@@rickdeckard1075 the terrifying part was the realization: if they shut down the machine, then the reality will cease to be exist. It's more like a loopback than a recursion - now they simulate the world that simulates them. Oh oh. There's a brief explanation in this short story, how it's possible: qntm.org/responsibility
To me, it was the least believable existential dread. I loved all the aspects except the "everything is predestined". That's bs. The very nature of quantum physics IS that some things are beyond our measuring and understanding, thus you can never predict anything perfectly. And that's the beauty of it. We will never get all the answers to make something like this, which I should add has some other issues, like you seeing the projection, and not doing what the projection says you will do. But besides that part, I loved it.
@@captainsweeney5964 Just because the laws of this Universe does not allow for anyone to prove it is predetermined, does in no way mean it is not predetermined. The results of Quantum experimentation could be about the limits of our ability to measure and verify. Maybe it is predetermined that you cannot prove it is predetermined ... if you know what Im saying.
Maybe you do. Universe has a heat death and given infinite times there is an infinite amount of big bangs for an infinite amount of universes including ones where you watch Devs again. And again. And again.
Pretty sure the basic concept of AI with behavioural predictive software has been done before. Also the idea of machines that can predict the future isn’t new. Phillip K Dick wrote at least 2 short stories about that. What Devs does better than most is the level of technical and scientific detail and philosophical discussion of the subject matter. On that level it’s great.
Actually, I think nearly the opposite about scientific and technical details. It really didn't explain anything other than the box was a simulation. It SHOWED how it worked and really just "name dropped" a few modern scientific facts, you could replace the references easily. Just here, a simulation can't be bigger than the universe containing it. And in a true computer simulation, just one level more would be either several times slower, or less detailed, like a Minecraft universe! This scene is wholly unscientific.
From reading the comments, it feels like a lot of people missed the entire point of this scene, thus the entire concept of the show. It's not about simulations, it's about determinism v. free will
@@luboisfat The basic premise of the show is flawed because the technology is logically impossible, but the show is still fascinating and objectively doesn't suck.
This scene is horrifying because it makes you question your own reality. In a world where you can make accurate simulation on this level, and they themselves contain a simulation, which carries to infinity...you make the realisation it’s infinitely more likely your own world is a simulation. I was very surprised the ending with the bright light wasn’t the world ending, like this simulation shown being shut off.
lol. I think the tech industry needs people like you to drive up their share price and keep the hype up. Relax kid. There is no concrete evidence of the simulation theory or a 'many worlds theory''. Its all in the mind of these smart kids who don't have anything better to do other than make apps, get our attention, sell our attention. Quantum theory is messed up. But only because we don't understand it. The fact is, currently technology can't predict shit in the real world even 5 seconds in the future.
I love that Stewart doesn't make any big movements. He knows how uncomfortable it is! I also think the he might have seen this moment before as he looks at the guy telling him to stop it before he stops it.
@@jamesgarfoyle3188 I have to agree with you. The nature of the quantum world is that there are immeasurable things, thus rules we will never find out about, and thus no simulation will ever be perfect.
This scene is like that "You're looking at Now" scene from _Spaceballs_ but darker and gives you a feeling of existential dread instead of fourth-wall comedy.
"I would just do something different" - you see, you can't. The reason is that the thoughts in your brain are actually predeterminated (at least in the world presented in the series). Let's suppose projection shows that you'll raise your hand up. And you will do this, because 1 second later atoms in your brain will be in that position that they form a thought about raising you hand up. The most scariest part here that it's not like "oh no, my hand is moving and i can't control it" - it's not just a neural impulse, this is a full-fledged thought, which is just a state of atoms. People was sure that they form their thoughts by themselves, and now the machine shows them that they actually aren't. They are scared by the realization of that. Ironically, this stressful thoughts was also predeterminated. And they have nothing to do with that but experience one's powerlessness.
The way this was written, shot, and acted....is brilliant. It's such a simple concept....but it clearly took a lot of thought to make it work on screen. What a brilliant little show. Definitely had me aching for a second season. Left me wanting more big time...
@Harrison Stott I think your use of "you" and "your" and "your brain" and "your unconscious" are taken to be all referring to the same thing for this argument to work. if you imagine yourself as a dimensionless point then of course it doesn't do anything, things merely happen to it and around it. but when you bring in "your brain" which is many parts, or 'your unconscious" which is a smaller piece of the "you", then what you say here isn't true. look for instance at your claim "that would mean there is no you" followed by several uses of "you". There's a trick that makes it seem paradoxical in using "you" in several cases and not noticing they aren't referring to the same thing.
Not necessarily. I mean, sure, I can see how it could be somewhat unsettling at first, but disturbing? Really? Free or not free, doesn't really matter imo, since it wouldn't make any difference
I wish this were a 10min scene where they left the projection going until they were all rocking on the ground in fetal position with crippling anxiety.
Set it for a ten second projection. If you can avoid doing what your screenself is doing then there's free will, if not then don't worry about it (or do worry about, you don't have a choice).
I loved the show but that was my one gripe with it. No one even tried to "disobey". Maybe Forrest was afraid to do so because it would break the system and disprove determinism, but it makes no sense to me that no one would even try until Lily did.
It would make no difference because the idea of "disobeying" what they see on the screen- would be predicted as well. So you would just see a predicted, future projection of them disobeying lol 😆 In other words, a "frame" cannot change its "filmstrip."
@@Mopark25 Why didn't she react and disobey when she was told she was going to go to Devs? Are you going to say that she didn't have a long enough time to react? 🤔 Also, Lily unexpectedly throwing the gun at the end could have just been an indication that the machine was not yet perfect in its code.
@@daesun92 Because it wouldn't make for a great climax to the show if she just sat at home 😂 She went there with the intention of throwing the gun so she did make that decision, we just don't know when.
Finally ! concept of determinism and paradox of free will is a raw material for a sci fi. It's about the time. Thanks Garland. Strangely this reminds me alien mimicking natalie Portman in Annihilation If you guys haven't see you should definitely
I'm glad that this show is low profile and kinda underrated. This is not something that everyone would appreciate and value. This is too high concept and high art for general masses.
@@hazardousjazzgasm129 lol, between all the people that choose not to go to college and people who don't get any philosophy courses on their college career, again, this is too high concept. But nice that you learn it on your teens. Did you do anything with it or just throw slander on comment sections?
@@zeroomens9438 "NOOOOOO YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT FAMOUS NOOOOOO PLEASE ALLOW ME TO ATTACK REPUTATION WITHOUT USING LOGIC NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"
@@hazardousjazzgasm129 It's not about being famous what is on the table, it's about being relevant. Those are very different concepts. The fact that you cannot distinguish between the two tells a lot about you, I am willing to bet it does so in a way you wish it didn't...
Came here looking for the scene where Forrest flips the hell out over Lyndon's stunning breakthrough. This show was one hundred and ten percent freakshow of the very best kind ever. I should probably do a rewatch, there's so much going on that you could miss a lot on just one go.
Lo que es mas terrorifico es el hecho de que no puedan acceder a su "libre albedrio". Un hecho tan aterrador como ver que estas obligado, no fisicamente, sino cuanticamente, a jugar el juego de la vida con unas reglas ya escritas e imposibles de desobedecer. El solo saber que el conocimiento de un solo segundo en el futuro determina que no tienes el control de tu vida, es suficiente para arruinar a cualquier persona. Que la causa no es provocado por nosotros, sino que ya estuvo calculado desde el inicio de los tiempos. Como relata en esta escena, hay una caja adentro de una caja, que contiene otra caja, infinitamente (haciendo referencia a la simulación). La simulación de un segundo en el futuro simula otra simulación de la cual reaccionan cuando se ven en la pantalla, infinitamente. Ellos describen a la tierra como la verdadera "realidad" ya que no existia semejante tecnologia para tener una simulación 99.99% identica a la realidad, donde en ese momento, se dan cuenta que muy probablemente estén dentro de una simulación, y que no habría ninguna manera de saberlo.
If there's a "box in the box" then people from the +1s future are looking into the screen that's also one second ahead and so on... So camera makes it impossible to see beyond the first iteration but audio should be a mess of infinite +1s future projections combined.
Devs Is my all-time favourite tv-show, the only problem I had, was that the opening-sequence of this episode wasn't a minute longer- the short glimpses of the landscapes with the mountains was some of the best cinematography I have ever seen. Does anyone know were this was filmed?
What I love about this show is that it gives normies a pause to think for a second whether they truly have the kind of free will they think they have, something physicists (and now neuroscientists and biologists like Sam Harris and Sapolsky, too) have been saying for decades, that you really don't have contra-causal free will, the ability to change our future. Lucky are those that never break this illusion, 'cause it's hard to deal with.
