories. It may be a memory error: An experience triggers a memory, but the brain can’t retrieve it. When that happens, your brain fails to distinguish the past from the present, leaving you with an odd feeling of familiarity.
Another theory holds that two parts of the brain perceive an experience at the same time. If information arrives slightly faster to one part, a person can feel like they’re having the same experience twice.
However, a group of scientists from the U.K., France, and Canada think another cause could be anxiety. They recently studied the bizarre case of a 23-year-old man with chronic déjà vu and found in one instance that the more distressed he became by the endless loop of déjà vu experiences, the worse they got. But you’ve probably heard that before.
We play mind games all the time: puzzles, board games, mental math tables, etc.
But most people do not realize that their own mind plays games on them. We may be aware of the mind game consciously when we hear a noise in the dark and the mind flashes to an intruder, or a banging shutter. But the mind can also play subconscious tricks on you.
Some psychologists believe that the subconscious mind tricks as a defensive or coping mechanism. For example, past hurtful experiences may be housed in a section of the brain that is triggered under similar circumstances. When a shy person sees a person that is attractive, his subconscious mind triggers a hurtful memory of rejection so the shy person never attempts to say hello to the attractive lady. This sets off another reaction in the conscious mind of guilt, remorse, loneliness and shame. But a person usually can cope, in reality hide, with their internal demons than a public display of rejection that puts a cloud of group judgment on themselves.
Deja vu could also be the mental process in which to solve problems. In third grade, you did math tables. As an adult, you are trying to split a $36 bar tab three ways. You access that math table in an instant to figure out the share sums. You may not mentally flash to the third grade chalkboard, but the subconscious mind does that for you.
The whole concept of LOST's flash backs and flash forwards could have been incorporated into mental experiments by scientists trying to figure out the brain functions that trigger deja vu memory recall.
But scientists have theories. It may be a memory error: An experience triggers a memory, but the brain can’t retrieve it. When that happens, your brain fails to distinguish the past from the present, leaving you with an odd feeling of familiarity.
Another theory holds that two parts of the brain perceive an experience at the same time. If information arrives slightly faster to one part, a person can feel like they’re having the same experience twice.
However, a group of scientists from the U.K., France, and Canada think another cause could be anxiety. They recently studied the bizarre case of a 23-year-old man with chronic déjà vu and found in one instance that the more distressed he became by the endless loop of déjà vu experiences, the worse they got. But you’ve probably heard that before.
We play mind games all the time: puzzles, board games, mental math tables, etc.
But most people do not realize that their own mind plays games on them. We may be aware of the mind game consciously when we hear a noise in the dark and the mind flashes to an intruder, or a banging shutter. But the mind can also play subconscious tricks on you.
Some psychologists believe that the subconscious mind tricks as a defensive or coping mechanism. For example, past hurtful experiences may be housed in a section of the brain that is triggered under similar circumstances. When a shy person sees a person that is attractive, his subconscious mind triggers a hurtful memory of rejection so the shy person never attempts to say hello to the attractive lady. This sets off another reaction in the conscious mind of guilt, remorse, loneliness and shame. But a person usually can cope, in reality hide, with their internal demons than a public display of rejection that puts a cloud of group judgment on themselves.
Deja vu could also be the mental process in which to solve problems. In third grade, you did math tables. As an adult, you are trying to split a $36 bar tab three ways. You access that math table in an instant to figure out the share sums. You may not mentally flash to the third grade chalkboard, but the subconscious mind does that for you.
The whole concept of LOST's flash backs and flash forwards could have been incorporated into mental experiments by scientists trying to figure out the brain functions that trigger deja vu memory recall.
Thursday, August 21, 2014
CRACKING THE THOUGHT CODE
Researchers have made interesting inroads into the human brain thought process.
The BBC reported that brain neurons function by sending bursts of electric pulses to parts of the brain, which in turn form the basis of thoughts and memories. Scientists have begun to use these pulse patterns to make algorithm or formulas to determine how the brain functions.
They have used probed rats to run mazes to record the thought patterns of the subjects.
While the rat runs the maze researchers record where it is, and simultaneously how the cells in the hippocampus are firing. The cell firing patterns are thrown into a mathematical algorithm which finds the pattern that best matches each bit of the maze. The language of the cells is no less complex, but now science believes it has a Rosetta Stone against which scientists can decode the thought process. Researchers then test the algorithm by feeding the freshly recorded patterns back into the subject, to see if it correctly predicts where the rat was at the point that pattern was recorded.
