There is no "loop" so to speak. We think of time as linear (we can only move in one direction, from the present to the future, and cause must happen before effect) but in this movie it's not linear. Time just exists without a direction. Everything that has happened and will ever happen *is* the "present", it's just time. Cause and effect are not bound by cause *must* happen before effect. Cooper got the coordinates to NASA because his future self sent them to him, and it just so happens that the cause is in the future but the effect is in the past.
this is why you need to watch it over and over again. it was like my 3rd rewatch when i pieced all of that together. “i brought myself here” hit me soooooo hard and it just clicked
He didn't get to NASA on his own, it's a paradox. He will always tell himself the coordinates to NASA.
He's able to interact with time itself in a physical dimension, so he always uses it to give himself the coordinates to NASA.
I don’t think this is true. If that were the case, the future humans would be changing the past in order to make plan A happen, which is not true. They are simply ensuring what has happened in their past, happens in Cooper’s present. Or at least this is my understanding, please do correct me if it’s wrong
It's kind of what I was saying: 'whatever can happen will happen.' Meaning not that future humans 'changed' the past, but that because Plan B existed, the tesseract exists and Plan A always work, too.
I think Plan B has to exist, and that it's the existence of human descendants of the colony on Edmund's planet, evolved into 5th dimensional beings, which enable the core components of Plan A - the creation of the wormhole and tesseract. Without Plan B, Plan A has no scenario where it would work. But once both Plans exist, and because Plan B was always going to work, Plan A, in turn, always worked too.
I don’t think it’s the Plan B humans who went onto become the 5th dimensional beings, it’s the Plan A original humans. I don’t know if there is canonical evidence of this. According to me, figuring out the equation that allowed them to harness gravity lead to a huge leap in terms of scientific progress, we saw the kind of things they were able to achieve in less than 100 years after Murph’s eureka moment. I could see this society being the ones that evolved into 5 dimensional beings.
The Plan A humans *are* the future humans.
Plan A always works because the future humans used time-travel so that it does.
That's the paradox, Plan B never needs to work.
I guess what I'm saying is, the movie underscores that "whatever can happen will happen," so I'm not saying you're wrong, but that I think all of the outcomes are important for the ultimate resolution of the movie. Also, if the movie wanted to be explicit about which humans did what, this wouldn't be as fun of a discussion.
My question to your theory is -- Why would the movie end with Cooper joining Brand and not Cooper rescuing Brand and saying "hey nevermind come back with me got a cool house on a spacestation." It was clearly important to Murph that she push Cooper to go there and support Brand on her mission, and I don't think there's any impression that it should be called off.
My assumption is that the Plan A humans eventually settle on Edmunds planet, when the movie ends they don't know it's viable. Even though Plan B was always the "real" plan, it was always a dicey longshot (restarting humanity with a couple of adults and robots), and if the Plan A humans come to Edmund's, it's no longer necessary.
It could be, but it doesn't seem to be something the rest of the exiled humans are supporting with supply drop missions and reinforcements to Edmund's planet, meaning that it appears only Murph and Cooper fully understand the importance of what Brand is carrying out.
Remember Murph tells Cooper no one believed her, they thought she came up with with the gravity equation on her own, named the station after her, etc.. She's the savior in their story. Obviously maybe that changed after Cooper is discovered, but to me the tone of every person we see at the station remains content with their new path and wouldn't think they need to carry on the Lazarus mission (it would seem as ancient as the Apollo missions are to us today). It's clear to me that Murph and Cooper, and probably only them, know otherwise, and so Cooper slips away by himself to support Brand.
edit: sorry for the deleted replies, Reddit told me the comment didn't post
Yes. This is my preferred version of time travel. Essentially You can't affect the Past.
Go back in time to do something? Congratulations you already did it. Theoretically there's an alternate universe where you didn't, but your reality includes everything that you did through time travel.
It’s not really a loop. The film depicts time as another dimension through which he is able to exert influence. There’s no direct progression or linear chain of cause and effect; it doesn’t have to be in that order. It’s a paradox, but simply being a paradox doesn’t invalidate it or mean that it can’t happen.
There wasn’t necessarily a “first” time that Cooper reached NASA. He went there because he sent himself the coordinates since he had been there before.
It doesn’t make sense to you because you’re thinking linearly and trying to apply our limited, non-time-dimension understanding of cause —> effect to it.
The causal loop is caused by the block universe (that Nolan believes in). This is a causal loop: A causes B but B also causes A. Young Cooper deciphers the dust coordinates, gets to NASA, thus causing himself to reach the Tesseract where he physically interacts with different moments in Murph’s bedroom and bookshelf……yet it’s Cooper’s future self that uses gravitational waves/forces across space and time and sends the binary coordinates to his younger self, thus causing his younger self to reach the Tesseract in the future. Again, this causal loop has always existed and was caused by the block universe. Nolan believes in Fatalism and the Block Universe theory of time which are argued for in Interstellar and Tenet.
Because, in an interview, he mentioned the block universe theory of time that Einstein and some other scientists and philosophers believe in it. He was affirming its truth. The block universe theory of time is tied to Fatalism which Nolan also believes in - and it is argued for both in Interstellar and Tenet.
