I’m the guy who cracked the problem.
On a Many-Worlds principle.
Yes, exactly.
And it worked, beautifully.
So what’s the implication of that?
He doesn’t want Many-Worlds.
Just one.
But there is no “just one.”
That’s the point.
If he doesn’t like it, he’s got to change the laws of the fucking universe.
He’s a tech genius.
Those laws are secondary.
From Dark to Tenet, now Devs.
What is happening?
I am of course carefully selecting things, following a pattern, but the pattern is also there for me to be found. For some reason everyone is in love with this “new” concept of time-travel, and I keep digging to see if there’s a new angle that makes it work.
Will it happen in Devs? The show itself is almost the opposite of Tenet. It’s a good show, with some good characters and an intriguing, unsettling story. Compared to Tenet, it does focus on the important theme instead of looking away from it. And yet… already at the 2nd episode there’s something that is way sillier than the worst stuff in Tenet, and this also is fundamental to how everything develops.
While Devs keeps its meaningful focus, it doesn’t answer it. It doesn’t challenge it. It still goes untested. There’s even a magical (and entirely unnecessary) handwaving at the end. But the ending is not completely pointless. I liked its tone, and there’s some merit with it moving from science to ontology. The finale itself is able to seize something meaningful, that makes it work, somewhat. But it’s nothing new and it’s the same Philip Dick mold when it comes to truth and epistemology/ontology.
The bigger point is that I assume most people who watched Devs, all the way through, still believe it’s not about time-travel. But it is. And it’s exquisitely close to Arrival. People don’t jump in time, but they move information. This also means that Devs has, perfectly organized on its conceptual table, ALL THE PIECES to solve the puzzle. Yet it doesn’t, not deliberately. I have no idea, no logical explanation, how a show that is otherwise clever and lucid, still loses all its senses when it comes to face the fundamental theme.
As I’m used to do, I’ll try here to point at what the show does wrong.
1- simulating the system of the world, without sufficient data
2- time travel & contradiction in block universe/determinism
Even in this case the problem is in the premise. I kept watching till the last episode to see if they added a twist, but it didn’t happen. The premise is that they have a (quantum) computer and an algorithm that can make accurate predictions. In the first episode they work on a program that can predict the movement of a very simple living organism, but the prediction is only accurate for a few seconds, then it goes off the rails and needs to be re-synced. In the second episode it’s shown that the computer and the algorithm are already much more advanced and they can go back to “predict” the image of Christ on the cross. Two thousands years of backward prediction.
This doesn’t work, of course. The suspension of disbelief wants that such a computer and algorithm exist. That’s fine. But the premise is itself impossible, for reasons that are already shown and discussed through the episodes.
The fundamental problem is chaos, or how they better define it: complexity. Even if you have a very good insight, and almost infinite computational power, you cannot make a prediction that goes back 2.000 years, not even in theory. And not even if we accept the world is deterministic.
Toward the end of the show we see that the algorithm is able to deduce all reality starting from a specific point. This is only apparently similar to Laplace’s demon: if we know the position of every particle in a specific moment, then we can calculate, both forward and backward, everything that happens. The caveat is: the position of EVERY particle.
We cannot deduce the position of OTHER particles by knowing one.
The premise of determinism implies there’s a system and then there are the variables it contains. Once you know both the rules and the variables, you can accurately predict everything that happens within that system. But if you know a PORTION of the system, your predictions are weak and temporary, because you’ll get interference from all the other particles. You cannot predict ANYTHING if you are blind to some data. That data can upset everything, even if your vision of a portion of the system is perfect. There’s always something that barges in the picture and sends everything to shit.
That’s why you cannot go back and predict Christ on the cross. Because you need the total system universe to make that prediction ACCURATE enough to hold the complexity of 2.000 years. A whole lot of interference “from the outside.” From out of the limited picture. In the show they only make explicit a problem of the prediction being “fuzzy”, and noisy. That’s not the real problem. A tiny deviation a second in the future (or the past) produces major deviations, over and over. The further back you go, the larger the divergence. A completely different world, in a macroscopic way.