This scene broke the suspension of disbelief more than anything else for me. If they had just set the time period at something like 10 seconds, instead of juuuust roughly at the perception & reaction time of the characters, viewers would immediately be confronted with the problem: what if a character chooses to do something *other* than what they just saw on the screen? There is an irreconcilable infinite loop inherent to *changing* the state of the universe by rendering the output of the machine anywhere - and that includes the pixels of a screen. Let's call the current "real" world World A. In it, those pixels' light goes into nearby people's brains; their brains change their behaviour based upon that stimuli; and so the machine in World A, *before* it sent any information to those World A screens, must have needed to calculate the outcome of doing so. So: it simulates the world in which it *does* display those colours on those pixels - World B. Remember that it needs to know what happens in the simulated World B **before** it can output pixels in World A. Inside the simulated World B, in order for the World B machine to display any pixels to World B, it first needs to predict what happens in World B inside a simulation: World C. This is an infinite loop which occurs before any single pixel can be displayed. The machine can't ever actually predict the future *and* change literally anything in the world as a result. The predictions could only ever happen OUTSIDE of the possible causality "sphere" of the world which is to be simulated/predicted (so, the machine would need to be at least X light-seconds away from everything it predicts in order to predict what happens at most X seconds from now). Its only other option is to lie, which is of course narratively interesting but goes against Devs' premise. What you *could* do is have the machine output its prediction for all time BEFORE it began outputting the current prediction, OR showing the future that would be if it HADN'T shown the future. That could still be a really rich narrative device - the past always remains the same, but the future that characters are heading towards can never be known - only the single future in which the box may *know* everything, but could not *tell* anything. All the characters could still be on deterministic rails, and they could still see the deterministic future of the "mute box" world, but there would now be exactly 2, permanently split, worlds. They could then choose to split the world again by viewing the box's prediction again, but as before, the box could only predict what WAS going to happen if they never saw a box prediction again. So the characters keep getting to change their own future by seeing a possible future that was extrapolated from their past (their very recent past! as recent as "a few seconds ago, before they started watching this prediction"). However, they'd never be able to see __their own__ future without changing it. I think that could still be a very, very fascinating premise.
But they can't make a choice, that's the point, that's determinism. It doesn't matter how much they try. It's easy to believe that you would just try to act against it, but the fact would rather be that too long exposure to this would melt your mind, it would melt your sense of agency. The potency of the illusion of free will would rather push you into insanity before you had any ability to try and change the course of actions to break determinism. It doesn't matter how much you try to explain how this wouldn't happen because your premiss still rely on the idea of free will. What defends against breaking it would rather be the mental breakdown of the viewers. I don't think people realize the effect this experience would have on them, it's easy to look at this scene and just say "but why do they not just act against what they see", but if people actually tried to imagine how it would be like experiencing it, it becomes clear that insanity sets in much faster than anything else. This is the equivalent of being thrown into a raging fire, you try to fight against the burn, against burning up, but you will die either way. Throwing your mind into this experience is like throwing your sanity into the fire. The only reason it broke your suspension of disbelief is that you still think determinism isn't real, or you don't understand the actual implications of it. You cannot choose when you are unable to make choices. In the end, that choice that Lily makes does not equal that she were able to make the choice, but could have been a random quantum fluctuation which broke reality by becoming a macro event, and that's why they couldn't see past it. It may be that such things happen in our reality over and over and that causality cannot be measured beyond it. But it was still not free will, it wasn't really a choice, it was a domino effect from the quantum realm that echoed into the macro realm and split reality. The problem with your argument is that you don't seem to have knowledge of the actual physics that the show is based upon. Instead you rely on your personal interpretation of determinism and its implications. I recommend that you study quantum physics more and the philosophy of determinism if you want to dive deeper into this topic.
@@christoffer886Sorry, that’s just a silly wordy rationalization based around the idea that determinism exists because if it didn’t, we’d go insane. That’s solipsistic in the extreme and therefore nonsensical.
@@BlownMacTruck Why would we go insane without it? This has nothing to do with determinism as a rationalization for ourselves, but that there's no indication that we are not bound to determinism as everything else. If we were able to experience this scene for ourselves it would drive us to a panic attack because we act according to internal predictions all the time, it's part of how our consciousness works. So when that clash against the brutality of determinism, us able to see it, it messes with our fundamental function to plan actions. Determinism exists because that's what physics tells us, if you don't agree then you are free to provide an empirical alternative. So far, in philosophy, the apologists of free will have failed to do so. I'm still waiting for any of them to put such an argument on the table.
Um. I remember thinking this when I first saw the scene. If it is a like for like simulation then shouldn't the deus version of the people appear on the other side of the screen? Rather than reflecting like a mirror?
The machine can assume any angle or perspective of its visualization of the future. I guess one of the coders decided to select that view, then flip it to make it act like a mirror.
Even an infinitely powerful computer wouldn't be able to predict the future if the prediction was allowed to be part of the equation. The computer could only predict the world without influencing it in anyway. It's not that it would make a wrong prediction, it would never be able to complete the equation at all since it would have to know the end result before it has solved the equation.
Thats why there is a box with vacuum and such thigs. It would be possible to predict the future in that room 1 second with a real computer (not the one in the show). You dont have to calculate the whole universe to make a good enough prediction (99.999%) in that room.
@@TeDynef The vacuum was to prevent outside forces affecting the delicate Quantum state of the bits from collapsing to a state of particle. People were still going in and out, their actions being a continuum of working on the algorithms and code of the computer interface. So the computer was already affecting the outside world with its predictions and interaction with the programmers, since they led a life outside of the Devs complex. It's just that Forest &Co wanted to reject the many worlds interpretation so much that instead of trying to make things go differently they acted upon to make the predictions come true - like killing the spy Sergei in the first episode. It was only revealed in the last episode that the Devs' calculations weren't absolutely correct when Lily the main protagonist deviated from her behaviour she saw the computer predict. Logically a computer with even infinite computing power would go on an endless loop trying to predict what it would predict it would predict, Ad Infinitum, Ad Nauseam.
This show is almost Perfection. This is where, to me, it makes no sense. The projection should only be able to show things in the future that are impossible to change by the viewers (like a random lady in Nepal buying a scarf or something, otherwise you give them a new variable-choice. If I see myself raising an arm, I can choose not to raise it, righ?
@nablo no, you couldn't choose not to. if i understand correctly, let's say you see your +1s self raise your right arm. you were always going to do this. if we assume that you would instead say to yourself "i'm not going to raise my right arm", the +1s projection would not show you raising your arm, and instead show you what you were always going to do (if that makes sense) it's like when forest says even tho he has heard the words he says to Lily from the future many times, he says that when they arrive at that moment in time, it's what he wants to say, and it doesn't feel unnatural.
@@SanguineYoru I see what you mean, however I think there is a small window where it's too late to change your mind over you're next action. Right after that, you'd enter a weird zone where a sort of a variable loop starts and the machine itself can't keep up with the ∞+1 type of situation. So, it would make more sense to me that this kind of predictions would be, if not a white noise like in the early stages of the Devs, at least less clear. Ps: I hope I made my point understandable enough, english is not my first language and this is an amazingly weird topic
@@TheFunkNeva The whole point is you actually fundamentally don't have a choice, you're no more than a function operating on the state of the universe to produce the next state. Everything was and is completely predetermined by initial conditions. It's irrelevant whether or not you decide to 'break with the projection' because there actually exists no concept of free will or decision, there is no more potential for you to 'change your mind' than there is for a rock rolling downhill to suddenly decide to roll uphill. This is determinism, and if Everett is correct it would actually be totally true. It's why in the end when she chose to discard the gun everyone was so shocked. The part *I'm* still confused about is given they accept Everett is correct, choosing to discard the gun in the finale should be nothing more in a divergence between which reality they were observing in the projection and what they ended up observing. The characters in the show all seemed like they would be intelligent enough to recognize this almost instantly.
I thought a little about this scene and I think it is a paradox. The Devs are looking at their "mirror image", which is 1 second ahead of them in time. This means, the guys "behind the mirror" must themselves be looking at their "mirror image" which is also 1 second ahead of them. And so on, until the moment when it gets switched off, which is a moment in the future that has already happened in one of the further reflections. As the show establishes later, there is no difference between being "real" and being "simulated". We see the one "simulated" guy saying: "Switch it off." That "simulated" guy must have been convinced that he is not in the simulation but in the real world. Same as the guy he was looking at in the mirror who said, "switch if off", prior to him. At that moment, the "real" guys could not have known if they are real or simulated. "Switching it off" could have very well been the end of their existence. For sure the "simulated" guys were thinking they were "real", otherwise they would not have wanted it to be switched off. So if the Devs had the same thought, they would not have wanted to switch it off, because they could not have known if they were "real" or "simulated" - because their future selves were actually simulated. But "not switching it off" would have meant, that the simulation would have created an infinite amount of mirror images, and that would have caused the computer to crash = death. The paradox: I think it is impossible to simulate an infinite number of mirror images, if the mirror images each are 1 second in the future. Remember: Each mirror image of a person is looking at another mirror image which is 1 second ahead of them. Not switching it off would have caused the computer to simulate eternity.
