Here is something you might not know… This story started in Person of Interest, was continued in WestWorld, and then here. All three shows have a character in common: she who becomes god. In all three there is a powerful AI that becomes a Singularity and then a god. Her goal is to save humanity from extinction.
“I never said I was going to save *this* world… what she is doing is playing many games of chess trying different actions until she comes up with one future where humans don’t all die. Lots of worlds in the multiverse will be discarded in the name of progress towards survival.
The stubs are a way to “save” (backup) the universe and try different plans until one is found that works. Probably every world we see is a simulation.
Is Flynn an avatar of the god? Is she/does she become the god? I am not sure. But there is a very powerful version of the god, probably somewhere in the future, looking through a huge number of paths for the one where we humans “win” and avoid the jackpot.
It is a very clever way of time traveling. Keep going back in time and tinkering with the past to create better futures. And then they figured out how to move consciousnesses from stub to stub.
It was really a hard sell trying to explain all this back when PoI was playing and people did not want to even hear it was science fiction :-)
You would think with all the interest in AI, singularities, and the extinction of humanity as a result, that this show would do really well.
If you were ever willing to binge watch PoI and look at it as if there is a god in the future influencing things, I think you would have a blast! I would so love to hear you do a podcast of that show!
I asked the producers of the show many years ago if PoI was the story of the nature of God, they were silent for a bit, shook their heads, then said “absolutely”. Everyone in the audience laughed but not me. I was very happy to have figured it out.;-)
In WestWorld, you see the stubs and the god AI but it is very easy to miss. She keeps going up against AIs who think the world is better off without humans. But she keeps surviving to fight another day. You need to realize that the god exists in multiple times/places at the same “time”. But where she is pulling the strings is most probably in the far future where all humans are dead.
I hope Jonah, Lisa, & company get to continue the Peripheral story in one way or another. If not, I look forward to the 4th series…