To summarize this first fundamental problem: the fictional principle we can accept is the existence of a really powerful computer and algorithm. That’s fine. But it’s not a matter of being too powerful, the problem is what the system cannot see and cannot map, regardless of its power. Not a problem of computation, but of vision, of access to data. To be able to make these types of predictions, you need to “scan” the universe in its totality. Because the complex system you observe doesn’t exist “in a vat”, or a computer simulation… It is still immersed in reality. You cannot just cut out a portion and predict what happens in there, because EVERYTHING OUTSIDE your observation still chaotically/complexly interacts.
As far as I know there is no way, even theoretically, to predict the behavior of a system by only knowing a portion of it. You could maybe exclude every possible universe that doesn’t align with what you observe, but that’s even more silly than making a prediction. You’d have to calculate and predict ALL POSSIBLE UNIVERSES and then exclude those that don’t fit your observation. You just cannot solve this blindness. Not a problem of computation. If you cannot see, you have nothing to calculate.
The other problem is of course free will and time travel. These two themes are the real focus, but again they are never really challenged, it’s like observing a standoff, like in a Western movie. They glare at each other, but no one dares acting first.
Time travel here happens because they can make accurate predictions about the future. If you can do that, you can go check the future for the solution of a problem, and bring that information back. Even here the premise is that everything is deterministic, and so nothing can change. We are in the same context of Arrival, Watchmen, Dark and Tenet. In Devs there’s a rule that actually forbids looking at the future, all the tests should be done about the past, in order to not disrupt things. Yet we immediately know they don’t really respect this rule, and have observed the “last day” many times. They know precisely what is going to happen, and live their life in a resigned, calm & fatalistic way.
One could guess that the progress on this computer was obtained through future-looking power, and so accelerating the process. It makes sense, but this is not encouraged in the show. They ignore the possibility, in the same way they ignore addressing the problem of free will. They TALK about it. They do nothing to test it. Taboo.
Better than Tenet because at least they don’t ignore the problem. They frame it quite nicely, early in the show. They can make a visual prediction even a few seconds in the future, so what if you see yourself ten seconds in the future, lifting your arm, and decide to contradict what you see? They talk about this. They do not test it. But they say you won’t have the freedom to keep the arm down. You don’t have the freedom to contradict what you see.
This contradicts the way we understand “free will”, leading to the facile, convenient conclusion: because we don’t have the free will we think we have. This is precisely what the show wants to say. And it’s completely wrong. Easily proven wrong.
Yes, we don’t have the free will we generally assume we have, but we assume we have it for a reason. Science reveals what happens in reality, sometimes challenging assumptions and perceptions, but it still HAS TO remain compatible with perception. If you’re drugged and have visions, those visions are still causally produced. Your interpretation of those visions might be wrong, but they are real, in a way. In the same way, quantum mechanics replace classic physics, but classical observations and models are still valid within their application domain. Quantum mechanics don’t invalidate macroscopic observations. They offer a bigger picture, but a picture that still needs to be compatible to previous observation/data. The interpretation we have of free will can also be wrong, then, but the interpretation being wrong doesn’t erase our possibility to act and decide the way we’ve always perceived to act and decide.
WHETHER I have free will or not, I CAN decide to keep my arm down once I see a picture of myself with the arm raised. If I want to do that, I can. Same as I always could. I repeat: whether I have free will or not. Science cannot contradict my common perception. Science can complete it, offer a wider, deeper picture, but it cannot REMOVE what was always observed. It cannot force my arm down through a magical power.
That’s why when I was writing about Tenet I converted my experiment, that was originally built on humans, to be performed by MACHINES. Because this isn’t a problem of free will, therefore you can test the prediction through simple machines.
Me lifting my arm or not is not the product of magical free will. It’s the product of a brain, operating like a very complex machine, subject to prior cause. As the show also preaches about:
…does anything ever happen without a reason?
Yes.
No.
Things happen without a reason.
-Like?
-An example?
Yes.
A kid getting leukemia?
Getting hit by lightning?
It’s an endless list.