But it's not simulating eternity, it's simply calculating and rendering one moment at a time. Eg when they are looking at earth from space, the computer is not calculating and rendering everything there is (although it can), it's only calculating everything required for the view they have chosen. That's why there's a slight delay when they switch from -100 Billion years to +1 second, the computer needs time to re-calculate and then render. And also why in the end ****SPOILER*** there was input required from Katie to put Forest in the sim. Only from that point onward did the computer have to simulate all possible futures, and why she needed help to keep the machine running since it will eventually run out of qbits the longer time goes on. Only if they selected a view of the screen itself and not themselves looking at the screen would it create a paradox.
@@RohanBarnard When they were looking at the simulated earth, they were simulated too. That is why they showed themselves in the simulation, because some of the guys where asking if they are in the simulation too. Does not matter from which angle they were looking at themselves. If the virtual camera were behind them, they would have also seen the screen in the simulation in which they could have seen the same scene 1 second ahead of them (and so on). But the simulated screen and the simulated screen in the simulation (and so on) were actually simulated no matter if they were visible from their point of view.
@@RohanBarnard the paradox is that in order to calculate the future in this case it takes as input its future output - so it loops back on itself because the viewing affects the calculation of what the viewers will do. For the one second projection to work out this way, that is in having the viewers behave in exactly the same way, it implies that there is infinite projections to the future. If you ask the question, why did person A say 'What the fuck", the answer would have to involve that person seeing the projection 1 second into the future, which would never end. I think the solution to this is that in fact it couldn't play out the way it is shown. Observing a projection of yourself one second into the future would cause you to behave differently, and this makes sense with the premise of multiple realities, which the show falls back on.
I think they got the science wrong here. curious if anyone disagrees. but this box and their projections are based on access to a multiverse (even though Swanson doesn't like the multiverse idea, that's how they got it to work) and they are looking, they hope, at universes "adjacent" or very nearly identical to their own. The premise of the show is each universe is completely deterministic. It doesn't follow from the assumption of total determinism that watching the one second "projection" would result in the watchers enacting what they see. I think in fact it would be guaranteed to cause them to act differently, simply by watching it. They aren't watching the future of their own exact universe, but this scene only works if they are - it falls back on the idea of a single universe and single reality for this scene to make sense.
no, the +1s projection it is an adjacent universe very nearly identical to the one they are existing in. so they were always going to react as a delayed mirror. that doesn't meant someone's eye color or hair count is the same, though, which makes it a completely separate yet nearly identical universe
Yeah I agree, doesn't make sense. They added this scene for effect, to creep the audience out, that's it. Sometimes logic is temporarily discarded for effect.
You either seeing or not seeing yourself clap would not change the simulation if your objective was to do the opposite of what you saw. If you see yourself clap, you could easily not clap for 10+ seconds. The simulation can't "make" you do things if you have a strong desire to do the opposite of what the simulation shows you. It's just a machine after all; not a direct mainline to the truth of the universe. Even if it is still extremely accurate (nearly perfect) in making predictions.
This show is very close to the truth, clairvoyance and sooth sayers or men who see the future just wrap around the basic science of determinism, it all resolves to one of Newton's law of motion, Action and reaction, cause and effect, Our understanding of this or level of evolution is simply an abstraction built on this basic concepts, we are all wrappers to this simplistic principle, if you know OOP you understand what i mean, Encapsulation, Abstraction and Polymorphism. The Devs is the height of OOP
@@user-uq4gr5nl5o If you say so then it would be impossible to calculate how much speed it would take a 30kg to displace another mass of 20kg over a distance of 10meters
Then if it would be possible making physics calculation then it would certainly be possible applying same approach to other abstracted concepts such as desire, feelings, mindset, human actions and biology, if given the needed amount of data, we could establish some specific relationships with a mathematical model, the only limitations we have now is the right amount of data, Machine learning would solve all that for us with time.
Facing reality, the future is not in a specific context, there are several alternatives to what could occur but with the right ammount of data you can predict to a close extent the most likely outcome.
It can't be a self fulfilling prophecy, he wasn't looking at the screen when he motioned to switch it off. How could he have followed a plan he was unaware of.
You can't simulate the universe, because the universe is a simulation already, a simulation of atomic particles. A simulation coded the same way as the universe, by the universe. That's why atoms are similar in structure to solar systems and galaxies. But like the universe, it's a simulation of infinite bounds and also possibilities, therefore, unless the universe can be recreated or destroyed, neither can the simulation. We cannot because we are unable to harnes infinite bounds, we're not even able to observe it.. We are but a simulation of atomic particles coded by the computer that is the universe. Now you must wonder.. what coded the universe.. what had the ability to harness infinite bounds. You also have to take in account it wasn't just matter that was created, but through the ashes following the big bang, rose genetics for organic life. Life makes the simulation no longer a simulation, but reality. Yet, still a simulation.
can someone explain why this scene is so horrifying? why does the sim they make mean their reality is any less real? one is happening in 3 dimensions and the other is happening on a screen. thats like getting scared when watching security camera footage
It's about the probability that their own reality is itself a simulation. Like Stephen said, inside the box is a simulation of a simulation of a simulation of reality to infinity. How would they know that theirs is "the original?" It is indistinguishable.
The screen is just a visualization of the full 3D simulation happening within the machine. The characters on the screen are rendered from a particular perspective within the full simulation, but the actions the screen-characters take are the result of simulated brains. This show, especially made clear in the final episode, takes the position that the simulated brains are just as alive as brains in the real world, and that the machine isn't simply generating a 2D video. The scary implication here is that, if each simulation contains another complete simulation, etc to infinity, then it is infinitely more likely that our "real" characters are actually inside of a simulation. The odds are infinity to one.
There's a quantum error in the machine. The guy in the back with the crossed arms unfolds them faster in the prime universe vs the simulation and seems to be unfolding them twice between camera shots, first when the guy in front gets up and then again when he waves. Uh Oh!
@@robl9619 lol I rewatched the vid after u told me this and now I'm creeped out as fuck but honestly If they can still have a nice life is it all that scary????
@@x32i77 he said "They've discovered that their "Reality" is just a simulation, meaning they are not real, and are living in a simulation created by "something"."
I still don't understand why you couldn't just do the exact opposite of what it predicts and prove it wrong - seems trivial. Still loved the show - I feel like the machine shouldn't be able to factor itself in, though
Yeah same. I was like "bruh just don't do fuckin anything and wait and see what happens" at the end, but they just do exactly what they've already seen they're gonna do and I still don't get why they don't just stop what they're doing.
@@MamadNobari because it shows them what they are going to do, the end. you can't trick causality. a ball doesnt suddenly stop rolling down a hill because it wants to, there is no want, there is no will. you are just a complex ball rolling down a hill, who can be predicted via 100% accuracy with this machine
@@xtaIlIl Yeah sure. But in no way and not once do they even try to just stop what they're doing or at least try to do the opposite. I don't remember much from the show as I watched it a long time ago, but I think there was one time where the main girl tried to stay in her house but the murderer guy came and made her leave, but that's it. They didn't show them do it anymore. The concept of the show is really good but Alex Garland should've gone full in and show all the aspects of that concept.
imagine every decision "you made" is not made by you, but resulted in previous actions. You are not deciding about your life, it just plays in front of you. There is no "you". That's the scary thing. Luckily determinism isnt real (:
yeah this makes no sense. Hows the simulation any more real than the base reality the characters were born in? and just because hard determinism is true doesnt mean we dont make choices. I really dont get any horror from this scene at all? more of isnt this how things always were
I thought of the show out of nowhere, and wanted to recapture that feeling. There was so much potential here. There's enough here for many seasons, if they wanted to parcel it out. Imagine the earliest version of The Box lets you see into history perfectly, see where DB Cooper went, watch JFK's assassin, solve murders. Go further back, and you start disrupting everything, watch someone write the Bible, witness the last days of rome, see how Columbus handled the natives. In another season, they gain the ability to observe everything in real time. Witness private moments from across the globe, become the ultimate spy, gain infinite wealth, blackmail politicians. Then, maybe three seasons in, we have this scene. We're finally looking into the future. I hope somebody reboots the show, gives it the full treatment, if you tell this story right then millions will watch.
Glad that you're not in charge of tv shows. I don't understand the need for "more seasons" when a perfectly made short series is enough to tell a story full of rich concepts and character development. Not everything needs to be a franchise or a multi season narrative. Enjoy what you have while you have it.
@@zeroomens9438 it might be that I grew up in the days of 20 episodes seasons. I like having a specific show to look forward to every week. I agree that not every story needs to be told that way, but this series felt like it had loads of unexplored potential.
@@creedolala6918 I grew up with 20 episode season shows and to be perfectly honest, a LOT of those lose quality waaay too quickly. And I agree that the potencial is there but why mess with something that is perfect as it is? I prefer to watch something new and contained than an endless rethread of the same thing.
