Terminator-201 "Samson & Delilah" - Discuss/Grade <Spoiler>

Unless they're all in the Matrix or something just like the Matrix, because fuck me but wasn't Manson's speech about trafficking people much much like Smiths speech about people being a virus... but a tad nicer?

 

Wrong, I did say that. You seem to be unable to grasp that essentially doing what Skynet did - start Judgment Day and then wage war on what's left of humanity - does not require one to do the exact same steps as Skynet did, and having control over the American nuclear arsenal. (And I'm not even discounting that one as impossible. It would take some time, ingratiating itself into society, join the army, work itself up and such (while continuously making sure Skynet doesn't arrise) but it could do even that.)

You're contradicting yourself. Earlier you've said that things from the past aren't just going to disappear, making John, or someone else, just fade out of existence. Similarly the events of that 1984 night aren't simply going to fade away and be replaced by something else. That night has happened, period.

It's not a straw man, it's a fact. You KEEP going on about time can be changed, and thus stuff about John Connor's birth has to be different, continuously ignoring that just because things CAN change, it doesn't mean they HAVE to be changed. This isn't a strawman, this is a fact. Unless you can absolutely prove that the events of that 1984 night, and the conception of John Connor is different through it, there's no point in assuming things are different. Yet, you keep doing that. And you keep doing that by going about, how time can be changed, thus...

And I keep trying to make you understand, that time can be changed doesn't matter. There is NO "time can be changed, thus..." (this implies that just because time can be changed, it automatically is changed) there's only, what actually happened.

Wrong. T2 didn't change that at all. Kyle STILL said the exact same thing, he was just mistaken.

Which doesn't matter.

Which all has nothing to do with the way John Connor was born, that all happened a decade and more after that event. The fact that Kyle Reese and a Terminator was sent back to kill John before he was born. Sarah still has those very same memories, or the moment the T-800 was destroyed in that molten iron, Sarah and John would have faded from that position and the entire timeline changed, and they'd now be where they'd be if the first Terminator and Kyle Reese had never gone back and there never was a war. So how Kyle could come back doesn't matter, because he already did.

Which all don't matter to T1, because all those changes happened AFTER the events of T1 and John Connor was born from that T1, and time as it was at the time of T1. Whatever changes were made to time after 1984, have no impact to what happened in 1984.

And that's funny how?

YES, it WAS! We get back, to just because things CAN change, does NOT mean it has to change. You can have a pre-destination paradox because things don't have to change when you go back in time. Subsequent time travel can change this circle and break it into itty bitty pieces, but that does not mean the original non-time-changing time-travel event didn't happen.

 

What I've come to realize is that all you do is contradict yourself for the sake of argument.

And what other way would there be without getting caught? A terminator would never be in the exact same position as Skynet.

This is all totally moot, though, since what would be the big difference between John turning on the switch before time travel, and his younger self flipping it two days later? Your argument is totally flawed.

I'm not contradicting myself at all. You just don't have a grasp of reading comprehension. The model of time travel that I believe in is a rewritable timeline, which has nothing to do with pre-destination. If someone travels back to the past, and say, kills their grandfather, things don't revert and a paradox is not created. It writes over this time while not affecting that alternate future at all.

I never said events in 1984 would fade away, just that they are no longer part of a pre-destination paradox.

This is so incredibly laughable. I DID NOT SAY THIS AND NEVER HAVE. I said time DID change, not that it CAN be, that it DID. I'm not going to waste any more time on you if you can't grasp this simple fucking concept. You keep setting up my position as something it is not. Straw man. Get that in your head.

No, I'm talking about how time WAS changed. According to T2 and onward.

No, it was a change, a retcon to serve the purpose of the story. We had no reason to believe Kyle was mistaken, so it's a retcon. This is besides the point, though.

Uh, according to this, technically this John wouldn't be anywhere, never creating a need for time travel. This is a paradox. If changes to the future simply revert it, we would not have T3 or SCC.

Because it's a contradiction of terms. "Never" implies that something doesn't happen at any time, but we're talking about time outside of time.