No, Lily.
I didn’t ask if things ever happen without a good reason.
I said a reason.
The leukemia was an aberration in the kid’s DNA.
The lightning was a static discharge.
Why did the pen roll across the table?
You pushed it.
Why did I push it?
I’m guessing to make a point.
That’s a reason.
It’s why the pen rolled across the table.
You blinked.
What?
Why did you just blink?
Your eyes were dry.
Or you were nervous.
Does anything ever happen without a reason?
There must be some events.
Random events.
Name a random event.
Take a moment.
Think about it.
And then name one.
A coin flip.
A coin flip is not a random event.
It’s a complex event.
How hard was the coin flipped?
What was the weight of the coin?
The air resistance?
The temperature of the room?
The angle it landed on the table?
Okay, not a coin flip.
But some things are random.
Then name one.
-Selection.
-Selection of what?
Selecting from things that are all the same.
What things are all the same?
Objects.
Identical copies of a book at a bookstore.
You chose the one beneath the top of the pile because it had been handled less.
Meteors landing.
Roulette wheels spinning.
Misfortunes suffered.
They can all be unraveled.
You can’t name a random event.
Because there are no random events.
So, let’s push the possibility of free will out of the picture. Assume the brain is simply mechanical. This means that, with a good enough computer and a good enough description, we can perfectly predict a brain. THIS IS the premise of the show. (this is about the second problem, the first problem described above is that a good enough description of reality requires being complete, so requires to accurately map the universe)
Fine then, with an accurate description of the brain we can the predict something in the immediate future with a good amount of accuracy. So we can say the brain will send the signal to lift the arm. And the arm will be lifted. No free will. Okay? Okay. Nothing wrong here. It’s a simplistic example, but it’s acceptable.
The problem appears in the picture when you introduce the fucking time travel. What is time travel, again? Recursion. Something in the future that goes back, to itself. It returns to itself. So, what happens when a brain SEES information about itself (arm being lifted)? That the just acquired information joins the calculations that the brain performs. INFORMATION FROM THE FUTURE is input data. Input data that becomes part of the computation. Therefore, if the brain sees the arm lifted, IT CAN DECIDE to not lift it. Because the brain has access to that data.
That’s why you can fuck with free will AS LONG you don’t make it recursive. For example, toward the end the protagonist is told what she WILL do a day later. She wants to challenge that prediction, so decides to not do it. Our test. Of course then we see what happens, and enough motivations so that she will indeed decide to comply to that prediction, reinforcing the thesis. But while watching that scene I was on a different track: she is blind. She isn’t seeing the prediction herself, she’s being told the prediction. This means you can lie to her. Tell her she will do something in order to manipulate her doing something else. If you don’t know anything, then you cannot DECIDE. You cannot try and contradict the prediction if the prediction you’re being told might be the correct one or a lie. You’re blind, whatever you decide is out of your control. You don’t have enough information to make that choice. Whatever you do, you’re out of control, and they can manipulate you any way they want. You are in their hands, because they have access to data, and you don’t. You have no power against this. (and from your perspective you’d also be “free”, since the “free” in “free will” is about being blind to prior cause. Freedom IS only ever possible through blindness… as long we establish blindness is fundamental)
This is a thing precisely because it isn’t recursive. Someone else holds that information. You don’t have any access. So if they hold a map of your brain, and they control the input data, THEY OWN YOU.
Game fucking over.
But this is of course not what happens in this show. This isn’t Westworld. Here they are predicting reality at the fundamental level of physics. Brains are just small pieces of this overall complex fabric. They don’t simulate thoughts, choices and brains, they simulate the particles brains are made of… So there’s nothing about the problem of free will here. We have a problem of contradiction, due to time travel. If these people built the computers and then made those predictions, then all this stuff was always part of the overall picture. It’s at this fundamental level that it breaks apart. Information that is brought back from the future, becomes new input in the past. This recursion and self-reference duplicates matter. It duplicates those fundamental particles.