You create a simple computer program (that can pick heads or tails). Let that computer program watch the future prediction of itself on DEUS. IF (DEUS prediction = heads), THEN (program picks tails). And vice versa. But if the showrunners did this it would ruin their show. Having a machine like DEUS in the same system as the system its simulating creates an impossible paradox, thereby guaranteeing that DEUS doesn't work. Something like DEUS works only when its "one level up" from the universe its simulation/extrapolating
Hmm.... Here's my take: I believe your heads / tails program simply just wouldn't run at all because, when it's watching the Deus's prediction, it'll see itself not outputting anything since it's output requires an effect to happen before the cause. In other words, when the computer's processor is executing the IF statement, it simply won't execute at all because there is no value for the "DEUS prediction" variable inside that IF statement. It'll just spit out an error saying "no value found for "DEUS prediction". So it's not a paradox.
@@ryandiv3800 would it matter if the program weren't specific to reacting to the output of the devs program? for instance if whatever the source of the input "heads" it would output "tails". it wouldn't need to calculate what the dev program was doing, the program would be simpler, taking only into account what is placed before it. get around any potential "syntax error" sort of output by having only two degrees of freedom for the programs output. heads or tails. no blank screen, it always shows either heads or tails and the simple rule is it will switch to the opposite if it takes as input a heads or tails.
This is the one hanging thread that if they make a 2nd season will have to be explored more. Also none of them thought, maybe try and say something different to what they heard themselves say. Oh oh
It was a one second projection, so they couldn’t have reacted fast enough to say something different. We only saw Forest, Katie , and Lily see far enough into the future to actually attempt to make a change. Forest and Katie are both fulfilling what they saw for their own self interests and Lily was able to make a choice (although it turned out to be insignificant/arbitrary in the scheme of things)
They are part of the system being modelled and so is the machine. Whatever they say or do in the projection will have taken into account their reaction to having seen it in advance.
it's only scary if you're afraid of death. But this is the stuff Elon talks about. Human's may someday create a perfect simulation of reality. Every quantum bit is analyzed and the let the laws of physics take hold.
The series was brilliant - but this scene was annoying, if I was watching the screen I would have ...... if my other self stands up - I keep sat down and if other self keeps sat down, I stand up. Machine explodes as it can't handle the paradox. Sounds like an Eminem song I guess.
The whole show is based upon this question, one of the reasons that they are freaking out is because they realized that they have no control of their actions regardless if they can see them in the future, I.e no free will in a deterministic universe. So it doesn't matter how many times you sit down and stand up, the projections are always going to be the same. That is why the ending is so good, they go ahead and do the things they are destined to do even after they've seen it in the simulation hundreds of times.
The cool thing is because of how you act your projection will probably never stand up, you'll probably be one of the guys that never move. But on a more serious note, this is why the future is non deterministic. The moment a technology that can calculate the deterministic future will also change that future. Kind of like how you can either know the momentum of the electron or the position of the electron, but not both.
@@ralphmacchiato3761 cop out happy ending? The multiverse always existed throughout the entire series that was the whole conflict between how Forest wanted the Devs system to run and what Lyndon did that made the Devs system work.
Because our brains and "choices" are bound by the laws of physics that operate the atoms throughout our body. The machine took account of everyone in the room viewing it, it's own existance, all the causal effects leading up to that very moment. This of course necessarily included predicting how they would behave in response to seeing their own one-second future selves. This scene was an existential nightmare to me.
@@Kriae The fact that free will doesn't exist doesn't change the fact seeing the future in a predetermined universe is a paradox. The future would have to constantly change to keep up with the people doing something different than what they are seeing. It's simply impossible.
@@AnthonyRodriguez-wc4cy You can because it’s not real. It’s not possible to 100% accurately predict the future. That’s what makes this scene so stupid.
IMO all one of them had to do was stop freaking out (easier said than done)... carefully watch what their onscreen counterpart does in the future... and then just do something different and you break the system or split into another reality or whatever.
This is one of the dumbest scenes in the show. It makes it so clear how the premise doesn't work, yet they don't explore it further. Lily shows later on that it's possible to do something contrary to the prognosis of the simulation, yet for these people it's impossible? Why? (Also how come none of these nerds have any curiousity about stuff like how the universe was created. "Further than a million years? We don't need to, it works!". Wtf.)
This scene is absolutely horrifying in a way no other show or movie has ever captured
why would anyone find recursion terrifying, it makes no sense. this scene is like a dumb people filter.
@@rickdeckard1075 it's not about recursion. it's about determinism, absence of free will and reductionism.
@YexaC Fully agree. Free will is an illusion. I'm a big fan of Daniel Dennett's proposals.
The only horrifying thing is how ugly lily is
@@rickdeckard1075 the terrifying part was the realization: if they shut down the machine, then the reality will cease to be exist. It's more like a loopback than a recursion - now they simulate the world that simulates them. Oh oh.
There's a brief explanation in this short story, how it's possible: qntm.org/responsibility
This show is a unique flavor of existential dread.
@@NatureFreak1127 it's the fun kind of dread.
Gourmet lol
To me, it was the least believable existential dread. I loved all the aspects except the "everything is predestined". That's bs. The very nature of quantum physics IS that some things are beyond our measuring and understanding, thus you can never predict anything perfectly. And that's the beauty of it. We will never get all the answers to make something like this, which I should add has some other issues, like you seeing the projection, and not doing what the projection says you will do. But besides that part, I loved it.
@@captainsweeney5964 never say never
@@captainsweeney5964 Just because the laws of this Universe does not allow for anyone to prove it is predetermined, does in no way mean it is not predetermined. The results of Quantum experimentation could be about the limits of our ability to measure and verify. Maybe it is predetermined that you cannot prove it is predetermined ... if you know what Im saying.
I wish I can erase my memories of this show so I can experience it all over again, ad nauseam, infinitum.
I know! I've watched it 5 times now! And each time I try to "forget" it so I can experience it again! It has really changed my life :)
The matter of fact, since reality is inside of the box, and in that box is another box, it's means you already say that...ad infinitum ad nauseam
Maybe you do. Universe has a heat death and given infinite times there is an infinite amount of big bangs for an infinite amount of universes including ones where you watch Devs again. And again. And again.
Now you can watch 1899 and get a similar thrill!
@@twistysnacks is it called 1899 ?
You know what else I loved about this show?
It's only 1 season. Just 1 season of a "what if" sci-fi concept that hasn't been done before.
Pretty sure the basic concept of AI with behavioural predictive software has been done before. Also the idea of machines that can predict the future isn’t new. Phillip K Dick wrote at least 2 short stories about that. What Devs does better than most is the level of technical and scientific detail and philosophical discussion of the subject matter. On that level it’s great.
@@esyphillis101 Ted Chiang has also done this concept, or slight variations on it, at least twice.
I still want season 2
@@IntensePeppers uh oh
Actually, I think nearly the opposite about scientific and technical details. It really didn't explain anything other than the box was a simulation. It SHOWED how it worked and really just "name dropped" a few modern scientific facts, you could replace the references easily. Just here, a simulation can't be bigger than the universe containing it. And in a true computer simulation, just one level more would be either several times slower, or less detailed, like a Minecraft universe! This scene is wholly unscientific.
From reading the comments, it feels like a lot of people missed the entire point of this scene, thus the entire concept of the show. It's not about simulations, it's about determinism v. free will
thats a false dichotomy deliberately designed to put you in an unresolvable decision loop
The one is just pointing to the other thing in the room. Ignore it if you dont like it.
When you realize you're an NPC not the main Character
This show is a gift. I have spent countless hours on this show, and I'm still fascinated.
This show sucks...
@@luboisfat What an uncultured opinion.
@@xackk9198 Uncultured>? I think you mean to say critical and philosophical thinking is beyond this bloke's abilities!
@@luboisfat your mind couldn’t comprehend it’s brilliance
@@luboisfat The basic premise of the show is flawed because the technology is logically impossible, but the show is still fascinating and objectively doesn't suck.
This scene is horrifying because it makes you question your own reality. In a world where you can make accurate simulation on this level, and they themselves contain a simulation, which carries to infinity...you make the realisation it’s infinitely more likely your own world is a simulation.
I was very surprised the ending with the bright light wasn’t the world ending, like this simulation shown being shut off.
Welcome to simulation theory.
Good short story on the subject: qntm.org/responsibility
this show was so stupid and slow to watch. I thought the end would be worth it but was so wrong
lol. I think the tech industry needs people like you to drive up their share price and keep the hype up. Relax kid. There is no concrete evidence of the simulation theory or a 'many worlds theory''.
Its all in the mind of these smart kids who don't have anything better to do other than make apps, get our attention, sell our attention. Quantum theory is messed up. But only because we don't understand it.
The fact is, currently technology can't predict shit in the real world even 5 seconds in the future.
@@kcoose5356 so stupid and slow? oh man! You have to be nicer to yourself!
Computers havn't even been around for that long so you can throw that theory out the window
I love that Stewart doesn't make any big movements. He knows how uncomfortable it is!