I'm sorry you don't understand how a pre-destination paradox is supposed to work. Maybe you should go read up on it. A pre-destination paradox always exists and defies the laws of causality. It cannot be changed, it cannot be broken.

 

No, I don't contradict myself at all. You just keep making assumptions about what I wrote, without bothering to understand what I wrote.

Again, a Terminator doesn't have to. It could find a way to launch Russia's nukes, or manipulate events so some lesser country starts firing nukes and it causes a cascade reaction that has everyone firing nukes, etc. etc. etc. There are so many ways to get humanity to do its initial dirty work for it, it isn't even funny. Further, it doesn't even have to worry about getting caught at all, especially if it goes about this with the weaker country's. Anyone who "caught" the Terminator simply get killed by the Terminator, and then it moves itself out of harms way to start building its own arsenal.

There are so, so, so, so many ways to do this, I probably can't even think of all of them.

I don't know what the big difference would be, neither does John. Hence why you don't do it. If you know NOT turning on the chip before you send it leads to victory, you do NOT introduce a change that might lead to your defeat instead.

I'm not the one with the with the reading comprehension problem, you're the one with the writing comprehension problem, because here you go contradicting yourself again. It can't "write over this time" while "not affecting that alternate future at all". That last is splitting off a new timeline, which exactly does NOT write over any time, because you have a new one. When you "write over something" that something is gone, which is exactly things disappearing.

Which doesn't matter whether it comes to who is and was John's father.

I'm not the straw man, you are. You don't seem to be able to grasp the things you're writing. You should really take a course in discrete logic, and how they inform 'if then else' chains, and whether or not they have anything to do with each other.

Because here you go again with the, "hey, time changed, so it can change, therefor things changed during T1". And again I try to make you grasp, just because time CAN change, (and changed during T2 and onward), does NOT mean time HAS to change, and thus, does NOT mean and time had to have changed during the T1 time travel event.

And again, I tell you: just because time CAN change, and even DID change during the T2 and onward events, does NOT mean that time MUST change during every time travel event. Those events tell us NOTHING about T1 at all, you can only speculate about it. Time MIGHT have changed during it, more likely however it did NOT. Most notably because if Reese hadn't gone back in time, that picture would never have gotten taken, and he never could have had it to fall in love with her. Which meant that from that Reese's timeline point of view, he always went back in time to allow Sarah to make that picture.

Retcon's don't mean nothing to the universe in which things happened. The universe knows nothing of the writers writing it. Kyle was mistaken.

That's what I said, you do understand the concept of proving something, but showing how impossible the opposite is, right?

Well, YOU obviously don't understand the pre-destination paradox. The pre-destination paradox only exists and is unbreakeable within its loop. Outside of the loop, either after or before, it can not only be broken but it can even be erased all togehter. Time travel from before the loop into the loop, or from after the loop into the loop or even to before the loop, and you can affect it. That is, if time is changeable. If time is not changeable, then every time travel you attempt is by definition a pre-destination paradox.

 

Boy does this sound familiar!

Is there a broken record playing here? He does not know there will be victory unless it is predestined. It is not.

It writes over it from the perception of the time traveler. That alternate future is no longer accessible, and is essentially meaningless. What has been sent from that time does not suffer any consequences.

Haha, so I'm a straw man? Uh, hahaha, that's pretty ridiculous. You obviously don't even understand what that means, so you can't go lecturing me on logic.

There's that broken record again! I pointed out all my evidence for my line of thought and theory, and all you can do is repeat this same thing which shows a constant lack of understanding. If you come back to me with a logical argument for how a pre-destination paradox can be broken and still be a paradox, then we'll talk.

