Now onto the movie…

when the movie ended, something was going on in my head. i will now keep a log about it.

yours lol, Uncle Jamal

Now onto the movie…
Something in my head was going on when that movie ended, just like when I am inundated mentally by unexplainable feelings associate with an upcoming psychic ‘reception?’. The intangibles of the movie ending seemed to be directly associated for my state, the type of state I experience when the threads of thoughts enter my head preceding and during a psychic event.

I now keep a log of weird days where I am compelled to sort through/analyze mental images or events that I experience.

1) In the initial reality, Sean Fentiss is experiencing his final eight minutes undisturbed by Coulter’s consciousness. If Coulter just took over his body, Sean would not have eight minutes of memory to download into the simulation.

2) I like AJ’s comment (#4) that this is more than a simulation, that indeed each time he goes back, he is creating a different reality. HOWEVER, these could still merely be different simulations, with since on simulation #n+1 Coulter is adding all the things he has figured out during simulations #1 to #n.

3) As I take it, in the eight simulations, Coulter is inhabiting the “body” of Sean. However, the simulations are based not just on Sean’s last eight minutes, but on the last eight minutes of many of the passengers. Also, when the Scientist talks about the “aura”, is that limited to human consciousness? Could objects and locations also have an aura, which are added to the simulation?

4) How does Coulter figure out the license plate number? Well, if the Bomber’s consciousness
is added to the simulation, that would explain how that gets added to the mix. I know he gets off the train and is not a victim, but he is on the train for part of the last eight minutes, and could have contributed to the general “aura”.
(If the same holds true for the fellow with motion sickness, the presence of his “aura” in the simulation would explain how Coulter learns about his problem with motion sickness.)

5) HOWEVER, if the combined aura of passengers (and perhaps train and locations) make up the simulation, couldn’t the identity of the Bomber have simply been determined with a “Search” program? Or is Sean/Coulter the metaphoric realization of the “Search” program?

6) Now for the puzzling point I’ve not seen discussed anywhere:
Coulter’s text message to Goodwin ends with something like “Tell Coulter everything is going to be OK.” The alternate-Goodwin received this request. HOWEVER, it is the ORIGINAL-Goodwin who carries out this request. DOES THIS MEAN that the original-Goodwin is actually Goodwin-version n+1, responding to an e-mail that she received from Coulter-version n, where he asks her to “Tell Coulter everything is going to be OK”?

7) If (6) is correct, then every Coulter that gets sent back on a mission, being consistently upbeat guys, manage to turn lemon into lemonade, saves the world and makes it a happier place.
Goodwin is a consistently compassionate comrade, and terminates Coulter-in-the-tank, allowing another alternate world to unfold. So instead of the scientist’s truly creepy idea of sending Coulter back again-and-again for another grim “mission impossible”, Coulter gets to create another happy world for himself at the end of every mission.

As for Sean, he had many opportunities to start something with Christina, but didn’t. He might never have made his move. This way, at least Sean’s family get to have some kind of Sean to hold on to. Also, there’s that point about Sean and Coulter being compatible. Perhaps that includes
very similar “wiring” so that in some way Sean manages through Coulter to live the kind of life (only better) that he was meant to live. Haven’t thought too much about this though, nor about the implications of the visions of the Cloud Gate the seem to presage the alternate reality he’s going to inhabit.

Obviously you double-posted because of your app.