I also think the he might have seen this moment before as he looks at the guy telling him to stop it before he stops it.
now the question is... when he saw this projection before, he saw himself looking at the guy telling him to stop?
Glad to see I wasn’t the only one who got the shit scared out of them from this scene. Terrifying stuff
not really if you regularly read the current state of quantum and AI technologies.
@@jamesgarfoyle3188 I have to agree with you. The nature of the quantum world is that there are immeasurable things, thus rules we will never find out about, and thus no simulation will ever be perfect.
Uh-oh.
Uh-oh.
@@Jerry113 Jerry: "Oh shit"
@@coolbrains142 switch it off
This scene is like that "You're looking at Now" scene from _Spaceballs_ but darker and gives you a feeling of existential dread instead of fourth-wall comedy.
"I would just do something different" - you see, you can't. The reason is that the thoughts in your brain are actually predeterminated (at least in the world presented in the series). Let's suppose projection shows that you'll raise your hand up. And you will do this, because 1 second later atoms in your brain will be in that position that they form a thought about raising you hand up. The most scariest part here that it's not like "oh no, my hand is moving and i can't control it" - it's not just a neural impulse, this is a full-fledged thought, which is just a state of atoms.
People was sure that they form their thoughts by themselves, and now the machine shows them that they actually aren't. They are scared by the realization of that. Ironically, this stressful thoughts was also predeterminated. And they have nothing to do with that but experience one's powerlessness.
The way this was written, shot, and acted....is brilliant.
It's such a simple concept....but it clearly took a lot of thought to make it work on screen.
What a brilliant little show. Definitely had me aching for a second season. Left me wanting more big time...
This series was so underrated. I loved every ep of this.
If you understand this scene, you are horrified by this scene. It is outrageously disturbing!
@Harrison Stott I think your use of "you" and "your" and "your brain" and "your unconscious" are taken to be all referring to the same thing for this argument to work. if you imagine yourself as a dimensionless point then of course it doesn't do anything, things merely happen to it and around it. but when you bring in "your brain" which is many parts, or 'your unconscious" which is a smaller piece of the "you", then what you say here isn't true. look for instance at your claim "that would mean there is no you" followed by several uses of "you". There's a trick that makes it seem paradoxical in using "you" in several cases and not noticing they aren't referring to the same thing.
Not necessarily. I mean, sure, I can see how it could be somewhat unsettling at first, but disturbing? Really? Free or not free, doesn't really matter imo, since it wouldn't make any difference
I knew you'd say that
PLEASE EXPLAIN BECAUSE I DON'T UNDERSTAND PLEEEEEAAASSEEEE
@@neemahbethea9328 They are simulated beings
In my opinion this was the best scene of an excellent series and yes it was horrifying once you understood the ramifications.
- It doesn't contain us.
- ... One second projection.
I wish this were a 10min scene where they left the projection going until they were all rocking on the ground in fetal position with crippling anxiety.
i got chills then and i got chills now😫
This scene terrified me in a way no other scene has before
Yes, that's scary. I loved this show.
This show was so Good
Set it for a ten second projection. If you can avoid doing what your screenself is doing then there's free will, if not then don't worry about it (or do worry about, you don't have a choice).
I loved the show but that was my one gripe with it. No one even tried to "disobey". Maybe Forrest was afraid to do so because it would break the system and disprove determinism, but it makes no sense to me that no one would even try until Lily did.
It would make no difference because the idea of "disobeying" what they see on the screen- would be predicted as well. So you would just see a predicted, future projection of them disobeying lol 😆 In other words, a "frame" cannot change its "filmstrip."
@@daesun92 If the projection is long enough and they have time to react, they absolutely can disobey. Just as Lily does.
@@Mopark25 Why didn't she react and disobey when she was told she was going to go to Devs? Are you going to say that she didn't have a long enough time to react? 🤔 Also, Lily unexpectedly throwing the gun at the end could have just been an indication that the machine was not yet perfect in its code.
@@daesun92 Because it wouldn't make for a great climax to the show if she just sat at home 😂 She went there with the intention of throwing the gun so she did make that decision, we just don't know when.
Now we are HERE
When you try to break causality, but instead it breaks you.
Finally ! concept of determinism and paradox of free will is a raw material for a sci fi. It's about the time. Thanks Garland. Strangely this reminds me alien mimicking natalie Portman in Annihilation If you guys haven't see you should definitely
late to reply, but you know garland did both right?
Doesn't everything just lead to destruction than rebirth and creation times infinity?
@@jacofalltrades7610 late to reply but yeah of course I like Garland's mindset
@@smithnwesson990 maybe
The point isn’t the insanity, it’s the arbitrary reasoning.
One hell of a way to make a point.
I'm glad that this show is low profile and kinda underrated. This is not something that everyone would appreciate and value. This is too high concept and high art for general masses.
True
it's literally just basic philosophy teenagers learn in college lul
@@hazardousjazzgasm129 lol, between all the people that choose not to go to college and people who don't get any philosophy courses on their college career, again, this is too high concept. But nice that you learn it on your teens. Did you do anything with it or just throw slander on comment sections?
@@zeroomens9438 "NOOOOOO YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT FAMOUS NOOOOOO PLEASE ALLOW ME TO ATTACK REPUTATION WITHOUT USING LOGIC NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"
@@hazardousjazzgasm129 It's not about being famous what is on the table, it's about being relevant. Those are very different concepts. The fact that you cannot distinguish between the two tells a lot about you, I am willing to bet it does so in a way you wish it didn't...
this exact moment,, honestly i felt like my head started hurting, it was wow mind blowing 😅
There’s not enough time for each person to make unique decisions so they would be stuck in an endless loop
explain pls
This scene is such a trip!!!!!!!!
Blows my mind every time I see it
Came here looking for the scene where Forrest flips the hell out over Lyndon's stunning breakthrough. This show was one hundred and ten percent freakshow of the very best kind ever. I should probably do a rewatch, there's so much going on that you could miss a lot on just one go.
Lo que es mas terrorifico es el hecho de que no puedan acceder a su "libre albedrio". Un hecho tan aterrador como ver que estas obligado, no fisicamente, sino cuanticamente, a jugar el juego de la vida con unas reglas ya escritas e imposibles de desobedecer. El solo saber que el conocimiento de un solo segundo en el futuro determina que no tienes el control de tu vida, es suficiente para arruinar a cualquier persona. Que la causa no es provocado por nosotros, sino que ya estuvo calculado desde el inicio de los tiempos.
Como relata en esta escena, hay una caja adentro de una caja, que contiene otra caja, infinitamente (haciendo referencia a la simulación). La simulación de un segundo en el futuro simula otra simulación de la cual reaccionan cuando se ven en la pantalla, infinitamente. Ellos describen a la tierra como la verdadera "realidad" ya que no existia semejante tecnologia para tener una simulación 99.99% identica a la realidad, donde en ese momento, se dan cuenta que muy probablemente estén dentro de una simulación, y que no habría ninguna manera de saberlo.
Damn nature, you scary!
If there's a "box in the box" then people from the +1s future are looking into the screen that's also one second ahead and so on... So camera makes it impossible to see beyond the first iteration but audio should be a mess of infinite +1s future projections combined.
Thats a true movie error here. But I think the message still is coming across. And most won't notice.
agreed. Came here to say this
No that wouldn't happen. It was demonstrated perfectly.
lol
Horror element in alex garlands films is extremely unique.
A part of me expected the show to go the route of the machine predicting the end of the world route, Phillip K Dick style.
Deus Ex Machina.
yes, we all got that, thanks, genius
@@gloverelaxis this mf replied to 2 year old comment jeez 🤣🤣.
The moon is so close
Pepega
Devs Is my all-time favourite tv-show, the only problem I had, was that the opening-sequence of this episode wasn't a minute longer- the short glimpses of the landscapes with the mountains was some of the best cinematography I have ever seen. Does anyone know were this was filmed?
Pretty sure it’s all shot in California
San Francisco Bay Area
yeaaah this scene made me feel a weird type of fear/uncomfortableness i've never felt before
What I love about this show is that it gives normies a pause to think for a second whether they truly have the kind of free will they think they have, something physicists (and now neuroscientists and biologists like Sam Harris and Sapolsky, too) have been saying for decades, that you really don't have contra-causal free will, the ability to change our future. Lucky are those that never break this illusion, 'cause it's hard to deal with.
ad infinitum ad nauseam
01:49 When he says "oh shit" shouldn't we hear the 1 second projection "oh shit" from inside the box (forward echo)?
Just wait till when our smartphones will be able to do this for us. 🤪
sentient world simulation already happening
Please, the part when he says "a lot of bach, a lot of Coltrane?... Then shut the fuck up"... Scene of the first proyection.