Yes, that was how the first movie illustrated it. But everything after flew in the face of that. So to rectify the first movie with the rest (which is probably stupid anyways because it's just fiction), the easiest way to do that is by saying it was not really a paradox. An explanation for the picture could go like this:

The first John Connor lived his life without any interference from the future. He was born by Sarah and someone who was not Kyle. In the future, he leads the victory against Skynet and sends back Kyle (at random) to protect Sarah from the T-800. This time travel has a profound effect on the timeline, leading to a similar, but not identical loop. Kyle falls in love with Sarah and impregnates her. Events probably played out in a similar way with Kyle dying and the T-800 being left for Cyberdyne to find. We can't really know for sure with this type of speculation how events specifically played out. So this new John is born, and it's possible he was never meant to be a leader. But he is fed all this information about his destiny to lead against the machines and that Kyle is his father. So he gives Kyle the picture, thinking that he needs him to be born. But John is mistaken on the actual workings of time travel. He is only creating a path for a similar John to be created. This loop may have happened as little as twice, but it could've happened a hundred times. At some point, the events with the T-1000 would have happened in one of these timelines, the one we saw in T2.

And I know that this wasn't shown in the series. It is purely speculation. But it's speculation that fits better than a lot of other time travel theories for the movies.

You're not doing a very good job of it. You're basically saying a paradox makes people vanish if there were a change. There were changes, and no one vanished.

I know you'd like to think that, but you're wrong. Sorry.

More demonstration of your lack of understanding. Seriously, go read more about them. If a condition of time travel interferes with a loop, it was never a paradox to begin with. A paradox has no beginning and no end. It always exists and cannot be broken.

 

Exactly BECAUSE it is not predestined, do you NOT add change to it. If it WERE predestined, than it doesn't matter what change you make, in fact you CAN NOT make a change. If time CAN change, then you must make your best effort to introduce as little change as you can, otherwise you might lose instead of win.

Now, if you've lost, make as many changes as you can, it can't get worse, but if you've won, then the goal is to add as little change as you can, preferably NO change at all, so you can move on from this point in time to the future and savor your victory.

Which means that any talk about changing time happening LATER, is completely meaningless when it comes to that first time travel event, as I've been saying all along.

You're the one with the broken record. Your reasoning makes no sense. You keep going on about how "time has changed" however not once have you given even a single piece of evidence that shows anything changed during the T1 time travel event. Not a one. You keep harping about T2 and the rest, but T2 and the rest have bearing on, not a single iota to do with, the T1 event. Whatever changes were made later, has nothing to do with what happened in T1. And why you keep trying to demand it is, is unfathomable. You're unwilling to look at things at anything other way that what you think it is, to hell with anything else, including logic, physics, and everything else that contradicts what your saying.

Except that the first movie doesn't need to be rectified, nothing afterwards, flew in the face of the first movie.

That's nice, but it's also unnecessarily complex, at which point we get Occam's Razor. It might have happened similarly to what you said, but there's no point in bothering with it, and it's much easier to assume, that John Connor was always born from Kyle, exactly as T1 showed it to be, and then more time travel changed what came after.

:sighs: No, I didn't say that at all. Again, look up the concept of showing one thing, while showing the impossibility of the other. You'll find that anything that contradicts the movies, is the impossibility I'm talking about.

No, you're the one who's wrong. Not me.

That's where you're wrong, simple as that. There's nothing else to say here. I can explain to you the same thing another 1000 times over, and you'll still be too stubborn to even listen to any logic.

 

Not only are the different writers over the last 24 years using different rules for time travel but they are using conflicting and messy rules for time travel and sometimes one might suspect that they are not using any rules at all.

That's not saying that I couldn't argue how both of you are right and both of you are wrong successfully, because I could, but it would require some lying to myself.

 

Spoiler: TTSCC Time Travel spoilers

According to the producers Time Travel is going to become a more and more common theme in the series by the request of Fox entertainment. Both the Resistance and Skynet are both using it to alter the future in ways to advance their own goals. Think Annorax in Star Trek: Voyager.

 

Because the suits know what the Geeks want?

 

^Or at least they like to think that they do...

 

It seems to me that you're unwilling to look at it any other way. I've considered many theories before. Here's an interesting one that's similar to the theory I accept: http://www.mjyoung.net/time/terminat.html

I can't go with that theory for several reasons, but it's still worth considering. I consider all theories and just go with the one I like best. I'm sure you do the same.