It doesn’t allow a complete code crack, because scientists still don't know all the rules, and it can’t help them read the patterns which aren't from this bit of the brain or which aren't about maze running, but it is still a powerful tool. For instance, using this technique, the research team was able to show that the specific sequence of cell firing repeated in the brain of the rat when it slept after running the maze (and, as a crucial comparison, not in the sleep it had enjoyed before it had run the maze).
Fascinatingly, the sequence repeated faster during sleep – around 20 times faster. This meant that the rat could run the maze in their sleeping minds in a fraction of the time it took them in real life. This could be related to the mnemonic function of sleep; by replaying the memory, it might have helped the rat to consolidate its learning. And the fact that the replay was accelerated might give researchers a glimpse of the activity that lies behind sudden insights, or experiences where our life “flashes before our eyes”; when not restrained, our thoughts really can retrace familiar paths in “fast forward”.
This new scientific research plays very well in the LOST universe.
Look at the key reference points: flashes before our eyes, flash forwards, mazes, sleep and memory. These were all critical components in the story lines. So much so that it brings us to a new theory based on this science.
When one is asleep, one can have vivid dreams. Dreams so vivid that they seem absolutely real. And once one wakes up, these vivid dreams seem like actual memories.
When one is in a dream state, the mind processes information 20 times faster than in one's waking state. This tends to give dreamers the impression that their dreams may last for hours, but in reality the REM sleep was only for minutes. This is a illusion of time displacement in one's mind.
What Daniel's Oxford experiment was similar to was the thought researchers experiment about a lab rat learning a maze. In Daniel's case, learning it before it ran it. But in a certain way, Daniel "programmed" his rat, Eloise, to run the maze by imputing the maze algorithm while at the subject was asleep. Eloise "learned" the maze in a dream state so vivid that she thought it was a real memory when she was put at the starting gate.
And this segment of the story line, glossed over by many viewers, is probably the key to unraveling a better explanation for the series sci-fi foundation. For if one takes the confusing "time travel" and "time skip" elements of the story lines and realize that they are merely metaphors for "thought coding" dreams, then LOST takes a whole different road to understanding.
In all the time travel segments, if one substitutes the fact that no real time travel happened - - - that it was all thought code imparted into a character's mind, then things start to make better sense.
Dharma was a research group looking into various components of mental applications. Room 23 was clearly a mind control chamber. But there is other evidence of mind and thought control. If one imparts new memories into polar bears that they are actually tropical animals, the bears would be more quickly adapt to their new environment. If Dharma found the way to implant new memories into human beings, then that control would be extremely important - - - and possibly a military weapon.
So the island vanishing and time skipping to the 1970s never really happened; the characters merely thought it did because their brains were re-wired with those adventures. The main characters were actually lab rats in some grand experiment on human beings. Perhaps Jacob was not the immortal demigod, but the guardian of the process in which he fed various events into his subjects to determine whether he could actually change a person's free will, good or evil personality or behavior patterns. Or whether those long term personality traits would "corrupt" the new mental programming which would lead to failure (or death). Instead of remembering the actual programmed events, the character's minds could short circuit and take those memories and turn them into twisted nightmares by merging with older memories.
It also gets back to the unexplained big clue that the characters had to "awaken" in order to move on or be free. Awaken from what? The dream and thought experiments?
What better way to treat a mental health patient than creating a new, better personality for him or her. For example, Hurley was destined to be a lonely, semi-skilled fast food worker filled with anxiety, self-worth issues and manic depression. But if he was re-programmed to be a lottery winner, a person with new found confidence, a business owner success, could that really change his life? If not, would the programmers ramp up the thought conversion process to shock his mind with an extreme plane crash island survival story in order to "cure" Hurley's mental state?
It is a good theory but not a complete one because the sideways world makes a mess of most theories. Since the sideways world is death, plain and simple, then which memories are actually the "true" ones? One could say the reason the characters met in the church was that there one great shared experience that bonded them together was the collective thought control experiments - - - which led to actual deaths. But those strong memories were so vivid and clear, that it was those imprints on the characters' souls that matter most in the after life.
Trouble real characters + failed thought control experiments with fake island events = death = sideways world reunion of souls bonded together by the memories from their experiments.
The BBC reported that brain neurons function by sending bursts of electric pulses to parts of the brain, which in turn form the basis of thoughts and memories. Scientists have begun to use these pulse patterns to make algorithm or formulas to determine how the brain functions.
They have used probed rats to run mazes to record the thought patterns of the subjects.