This scene broke the suspension of disbelief more than anything else for me. If they had just set the time period at something like 10 seconds, instead of juuuust roughly at the perception & reaction time of the characters, viewers would immediately be confronted with the problem: what if a character chooses to do something *other* than what they just saw on the screen? There is an irreconcilable infinite loop inherent to *changing* the state of the universe by rendering the output of the machine anywhere - and that includes the pixels of a screen. Let's call the current "real" world World A. In it, those pixels' light goes into nearby people's brains; their brains change their behaviour based upon that stimuli; and so the machine in World A, *before* it sent any information to those World A screens, must have needed to calculate the outcome of doing so. So: it simulates the world in which it *does* display those colours on those pixels - World B. Remember that it needs to know what happens in the simulated World B **before** it can output pixels in World A. Inside the simulated World B, in order for the World B machine to display any pixels to World B, it first needs to predict what happens in World B inside a simulation: World C. This is an infinite loop which occurs before any single pixel can be displayed. The machine can't ever actually predict the future *and* change literally anything in the world as a result. The predictions could only ever happen OUTSIDE of the possible causality "sphere" of the world which is to be simulated/predicted (so, the machine would need to be at least X light-seconds away from everything it predicts in order to predict what happens at most X seconds from now). Its only other option is to lie, which is of course narratively interesting but goes against Devs' premise.
What you *could* do is have the machine output its prediction for all time BEFORE it began outputting the current prediction, OR showing the future that would be if it HADN'T shown the future. That could still be a really rich narrative device - the past always remains the same, but the future that characters are heading towards can never be known - only the single future in which the box may *know* everything, but could not *tell* anything. All the characters could still be on deterministic rails, and they could still see the deterministic future of the "mute box" world, but there would now be exactly 2, permanently split, worlds. They could then choose to split the world again by viewing the box's prediction again, but as before, the box could only predict what WAS going to happen if they never saw a box prediction again. So the characters keep getting to change their own future by seeing a possible future that was extrapolated from their past (their very recent past! as recent as "a few seconds ago, before they started watching this prediction"). However, they'd never be able to see __their own__ future without changing it. I think that could still be a very, very fascinating premise.
Great points. Wow 😳
But they can't make a choice, that's the point, that's determinism. It doesn't matter how much they try. It's easy to believe that you would just try to act against it, but the fact would rather be that too long exposure to this would melt your mind, it would melt your sense of agency. The potency of the illusion of free will would rather push you into insanity before you had any ability to try and change the course of actions to break determinism. It doesn't matter how much you try to explain how this wouldn't happen because your premiss still rely on the idea of free will. What defends against breaking it would rather be the mental breakdown of the viewers. I don't think people realize the effect this experience would have on them, it's easy to look at this scene and just say "but why do they not just act against what they see", but if people actually tried to imagine how it would be like experiencing it, it becomes clear that insanity sets in much faster than anything else. This is the equivalent of being thrown into a raging fire, you try to fight against the burn, against burning up, but you will die either way. Throwing your mind into this experience is like throwing your sanity into the fire. The only reason it broke your suspension of disbelief is that you still think determinism isn't real, or you don't understand the actual implications of it. You cannot choose when you are unable to make choices. In the end, that choice that Lily makes does not equal that she were able to make the choice, but could have been a random quantum fluctuation which broke reality by becoming a macro event, and that's why they couldn't see past it. It may be that such things happen in our reality over and over and that causality cannot be measured beyond it. But it was still not free will, it wasn't really a choice, it was a domino effect from the quantum realm that echoed into the macro realm and split reality.
The problem with your argument is that you don't seem to have knowledge of the actual physics that the show is based upon. Instead you rely on your personal interpretation of determinism and its implications. I recommend that you study quantum physics more and the philosophy of determinism if you want to dive deeper into this topic.
@@christoffer886Sorry, that’s just a silly wordy rationalization based around the idea that determinism exists because if it didn’t, we’d go insane. That’s solipsistic in the extreme and therefore nonsensical.
@@BlownMacTruck Why would we go insane without it? This has nothing to do with determinism as a rationalization for ourselves, but that there's no indication that we are not bound to determinism as everything else. If we were able to experience this scene for ourselves it would drive us to a panic attack because we act according to internal predictions all the time, it's part of how our consciousness works. So when that clash against the brutality of determinism, us able to see it, it messes with our fundamental function to plan actions. Determinism exists because that's what physics tells us, if you don't agree then you are free to provide an empirical alternative. So far, in philosophy, the apologists of free will have failed to do so. I'm still waiting for any of them to put such an argument on the table.
@@christoffer886the show is just more multiverse BS. They cowardly copped out. Then again, they never had a choice..
Fuck I love this show 😂
Um. I remember thinking this when I first saw the scene. If it is a like for like simulation then shouldn't the deus version of the people appear on the other side of the screen? Rather than reflecting like a mirror?
The machine can assume any angle or perspective of its visualization of the future. I guess one of the coders decided to select that view, then flip it to make it act like a mirror.
Ryan Div of course! If the box contains everything, it can easily do that!
@@personx8580 the box contains this comment
@@psykoj uh-oh!
Since when has knowing the facts ever stopped us from doing dumb things?
imagine getting scared when watching security camera footage
it showed exactly what they were going to do one second into the future, not what already happened
Most horrifying scene in the history of human cinematography
I got a strange feeling that I've seen ALOT of times but I just saw it once 🤔 deja Vu
Who are the people in this room? We haven't seen them before (besides Stewart) before this scene.
There are many people that work for devs, a couple of people wouldn’t be able to research and develop such mechanisms in a short time by themselves
You see some of them in the background of the first episode and subsequent episodes. Sitting in other rooms or discussing things.
heck give me a 2. second projection and i woulda broke the dang thing being erratic
Whats that quote he says right at the end of the clip?
SPOILERS!: Well according to Lily at any point those people couldve reacted in diff way and free choice still exists
Yeah, the show copped out on reality with that multiverse BS
Even an infinitely powerful computer wouldn't be able to predict the future if the prediction was allowed to be part of the equation. The computer could only predict the world without influencing it in anyway. It's not that it would make a wrong prediction, it would never be able to complete the equation at all since it would have to know the end result before it has solved the equation.
Thats why there is a box with vacuum and such thigs.
It would be possible to predict the future in that room 1 second with a real computer (not the one in the show). You dont have to calculate the whole universe to make a good enough prediction (99.999%) in that room.
@@TeDynef The vacuum was to prevent outside forces affecting the delicate Quantum state of the bits from collapsing to a state of particle. People were still going in and out, their actions being a continuum of working on the algorithms and code of the computer interface. So the computer was already affecting the outside world with its predictions and interaction with the programmers, since they led a life outside of the Devs complex. It's just that Forest &Co wanted to reject the many worlds interpretation so much that instead of trying to make things go differently they acted upon to make the predictions come true - like killing the spy Sergei in the first episode. It was only revealed in the last episode that the Devs' calculations weren't absolutely correct when Lily the main protagonist deviated from her behaviour she saw the computer predict.
Logically a computer with even infinite computing power would go on an endless loop trying to predict what it would predict it would predict, Ad Infinitum, Ad Nauseam.
I hope that we don’t advance that far, we’ll not yet.
We are very near
@@nanow1990 No we aren't
who here after watching black mirror's new season
Where did you get the video rights?
Thufir Hawat doing mentat calculations
they're like puppets
This show is almost Perfection. This is where, to me, it makes no sense.
The projection should only be able to show things in the future that are impossible to change by the viewers (like a random lady in Nepal buying a scarf or something, otherwise you give them a new variable-choice.
If I see myself raising an arm, I can choose not to raise it, righ?
Unless you are the past reflection
@nablo no, you couldn't choose not to. if i understand correctly, let's say you see your +1s self raise your right arm. you were always going to do this. if we assume that you would instead say to yourself "i'm not going to raise my right arm", the +1s projection would not show you raising your arm, and instead show you what you were always going to do (if that makes sense)
it's like when forest says even tho he has heard the words he says to Lily from the future many times, he says that when they arrive at that moment in time, it's what he wants to say, and it doesn't feel unnatural.
@@SanguineYoru I see what you mean, however I think there is a small window where it's too late to change your mind over you're next action. Right after that, you'd enter a weird zone where a sort of a variable loop starts and the machine itself can't keep up with the ∞+1 type of situation. So, it would make more sense to me that this kind of predictions would be, if not a white noise like in the early stages of the Devs, at least less clear.
Ps: I hope I made my point understandable enough, english is not my first language and this is an amazingly weird topic
@@TheFunkNeva The whole point is you actually fundamentally don't have a choice, you're no more than a function operating on the state of the universe to produce the next state. Everything was and is completely predetermined by initial conditions. It's irrelevant whether or not you decide to 'break with the projection' because there actually exists no concept of free will or decision, there is no more potential for you to 'change your mind' than there is for a rock rolling downhill to suddenly decide to roll uphill. This is determinism, and if Everett is correct it would actually be totally true. It's why in the end when she chose to discard the gun everyone was so shocked.
The part *I'm* still confused about is given they accept Everett is correct, choosing to discard the gun in the finale should be nothing more in a divergence between which reality they were observing in the projection and what they ended up observing. The characters in the show all seemed like they would be intelligent enough to recognize this almost instantly.