This is why this doesn’t function even if you stretch it to the theoretical limits. You are imagining a map that is identical to the territory, but a “map of everything” needs to recursively contain itself. What is being mapped and the map. Recursively implying itself, and creating another case of infinite regression: the map will never contain the territory, unless the map is NOT PART of the territory.
If the map is outside the territory, then it can map it precisely. There’s no self-reference. So if some people have a map of your brain, they can control you. Because their map (of your brain) is outside your brain. But they cannot have a goddamn computer with a map of the universe WHILE this computer IS PART of the universe. Because it would need to integrate itself in its map.
IF the computer integrates ITSELF in its map then it can predict its own impact on reality. It can predict what happens when someone sees a projection of the future. Because it itself has made that prediction, and has mapped it. If it doesn’t map itself, then it will make a prediction of the future that doesn’t take in consideration the possibility of some people observing a prediction it produced. It would be blind to itself, and its impact on reality. The prediction would be wrong because it doesn’t have access to that data. And that data will influence and upset the prediction. BUT if it instead integrates itself in the prediction, then it will have to recursively integrate its map with itself, triggering infinite regression. And this simply means it will never be complete, so it will never make accurate predictions.
This was about the second problem, that is the common theme about time travel I keep writing about. It’s ultimately unsolvable because based on a incomplete description. You will always be able to keep your arm down, because that’s your “free will” operating on the data you have. Nothing can contradict experience. Science never contradicts experience, it completes it, and challenges assumptions. But it never validated paradoxes.
That was the second problem… and the show fixes it beautifully with the last episode.
Through the various episodes there’s a typical challenge that goes between deBroglie-Bohm and Everett (many worlds) interpretations. The first would allow a form of determinism, but it’s the latter that is ultimately embraced. The “fix” at the very end is fairly easy to explain considering all I wrote: the two protagonists die at the end, but the computer takes their most recent “data” and plugs it, including their memories, in a simulation of the world. With the possibility of living an happier life, a kind of “heaven”, because either their knowledge or circumstances have shifted enough to let them live in this better, “corrected” world. A different reality. Why can this work? Look above, the prediction/simulation works as long the computer isn’t part of the picture. In this new simulated reality that we see, the project about the computer never existed. No one built it. The computer runs the simulation, but it is not PART of the simulation. The computer is in a dimension outside, external. The “system” of the world is sealed, so it can operate.
The map is the territory, because the map is not part of itself. It is itself. It is what it is. Therefore, this isn’t a simulation, it’s truth. The simulation is the world exactly as it is, because there’s no distinction between reality and simulation. Nothing escapes the simulation, nothing is missing in the map. The map is precisely the territory. And so the map is the truth.
In the last episode they try to sell their bullshit. The protagonist is shown a prediction, then with a plot twist she messes it up. For the very first time we see the prediction being wrong. Yet it’s all bullshit. They say she’s “special” and that give it a magical, biblical meaning by implying she “disobeyed” like Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. She went against a rule set by the gods. 12 Monkeys ended with the exact same bullshitting. The difference here is that everything can still be explained after brushing the bullshit away.
Everett interpretation was always the correct one. Time travel doesn’t produce any contradiction, because it simply branches time lines. Everything works fine. This means EVERYONE at ANY TIME can break a prediction. Because every time a prediction is made, it is not consistent with the picture, it doesn’t integrate itself (because it cannot, it triggers infinite regress). Therefore, EVERY TIME a prediction is made, the timeline shifts. Everyone at any time can reveal a divergence. No one does, exactly like in Tenet, because they find convenient to “conform” to what is shown. They want that outcome, so they deliberately drive toward it. They are already in a divergent world, just close enough that it goes unnoticed. When the protagonist fucks it up in a more macroscopic way, it’s because that was always possible. It produced a new time line, as it always happens. A timeline that in this case doesn’t immediately diverges, so the outcome still matches the one they envisioned. They succeed, but without fully grasping what exactly happened and why. Their thesis was pragmatically correct, but imprecise. Ultimately wrong.
Same as in Tenet, Everett is the only solution to this kind of framework. You can make an act of blind faith, and refuse to see it for what it is. In this case your blindness is a choice.
