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Date Posted: 21:55:06 06/08/03 Sun
Author: Ender
Subject: I don't know
In reply to: neonate 's message, "No such thing as past or future in matrix" on 08:34:57 06/07/03 Sat

Sounds like minority report. I'm not sure if you've seen that movie, but Tom cruise takes a ball and places it on the table. He pushes the ball to the end and some man who needs a lesson in destiny catches it before it hits the floor. Tom cruise asks, "why did you catch that", and he replies "because it would have fell." "But it didn't fall," says Tom. "See, just because you caught it doesn't change the fact that it was going to fall." And that is where we come to learn that even though they change the future by preventing a crime, it doesn't mean the crime wouldn't have taken place and all is justified and blah blah blah... But that's not even the point I'm trying to make, although it is an interesting one.

The better point comes later in the movie, but for your sake I'll speak in generalities rather than specifics because I don't want to spoil it for you. Lets say, using your own metaphor, that time is (at least in the matrix) nothing but a film-strip. Then you could jump to any part of the film strip and see a still photo of the action. Or perhaps you could run a few of these photos in sequence to see a small shot of the movie. But what conclusions could you draw from this small glimpse. Would you be able to draw facts, and know for sure that the impressions you draw from the still shot are the correct ones? Of course not. No more than seeing three minutes of a movie could tell you what the outcome was going to be. So while you could get some idea or draw some theory from such ability, you couldn't be able to predict the future unless you saw the future as a whole. THAT is the direction I think the brothers want to take with the whole "seeing into the future" bit. It is somewhat echoed in Neo's visions of trinity falling from the building. He sees you fall, but not die. I wouldn't expect them to go much further with it, though. If suddenly Neo could see into the future and know the outcome of everything before it happened, it would make the rest of the movie somewhat tiresome when he tells us how it ends. A small glimpse vision of the future is fine, but I can't stand it when the hero knows his fate before we do.

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