Uh oh.
I thought a little about this scene and I think it is a paradox. The Devs are looking at their "mirror image", which is 1 second ahead of them in time. This means, the guys "behind the mirror" must themselves be looking at their "mirror image" which is also 1 second ahead of them. And so on, until the moment when it gets switched off, which is a moment in the future that has already happened in one of the further reflections.
As the show establishes later, there is no difference between being "real" and being "simulated". We see the one "simulated" guy saying: "Switch it off." That "simulated" guy must have been convinced that he is not in the simulation but in the real world. Same as the guy he was looking at in the mirror who said, "switch if off", prior to him. At that moment, the "real" guys could not have known if they are real or simulated. "Switching it off" could have very well been the end of their existence. For sure the "simulated" guys were thinking they were "real", otherwise they would not have wanted it to be switched off.
So if the Devs had the same thought, they would not have wanted to switch it off, because they could not have known if they were "real" or "simulated" - because their future selves were actually simulated. But "not switching it off" would have meant, that the simulation would have created an infinite amount of mirror images, and that would have caused the computer to crash = death.
The paradox: I think it is impossible to simulate an infinite number of mirror images, if the mirror images each are 1 second in the future. Remember: Each mirror image of a person is looking at another mirror image which is 1 second ahead of them. Not switching it off would have caused the computer to simulate eternity.
But it's not simulating eternity, it's simply calculating and rendering one moment at a time. Eg when they are looking at earth from space, the computer is not calculating and rendering everything there is (although it can), it's only calculating everything required for the view they have chosen. That's why there's a slight delay when they switch from -100 Billion years to +1 second, the computer needs time to re-calculate and then render. And also why in the end ****SPOILER*** there was input required from Katie to put Forest in the sim. Only from that point onward did the computer have to simulate all possible futures, and why she needed help to keep the machine running since it will eventually run out of qbits the longer time goes on. Only if they selected a view of the screen itself and not themselves looking at the screen would it create a paradox.
@@RohanBarnard When they were looking at the simulated earth, they were simulated too. That is why they showed themselves in the simulation, because some of the guys where asking if they are in the simulation too.
Does not matter from which angle they were looking at themselves. If the virtual camera were behind them, they would have also seen the screen in the simulation in which they could have seen the same scene 1 second ahead of them (and so on). But the simulated screen and the simulated screen in the simulation (and so on) were actually simulated no matter if they were visible from their point of view.
@@RohanBarnard the paradox is that in order to calculate the future in this case it takes as input its future output - so it loops back on itself because the viewing affects the calculation of what the viewers will do. For the one second projection to work out this way, that is in having the viewers behave in exactly the same way, it implies that there is infinite projections to the future. If you ask the question, why did person A say 'What the fuck", the answer would have to involve that person seeing the projection 1 second into the future, which would never end. I think the solution to this is that in fact it couldn't play out the way it is shown. Observing a projection of yourself one second into the future would cause you to behave differently, and this makes sense with the premise of multiple realities, which the show falls back on.
switching of could only mean the display... system keeps running
Yeah... but don’t you like create another “deus” machine with each image to do the heavy lifting?
Will there be another season?
No.
This is easily the best scene in the whole show.
Is it me or does he say ''protection'' instead of projection? Either way, great scene.
ping = -989
Can some one explain this scene I’m lost
This was basically a Ted Chiang short story...
which book?
Ad Infinitum Ad Nauseam
I think they got the science wrong here. curious if anyone disagrees. but this box and their projections are based on access to a multiverse (even though Swanson doesn't like the multiverse idea, that's how they got it to work) and they are looking, they hope, at universes "adjacent" or very nearly identical to their own. The premise of the show is each universe is completely deterministic. It doesn't follow from the assumption of total determinism that watching the one second "projection" would result in the watchers enacting what they see. I think in fact it would be guaranteed to cause them to act differently, simply by watching it. They aren't watching the future of their own exact universe, but this scene only works if they are - it falls back on the idea of a single universe and single reality for this scene to make sense.
It's hard to grasp causal determinism. You're probably not alone.
Its already taken that into account
no, the +1s projection it is an adjacent universe very nearly identical to the one they are existing in. so they were always going to react as a delayed mirror. that doesn't meant someone's eye color or hair count is the same, though, which makes it a completely separate yet nearly identical universe
Yeah I agree, doesn't make sense. They added this scene for effect, to creep the audience out, that's it. Sometimes logic is temporarily discarded for effect.
Wha da hell????🧐
"In ten seconds, I'll clap my hands, unless I see myself clap my hands before then. Ten... nine... eight..."
You either seeing or not seeing yourself clap would not change the simulation if your objective was to do the opposite of what you saw. If you see yourself clap, you could easily not clap for 10+ seconds. The simulation can't "make" you do things if you have a strong desire to do the opposite of what the simulation shows you. It's just a machine after all; not a direct mainline to the truth of the universe. Even if it is still extremely accurate (nearly perfect) in making predictions.
This show is very close to the truth, clairvoyance and sooth sayers or men who see the future just wrap around the basic science of determinism, it all resolves to one of Newton's law of motion, Action and reaction, cause and effect, Our understanding of this or level of evolution is simply an abstraction built on this basic concepts, we are all wrappers to this simplistic principle, if you know OOP you understand what i mean, Encapsulation, Abstraction and Polymorphism. The Devs is the height of OOP
If the future is determined, it would be impossible to see it, because seeing it would give the chance to change it.
@@user-uq4gr5nl5o If you say so then it would be impossible to calculate how much speed it would take a 30kg to displace another mass of 20kg over a distance of 10meters
@@eddyeffy No, it wouldn't.
Then if it would be possible making physics calculation then it would certainly be possible applying same approach to other abstracted concepts such as desire, feelings, mindset, human actions and biology, if given the needed amount of data, we could establish some specific relationships with a mathematical model, the only limitations we have now is the right amount of data, Machine learning would solve all that for us with time.
Facing reality, the future is not in a specific context, there are several alternatives to what could occur but with the right ammount of data you can predict to a close extent the most likely outcome.
This scene is a perfect litmus test for finding out if a person understands causal loops and self fulfilling prophecies.
It can't be a self fulfilling prophecy, he wasn't looking at the screen when he motioned to switch it off. How could he have followed a plan he was unaware of.
And it's neither a causal loop. Otherwise she couldn't have discarded of the gun against the wishes of a set future
It's almost a perfect representation of both, but it's neither
You can't simulate the universe, because the universe is a simulation already, a simulation of atomic particles. A simulation coded the same way as the universe, by the universe. That's why atoms are similar in structure to solar systems and galaxies. But like the universe, it's a simulation of infinite bounds and also possibilities, therefore, unless the universe can be recreated or destroyed, neither can the simulation. We cannot because we are unable to harnes infinite bounds, we're not even able to observe it.. We are but a simulation of atomic particles coded by the computer that is the universe. Now you must wonder.. what coded the universe.. what had the ability to harness infinite bounds. You also have to take in account it wasn't just matter that was created, but through the ashes following the big bang, rose genetics for organic life. Life makes the simulation no longer a simulation, but reality. Yet, still a simulation.
I would simply not do what the projection shows me
You can't change what you did.
You can't. That's the point
I'm built different.
can someone explain why this scene is so horrifying? why does the sim they make mean their reality is any less real? one is happening in 3 dimensions and the other is happening on a screen. thats like getting scared when watching security camera footage
It's about the probability that their own reality is itself a simulation. Like Stephen said, inside the box is a simulation of a simulation of a simulation of reality to infinity. How would they know that theirs is "the original?" It is indistinguishable.
The screen is just a visualization of the full 3D simulation happening within the machine. The characters on the screen are rendered from a particular perspective within the full simulation, but the actions the screen-characters take are the result of simulated brains. This show, especially made clear in the final episode, takes the position that the simulated brains are just as alive as brains in the real world, and that the machine isn't simply generating a 2D video.
The scary implication here is that, if each simulation contains another complete simulation, etc to infinity, then it is infinitely more likely that our "real" characters are actually inside of a simulation. The odds are infinity to one.
@@Bletotumno. The show is a lame multiverse fairytale.
There's a quantum error in the machine. The guy in the back with the crossed arms unfolds them faster in the prime universe vs the simulation and seems to be unfolding them twice between camera shots, first when the guy in front gets up and then again when he waves. Uh Oh!
Just a glitch in the matrix
I don't understand? Lol what's so scary
They've discovered that their "Reality" is just a simulation, meaning they are not real, and are living in a simulation created by "something".
@@robl9619 HOLY SHIT
@@robl9619 lol I rewatched the vid after u told me this and now I'm creeped out as fuck but honestly If they can still have a nice life is it all that scary????
@@neemahbethea9328 the comment has been erased , what did he tell you?
@@x32i77 he said "They've discovered that their "Reality" is just a simulation, meaning they are not real, and are living in a simulation created by "something"."