Anyways, I never said anything absolutely changed in T1 and its context. I'm gonna go with Guy Gardner here and say that the real reason for differences is because the writers want to do something differently. Cameron basically said as much when he did T2. T1 was obviously intended to be a pre-destination paradox with no interruptions (hence the definition of that term), and T2 was deliberately a spin on T1 that was a "what if" scenario. Now, as fans, we can just accept that and pretend it all works out just fine, or we can be nerdy and debate the methods of time travel and try and make a universe that fits.

The T2 and T3 events definitely influence how T1 is perceived if you want them to be one universe, and I've given plenty of evidence to support that. If there is a paradox in place spanning from 1984 to 2029, any changes that could potentially fuck up the time travel in 2029 would render it as not pre-destination. The aforementioned events have happened. Some say there are certain events in which the Novikov consistency principle applies. No matter how much Skynet or anyone else tries to change things, a few things remain constant by some unknown force. This is somewhat at odds with pre-destination, though.

Your whole argument in the first place was that the time travel of T2 was a pre-destined event, and that John of the future knew exactly how everything played in the past. The problem is that it wasn't, and never was intended to be.

A question for you: do you think stopping Skynet from ever happening would fly in the face of the first movie?

True enough. The theory is a bit needlessly complex, but to try and explain every little kink between T1 and T3 (forget SCC, it's not seeming to make any sense), you'd need a bit of complexity. They don't all flow as a perfect example of pre-destination, so that's where the theory comes in. If there's any better in-universe explanation, I'd be curious to read about it.

I think there's quite a difference between explaining something in an understandable way, and repeatedly shouting your opinion with your ears plugged. I have considered everything you've said carefully, and I just disagree with it. If you could counter my arguments instead of just repeating your same original argument, I'd be interested in reading it. You've never succinctly explained how a pre-destination paradox can co-exist with elements that interfere with that paradox. And that's probably because that flies in the face of what a paradox really is.

And stubbornness is a double-edged sword.

 

No, I'm not. I've already acknowledged that your way of looking at things is a possibility, you however refuse to do the same with what I'm saying.

It's also a pile of ridiculously unnecessary complex bullshit, that doesn't even bother explaining why it's his opinion, he plunges it forward as if it is fact.

No, they don't, and no you haven't. In fact, I haven't seen a single shred of evidence that supports that. It may be your opinion you gave any evidence, but when logic is applied you have not done so at all.

No, I didn't, not even a little bit.

That John knew how things played out is just one option I gave for why he didn't activate the chip. And just because John knew how things played out, doesn't mean it's pre-destination.

Skynet was never stopped.

Of course they don't all flow from pre-destination, only the first did. And then things got changed.

I have not shouted a single opinion, I have emphasized cold hard facts. Facts you oddly enough seem to agree with at one moment, and then continue on with theories that contradict your agreement. It seems as if you don't grasp what that fact you agree with means.

Yes, I have, you just refuse to accept or understand it. The first problem is your continued thought that pre-destination paradox can't be broken from outside of the time loop. This rather flies in the face of the ability to travel through time to begin with. Only if time is unchangeable can this be true, because then EVERY time travel event, from before or after a loop, to before, after, or in a loop, or just any time travel event when there didn't seem to be a loop, is by definition a pre-destination paradox. In fact, EVERY ACTION taken by ANYONE is pre-destined. There is no free will, we all just meander along the line of time, ruled by the laws of physics. (Interesting enough, the laws of physics themselves tell us this is impossible.) Ever time travel event happens exactly as it always happened, and exactly as the laws of physics forced it and everything else to happen. (Interesting enough, there isn't really any paradox in this case, everything is simply pre-destined period, and things only seem to be a paradox from a limited trapped in those pre-destination laws of physics point of view.)