The alternate realities theory helps to explain something I was struggling with which I’ll get to shortly, but it doesn’t sit well with what little we are told about how the source code works. I thought early on that Rutlidge explains that they are using the brains of the commuters on the train to download and recreate the last eight minutes on the train in order to be able to create the source code which can send Colter back. It isn’t clear who’s brain they are using from the train but the implication is it must be Sean’s (plus multiple others perhaps, otherwise they’d be limited to what Sean knows, which doesn’t include anything to do with getting off the train which Colter is able to do). Ignoring for now how they got access to one or more relatively intact brains when everyone on the train seems to have been incinerated, it seemed to me that the underlying premise must be that for Colter to go back, the commuters have to be dead and their brains available to Rutlidge otherwise there is no way to send Colter back. I originally thought you must still have a time paradox here. The only way for Colter to go back and do anything is that the train has to have exploded, so it is impossible for him to save the train. If the commuters don’t die, Rutlidge can’t send him back. To my mind, the 2002 movie “The Time Machine” (although not a great movie) dealt with this far better in that the scientist’s girlfriend dies causing him to finish the time machine in order to go back and save her, but everytime he tries to save her she still dies, but differently, he doesn’t understand until it is pointed out to him that unless his girlfriend dies, he doesn’t finish the machine. I think the alternate realities theory can sort of explain my paradox problem on the basis that you have to accept that the train always explodes in the original reality, but this allows Colter to go back (which again requires you to assume something more is happening here than a simulation using the dead people’s brains) to a parallel reality (as opposed to purely back in time) where he saves the train. However, in that case, his text at the end to Goodwin in the parallel reality that he has created is pretty pointless to my mind other than to tell them that they have something far more powerful than they ever envisaged in their grasp (since in this reality Goodwin has never interacted with Colter) and why would he want to do that? It would be better for him to try and persuade Goodwin to terminate the body of Colter in the altered reality, but even if they didn’t and sent alternate reality damaged Colter back for (another) mission (which in this reality would be his first)and something similar to the movie’s plot happened again, you’d just have another Colter consciousness running around in yet another version of reality. I still think you have a problem with two versions of Colter in the same reality. Injured Colter is clearly rational and has memories when he comes back from source code trips and interacts with Goodwin. Therefore you are going to have the scenario where there is Colter with Colter’s memories in Sean’s body and an injured Colter who has been reawakened in a lab in that same reality also with Colter’s memories. Likewise Colter calling his dad is a bit pointless, he is only calling his alternate dad in the alternate reality who he could in fact actually go and visit (albeit in Sean’s body). There is still a dad in the original reality who never heard from his son. Original reality Rutlidge makes it clear that calls and text messages can’t cross realities when Colter originally tries to call him from the train and on his return to the original reality says Rutlidge will have received a message he called.

I guess the movie succeeded in generating a lot of thought and debate but I still think it was far neater to leave it at the freeze rather than trying to create the “happy ending” out of what I also find a pretty disturbing scenario for Christine and alternate reality Sean and which requires a far greater suspension of disbelief.

A couple thoughts I had, though, were:

1. What if, before Colter returned to reveal the bomber, he had just stayed alive in an alternate universe for several days? Would the bomb have gone off in the original reality? Did they have some mechanism for pulling him back if he didn’t die?

2. Let’s say he hadn’t been taken off life support in the original reality. When he died of old age in the final reality, would his consciousness have jumped back to the original, years later for both?

Being part of the code and being aware, he can also communicate with Goodwin via email or text.

I may have misunderstood the ending, but I thought that Goodwin was not arrested but disciplined. The communication she received from Coulter was to let her know that he was “alive” in the simulation and had prevented another and different terrorist attack. She began to go and tell Rutledge of this email, but thought better of it. She did not tell, because he would have tried to continue to use Coulter for the project. even though Coulter’s body and brain were dead, killed/deactivated by Goodwin.

I also agree with Viggen, but hey the movie is for fun. It works because we have to use some imagination.

When Colter’s mind jumps into his body, it over-writes Sean’s consciousness.

An interesting post. The only neglected point, I would offer, is the rather liberal treatment of the human brain as being read-writable RAM. This may work for computer programs, but the biological roots of consciousness are not equivalent to that model. The movie failed horribly on that point.

(It’s an app which uses an actual quantum event to split the universe at your whim. Really.)

(It’s an app which uses an actual quantum event to split the universe at your whim. Really.)

That’s because many-worlds isn’t fiction, right?

Well, then, he “IN FACT” isn’t dead.

Fatal end to a preposterous storyline, plot and premise right there.

This junk has more to do with spiritual thinking than anything remotely resembling quantum mechanics…or good science fiction for that matter. Can you say “gimmick”?

(involving quantum mechanics and “parabolic calculus” – by the way, there is no such thing as parabolic calculus).

Not yet.