I still don't understand why you couldn't just do the exact opposite of what it predicts and prove it wrong - seems trivial. Still loved the show - I feel like the machine shouldn't be able to factor itself in, though
Yeah same. I was like "bruh just don't do fuckin anything and wait and see what happens" at the end, but they just do exactly what they've already seen they're gonna do and I still don't get why they don't just stop what they're doing.
@@MamadNobari because it shows them what they are going to do, the end. you can't trick causality. a ball doesnt suddenly stop rolling down a hill because it wants to, there is no want, there is no will. you are just a complex ball rolling down a hill, who can be predicted via 100% accuracy with this machine
@@xtaIlIl Yeah sure. But in no way and not once do they even try to just stop what they're doing or at least try to do the opposite. I don't remember much from the show as I watched it a long time ago, but I think there was one time where the main girl tried to stay in her house but the murderer guy came and made her leave, but that's it. They didn't show them do it anymore.
The concept of the show is really good but Alex Garland should've gone full in and show all the aspects of that concept.
@@xtaIlIl
you can't compare human beings with a ball tho that's stupid 😂
@@sa1ntlukeit's hard to accept for a while.
I'M SO CONFUSED. WHY IS THIS A SCARY THING?
imagine every decision "you made" is not made by you, but resulted in previous actions. You are not deciding about your life, it just plays in front of you. There is no "you". That's the scary thing. Luckily determinism isnt real (:
@@fabius420 .......OH uhhhh we'll that's creepy. I should re-watch devs.
Both what fabius420 said and the fact that it basically proves that they are all living in a simulation in which they have no free will.
@@Splifftone That's really trippy. So they can't even leave that room if they wanted to.
@@fabius420 Determinism is real. You're just "shielded" by ignorance.
yeah this makes no sense. Hows the simulation any more real than the base reality the characters were born in? and just because hard determinism is true doesnt mean we dont make choices. I really dont get any horror from this scene at all? more of isnt this how things always were
What base reality? Give it some thought.
I thought of the show out of nowhere, and wanted to recapture that feeling. There was so much potential here. There's enough here for many seasons, if they wanted to parcel it out. Imagine the earliest version of The Box lets you see into history perfectly, see where DB Cooper went, watch JFK's assassin, solve murders. Go further back, and you start disrupting everything, watch someone write the Bible, witness the last days of rome, see how Columbus handled the natives. In another season, they gain the ability to observe everything in real time. Witness private moments from across the globe, become the ultimate spy, gain infinite wealth, blackmail politicians. Then, maybe three seasons in, we have this scene. We're finally looking into the future.
I hope somebody reboots the show, gives it the full treatment, if you tell this story right then millions will watch.
Glad that you're not in charge of tv shows. I don't understand the need for "more seasons" when a perfectly made short series is enough to tell a story full of rich concepts and character development. Not everything needs to be a franchise or a multi season narrative. Enjoy what you have while you have it.
@@zeroomens9438 it might be that I grew up in the days of 20 episodes seasons. I like having a specific show to look forward to every week. I agree that not every story needs to be told that way, but this series felt like it had loads of unexplored potential.
@@creedolala6918 I grew up with 20 episode season shows and to be perfectly honest, a LOT of those lose quality waaay too quickly. And I agree that the potencial is there but why mess with something that is perfect as it is? I prefer to watch something new and contained than an endless rethread of the same thing.
People are really missing the occult implications here lmfao
Can you expose them . I’m honestly intrigued
You create a simple computer program (that can pick heads or tails). Let that computer program watch the future prediction of itself on DEUS. IF (DEUS prediction = heads), THEN (program picks tails). And vice versa. But if the showrunners did this it would ruin their show. Having a machine like DEUS in the same system as the system its simulating creates an impossible paradox, thereby guaranteeing that DEUS doesn't work. Something like DEUS works only when its "one level up" from the universe its simulation/extrapolating
Hmm.... Here's my take: I believe your heads / tails program simply just wouldn't run at all because, when it's watching the Deus's prediction, it'll see itself not outputting anything since it's output requires an effect to happen before the cause. In other words, when the computer's processor is executing the IF statement, it simply won't execute at all because there is no value for the "DEUS prediction" variable inside that IF statement. It'll just spit out an error saying "no value found for "DEUS prediction". So it's not a paradox.
@@ryandiv3800 would it matter if the program weren't specific to reacting to the output of the devs program? for instance if whatever the source of the input "heads" it would output "tails". it wouldn't need to calculate what the dev program was doing, the program would be simpler, taking only into account what is placed before it. get around any potential "syntax error" sort of output by having only two degrees of freedom for the programs output. heads or tails. no blank screen, it always shows either heads or tails and the simple rule is it will switch to the opposite if it takes as input a heads or tails.
This is the one hanging thread that if they make a 2nd season will have to be explored more.
Also none of them thought, maybe try and say something different to what they heard themselves say. Oh oh
It was a one second projection, so they couldn’t have reacted fast enough to say something different. We only saw Forest, Katie , and Lily see far enough into the future to actually attempt to make a change. Forest and Katie are both fulfilling what they saw for their own self interests and Lily was able to make a choice (although it turned out to be insignificant/arbitrary in the scheme of things)
They are part of the system being modelled and so is the machine. Whatever they say or do in the projection will have taken into account their reaction to having seen it in advance.
it's only scary if you're afraid of death. But this is the stuff Elon talks about. Human's may someday create a perfect simulation of reality.
Every quantum bit is analyzed and the let the laws of physics take hold.
elon doesn’t know what he’s talking about
@@tonyyyb He’s not gonna fuck you
@@tonyyyb elon isn't an intellectual, he doesn't even understand "turtles all the way down"
The series was brilliant - but this scene was annoying, if I was watching the screen I would have ...... if my other self stands up - I keep sat down and if other self keeps sat down, I stand up. Machine explodes as it can't handle the paradox. Sounds like an Eminem song I guess.
The whole show is based upon this question, one of the reasons that they are freaking out is because they realized that they have no control of their actions regardless if they can see them in the future, I.e no free will in a deterministic universe. So it doesn't matter how many times you sit down and stand up, the projections are always going to be the same. That is why the ending is so good, they go ahead and do the things they are destined to do even after they've seen it in the simulation hundreds of times.
The cool thing is because of how you act your projection will probably never stand up, you'll probably be one of the guys that never move.
But on a more serious note, this is why the future is non deterministic. The moment a technology that can calculate the deterministic future will also change that future.
Kind of like how you can either know the momentum of the electron or the position of the electron, but not both.
@@DocsDota dude, the whole premise is that it's a deterministic reality, the cop-out happy ending multiverse crap comes only at the end.
@@ralphmacchiato3761 cop out happy ending? The multiverse always existed throughout the entire series that was the whole conflict between how Forest wanted the Devs system to run and what Lyndon did that made the Devs system work.
The simulation has already taken your thoughts into account you dip
observer's paradox. cool idea, pretentious execution
Simply do something different lol
You can't change what you did.
Here's what I don't understand. Why can't they just choose to do something other than what the projection is showing.
because free will doesn't exist
The machine has taken itself into account! So it can predict what people will do even while watching themselves get predicted.
Because our brains and "choices" are bound by the laws of physics that operate the atoms throughout our body.
The machine took account of everyone in the room viewing it, it's own existance, all the causal effects leading up to that very moment. This of course necessarily included predicting how they would behave in response to seeing their own one-second future selves.
This scene was an existential nightmare to me.
@@caffeinated4671 why? Nothing's changed and it was just your time to feel shitty!
@@Kriae The fact that free will doesn't exist doesn't change the fact seeing the future in a predetermined universe is a paradox. The future would have to constantly change to keep up with the people doing something different than what they are seeing. It's simply impossible.
If I saw myself doing something in the future, all I would have to do is not do it to prove the projection false.
Then ur projection wouldn't do it in the first place lol
Until you realize you can't. What a wicked conundrum that would be
@@sidrockx6399 That’s what makes it a paradox. It’s impossible “lol”
@@AnthonyRodriguez-wc4cy You can because it’s not real. It’s not possible to 100% accurately predict the future. That’s what makes this scene so stupid.
@@TheWelchProductions atleast that's what we think in the year 2023
IMO all one of them had to do was stop freaking out (easier said than done)... carefully watch what their onscreen counterpart does in the future... and then just do something different and you break the system or split into another reality or whatever.
It doesn't work that way. That's the entire point of the show, and the entire point of determinism.
@@stevenuss1482this show is not about causal determinism but just another BS multiverse story.
This is one of the dumbest scenes in the show. It makes it so clear how the premise doesn't work, yet they don't explore it further. Lily shows later on that it's possible to do something contrary to the prognosis of the simulation, yet for these people it's impossible? Why?
(Also how come none of these nerds have any curiousity about stuff like how the universe was created. "Further than a million years? We don't need to, it works!". Wtf.)
Nature always solves paradoxes on its own
The show copped out rather than further smoothen the acceptance of causal determinism in the mainstream. Because that is reality. Really.