Any pre-destination paradox therefor, only produces a time loop, and it only matters during this loop. Time is not continuous, which your view demands it to me. Like anything else in the universe, it's grainy, discrete, quantized. There's a smallest unit in time, and every moment of those smallest units exists, completely separate from a moment before or after. What happens after such a loop, or before it, therefor, is completely separate from that loop. And if time is changeable, then you can go back into that loop and change it. However, the loop itself is still a pre-destination paradox timeloop for the duration in which it exists.

Like with relativity that has an event happen earlier for a person in one reference frame, then a person in another reference frame - and you can only agree on some things 100% with someone if you're in the same reference frame, even though all reference frames are completely valid to make observations, you can only talk about a pre-destination paradox from a specific reference frame; namely the paradox itself. Outside of it, there is essentially a different reference frame, and the pre-destination paradox can be altered and changed, and even completely broken. That however does not mean, that the reference frame of the loop itself, is not a valid reference frame for the duration of which it exists, and it is indeed a pre-destination paradox.

 

That's mostly because I find fault in your theory that a predestination paradox can coincide with events that change it.

You keep saying this, I keep giving evidence, and you apparently don't read it, or just refuse to acknowledge it.

Here is what supports that T3 and T2 changed T1, in-universe, in a logical fashion. Read carefully this time:

Terminator 1 presents a predestination paradox. A terminator is sent back to kill the mother of its worst enemy, but inadvertently ends up creating Skynet and the very enemy it tried to stop. This is an unbreakable loop.

Terminator 2 shows the Connors severely hindering Cyberdyne systems, with the possibility of stopping Skynet, or at the very least delaying it.

Terminator 3 verifies that they only delayed it. But certain lieutenants are killed and things are changed.

The Kyle in this new future has got to be different, and cannot fulfill an exact loop. Even the Skynet is different. The future cannot point back to the past in the exact same way as it did before.

The two theories of mutable and immutable timelines cannot co-exist.

I don't know if I can explain it any more clearly than that.

That's the exact definition of predestination! It's knowing how things turn out, and that nothing you do can change that.

Obviously, but that was a hypothetical question to try and understand your line of thinking more.

I'm not seeing that I ever agreed with your theories on the matter of predestination. And what you call facts are not really facts, just your opinions. It's not really about shouting them, in a literal sense, but just repeating them over and over without actually referencing what I've actually said.

It only flies in the face of being able to travel in time and to change it.

Yes, that is the theory. The theory is an all-or-nothing where either you can change things, or you cannot. There is no in-between.

This goes back to that time referencing an outside of time event. A time loop cannot exist for a certain amount of time. It's just completely contradictory. It either happened, or it did not. A predestination paradox is supposed to be infinite and unchanged. It can neither have a beginning, nor an ending.

 

How do you know Skynets afraid of the T-1000?


EDIT Actually I found a website with a really long answer

 

^ It seems you answered your own question

 

Well, you're wrong.

And all of that doesn't matter, because the Kyle that was sent back to 1984 comes from the original timeline, not this changed one. Heck, in this changed timeline, Skynet may not sent a Terminator back at all.

Of course not, but I never said they did.

Except for that annoying fact that he easily could have changed it by for example flipping that switch on beforehand. The whole point is that things are NOT pre-destined, they CAN change - and here we go again - but they do NOT HAVE to. And if you've been victorious, you do everything in your power to introduce as little, or no change if you can, because a change might lead to your defeat after all.

Oh, go back and check, at one point you agreed that just because time can change, it doesn't mean it has to. And this is a fact. It's a simple logical truth. It is the same thing as:

Just because I can change the order of my books, doesn't mean I have to.

Just because you can turn left, doesn't mean you have to.

Just because tomorrow an asteroid might slam into New York and reduce it smoldering ashes, doesn't mean it has to.

Just because time can change, doesn't mean it has to.

No, it doesn't. Again, just because you can change time when you go back in time, doesn't mean you have to when you travel back in time.

:sighs: Of course there is no in-between. You either can change things or you can't.

But again, just because you CAN change time when you do time travel, does not mean you must whenever it happens.