While the rat runs the maze researchers record where it is, and simultaneously how the cells in the hippocampus are firing. The cell firing patterns are thrown into a mathematical algorithm which finds the pattern that best matches each bit of the maze. The language of the cells is no less complex, but now science believes it has a Rosetta Stone against which scientists can decode the thought process. Researchers then test the algorithm by feeding the freshly recorded patterns back into the subject, to see if it correctly predicts where the rat was at the point that pattern was recorded.
It doesn’t allow a complete code crack, because scientists still don't know all the rules, and it can’t help them read the patterns which aren't from this bit of the brain or which aren't about maze running, but it is still a powerful tool. For instance, using this technique, the research team was able to show that the specific sequence of cell firing repeated in the brain of the rat when it slept after running the maze (and, as a crucial comparison, not in the sleep it had enjoyed before it had run the maze).
Fascinatingly, the sequence repeated faster during sleep – around 20 times faster. This meant that the rat could run the maze in their sleeping minds in a fraction of the time it took them in real life. This could be related to the mnemonic function of sleep; by replaying the memory, it might have helped the rat to consolidate its learning. And the fact that the replay was accelerated might give researchers a glimpse of the activity that lies behind sudden insights, or experiences where our life “flashes before our eyes”; when not restrained, our thoughts really can retrace familiar paths in “fast forward”.
This new scientific research plays very well in the LOST universe.
Look at the key reference points: flashes before our eyes, flash forwards, mazes, sleep and memory. These were all critical components in the story lines. So much so that it brings us to a new theory based on this science.
When one is asleep, one can have vivid dreams. Dreams so vivid that they seem absolutely real. And once one wakes up, these vivid dreams seem like actual memories.
When one is in a dream state, the mind processes information 20 times faster than in one's waking state. This tends to give dreamers the impression that their dreams may last for hours, but in reality the REM sleep was only for minutes. This is a illusion of time displacement in one's mind.
What Daniel's Oxford experiment was similar to was the thought researchers experiment about a lab rat learning a maze. In Daniel's case, learning it before it ran it. But in a certain way, Daniel "programmed" his rat, Eloise, to run the maze by imputing the maze algorithm while at the subject was asleep. Eloise "learned" the maze in a dream state so vivid that she thought it was a real memory when she was put at the starting gate.
And this segment of the story line, glossed over by many viewers, is probably the key to unraveling a better explanation for the series sci-fi foundation. For if one takes the confusing "time travel" and "time skip" elements of the story lines and realize that they are merely metaphors for "thought coding" dreams, then LOST takes a whole different road to understanding.
In all the time travel segments, if one substitutes the fact that no real time travel happened - - - that it was all thought code imparted into a character's mind, then things start to make better sense.
Dharma was a research group looking into various components of mental applications. Room 23 was clearly a mind control chamber. But there is other evidence of mind and thought control. If one imparts new memories into polar bears that they are actually tropical animals, the bears would be more quickly adapt to their new environment. If Dharma found the way to implant new memories into human beings, then that control would be extremely important - - - and possibly a military weapon.
So the island vanishing and time skipping to the 1970s never really happened; the characters merely thought it did because their brains were re-wired with those adventures. The main characters were actually lab rats in some grand experiment on human beings. Perhaps Jacob was not the immortal demigod, but the guardian of the process in which he fed various events into his subjects to determine whether he could actually change a person's free will, good or evil personality or behavior patterns. Or whether those long term personality traits would "corrupt" the new mental programming which would lead to failure (or death). Instead of remembering the actual programmed events, the character's minds could short circuit and take those memories and turn them into twisted nightmares by merging with older memories.
It also gets back to the unexplained big clue that the characters had to "awaken" in order to move on or be free. Awaken from what? The dream and thought experiments?
What better way to treat a mental health patient than creating a new, better personality for him or her. For example, Hurley was destined to be a lonely, semi-skilled fast food worker filled with anxiety, self-worth issues and manic depression. But if he was re-programmed to be a lottery winner, a person with new found confidence, a business owner success, could that really change his life? If not, would the programmers ramp up the thought conversion process to shock his mind with an extreme plane crash island survival story in order to "cure" Hurley's mental state?
It is a good theory but not a complete one because the sideways world makes a mess of most theories. Since the sideways world is death, plain and simple, then which memories are actually the "true" ones? One could say the reason the characters met in the church was that there one great shared experience that bonded them together was the collective thought control experiments - - - which led to actual deaths. But those strong memories were so vivid and clear, that it was those imprints on the characters' souls that matter most in the after life.
Trouble real characters + failed thought control experiments with fake island events = death = sideways world reunion of souls bonded together by the memories from their experiments.
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