Thus, you can have a pre-destination paradox occur, which you can subsequently destroy should you wish to.

That time loop seems to be infinite and unchangeable from within that loop, but not from outside of it. It's a reference frame point like I said. From within that loop it seems infinite and unchangeable, and from within that loop that's a perfectly valid truth, and thus this pre-destination paradox exists within that loop. But the moment you get outside that loop (and you do, otherwise time would literally be destroyed the moment of the time travel, the 10^-43 second that'd come after it, would be completely destroyed and space and time would unravel), your view is different. Hence you can have a pre-destination timeloop both existing and not existing, just like a photon and any other particle is both a wave and particle at the same time, and depending on how you look at it you see only one aspect.

That's all assuming the book has it right about what a T-1000 is of course. It is not canon. Me, I've never looked at a T-1000 as a bunch of nanites. Indeed, if it were a bunch of nanites, there are quite some contradictions. If it were nanites, then a piece separated from the whole wouldn't stop functioning, there a bunch of nanites after all, and they'd still be functioning nanites. So a piece getting blown off remaining in a police car wouldn't remain stuck in the police car, it would liquify and attack John Connor, especially when John went to grab it and throw it away.

I always looked upon the liquid metal matrix as a liquid crystal display. Send a current and the liquid crystals shift into the pattern you want them to do, and emit the right light to show a picture. The T-1000 would be the same, an alloy that reacts to a current, and changes under its influence. It thus, would still have a few CPUs, they can just freely float anywhere in the metal.

It also much better explains the TX liquid metal skin. If the liquid metal skin were nanites - self thinking ones, a T-1000 - it would never be able to control that skin, it would have a mind of its own.

 

That's basically what you've been saying the whole time. That somehow you can have a predestination paradox, and that it can be changed at the same time.

Here you go just beating that point into the ground again.

Yes, just because things can change does not mean they have to. I agree on that because it is a simple point of logic. However, it does not apply to this situation AT ALL. In some context, things DID change, making that whole argument moot. Why do you fail to understand this? Why do you try to argue that point when that is not at all the point I am making? That's the straw man, don't you get it?

This abandons all logic. So I think this debate is over if you can't understand that the very essence of a causality loop defies change. You go on and on about reference frames, but they have nothing to do with it being changeable. It doesn't matter if you're before, in the middle of, or after the event, it's still perceived as a loop. Changes in the middle break that loop, plain and simple.

 

They are not the same thing. A predestination paradox does not equal an immutable timeline.

Whether or not things changed, has no bearing on the John Connor who sent the T-800 back in time to protect his younger self. At that point, nothing had changed, he only just sent Kyle Reese back through time to protect his mother. Things only changed the moment he sent the T-800 back through time.

And you still do not understand that a pre-destination paradox, does not equal an immutable timeline and being completely unchangeable. That's your failure, you've taken what a pre-destination paradox and tacked things on there that do not belong there.

A pre-destination paradox is nothing but the following: going back through the past to change history creates the very history you're trying to change.

THAT is a pre-destination paradox, no more, no less. One does not require unchangeable time for this to work.

 

The first episode of the TV series had time travel just so the series could be in the now, instead of when the movies came out. They're not worried about the show making sense. The characters don't need to have beliefs and motivations because it's modern TV where the characters don't have minds---they just do what the writers think is cool. Therefore, the characters will not worry about time paradoxes or causal loops, argue about them, not even act upon definite beliefs about them. Which means the big debate is moot. There's no point to getting worked up about something the show's creators don't even care about.

 

Considering the book description of the T-1000 was from the character description that was sent out to the casting agencies to help the actors create their impression of the character yeah I really think that it's inaccurate.

This was explained in the deleted scenes and commentary. The T-1000, when damaged or separated, will attempt to hide to conduct repairs. That was why the system kept glitching in the steel mill (the hand taking on the caution tape appearance, the legs taking on the steel floor pattern).

Yeah, and the T-X was in control of each of those nanites. They were programmed to obey the directives of the T-X by Skynet.