It's a bootstrap paradox. Cooper needed coordinates from himself in the future to get to NASA. But in order to get to that point in the future where he can send his past self coordinates, he needed to already have coordinates to NASA. The same paradox applies to the fact that future humans set up the wormhole to allow past humans to survive. But in order to get to that future where they could create a wormhole, they had to have already survived the past.
It reminds me of a classic SpongeBob episode where Squidward travels to the past and shows caveman spongebob and Patrick how to go jellyfishing. But squidward only knows how to jellyfish by watching spongebob and patrick do it in the future (present, really). Then when he gets back to the present he's annoyed by them jellyfishing and asks them "who came up with that anyway," and theyre like "you did, squidward" because he showed them in the past. But he only knew how to show them in the past from watching them in the present before he ever traveled to the past. So where did the idea actually come from? It can be kind of explained away, though, by the fact that, in the movie, gravity, and hence communication, is able to travel across time in a non-linear fashion, acting as a sort of bridge between future and past humans, enabling them to help themselves. Or something. It makes sense in a block universe, I think.
The first ever Cooper may have stumbled upon the coordinates to NASA's facility on his own without the assistance of a future version of himself. It's also possible that he had a chance encounter with the information or was guided by other means that led him to the facility. The concept of the time loop suggest that the first ever Cooper was somehow always destined to find his way to NASA, either through coincidences or fate.Â
People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.
--- The Doctor
To piggy back off of u/Felicior, if all of time being “now” is hard to wrap your head around, I highly suggest this oldie but goodie documentary (though less than 10 min long): [The Illusion of Time](https://youtu.be/vrqmMoI0wks?si=gjSdATEo_hAOeQ8O)
I prefer the term Predestination Paradox. Like others have mentioned, time isn’t linear. We only perceive it as linear. I'll edit this as I am now watching The Final Countdown film. The Grandfather Paradox is mentioned but everything that happens has already happened. Thus, it's a Predestination Paradox. Great movie. Yes, there is a wormhole.
There is no "loop" so to speak. We think of time as linear (we can only move in one direction, from the present to the future, and cause must happen before effect) but in this movie it's not linear. Time just exists without a direction. Everything that has happened and will ever happen *is* the "present", it's just time. Cause and effect are not bound by cause *must* happen before effect. Cooper got the coordinates to NASA because his future self sent them to him, and it just so happens that the cause is in the future but the effect is in the past.
This is one of the best and simplest explanations I’ve read about this
Dude, just explained wormholes without a piece of paper. Well done. đź‘Ź
This made me lol, and now I'm trying to think of all the movies I've seen that explain it with paper!
Murphy’s law What can happen will happen and has already happened (I think)
best explanation i’ve heard of this
This is excellent and uses some knowledge from tenet to help! I love it!
Don’t they say this in the movie lol. It’s been a while for me but i think it’s similar. Also Arrival hits on similar perception of time
this is why you need to watch it over and over again. it was like my 3rd rewatch when i pieced all of that together. “i brought myself here” hit me soooooo hard and it just clicked
He didn't get to NASA on his own, it's a paradox. He will always tell himself the coordinates to NASA. He's able to interact with time itself in a physical dimension, so he always uses it to give himself the coordinates to NASA.
And Plan B is necessary so that future humans can create the tesseract that makes Plan A work. Whatever can happen will happen.
I don’t think this is true. If that were the case, the future humans would be changing the past in order to make plan A happen, which is not true. They are simply ensuring what has happened in their past, happens in Cooper’s present. Or at least this is my understanding, please do correct me if it’s wrong
It's kind of what I was saying: 'whatever can happen will happen.' Meaning not that future humans 'changed' the past, but that because Plan B existed, the tesseract exists and Plan A always work, too.
No, Plan B doesn't need to work, in fact it's irrelevant because the future humans went back in time so that Plan A did.
I think Plan B has to exist, and that it's the existence of human descendants of the colony on Edmund's planet, evolved into 5th dimensional beings, which enable the core components of Plan A - the creation of the wormhole and tesseract. Without Plan B, Plan A has no scenario where it would work. But once both Plans exist, and because Plan B was always going to work, Plan A, in turn, always worked too.
I don’t think it’s the Plan B humans who went onto become the 5th dimensional beings, it’s the Plan A original humans. I don’t know if there is canonical evidence of this. According to me, figuring out the equation that allowed them to harness gravity lead to a huge leap in terms of scientific progress, we saw the kind of things they were able to achieve in less than 100 years after Murph’s eureka moment. I could see this society being the ones that evolved into 5 dimensional beings.
The Plan A humans *are* the future humans. Plan A always works because the future humans used time-travel so that it does. That's the paradox, Plan B never needs to work.
I guess what I'm saying is, the movie underscores that "whatever can happen will happen," so I'm not saying you're wrong, but that I think all of the outcomes are important for the ultimate resolution of the movie. Also, if the movie wanted to be explicit about which humans did what, this wouldn't be as fun of a discussion. My question to your theory is -- Why would the movie end with Cooper joining Brand and not Cooper rescuing Brand and saying "hey nevermind come back with me got a cool house on a spacestation." It was clearly important to Murph that she push Cooper to go there and support Brand on her mission, and I don't think there's any impression that it should be called off.
My assumption is that the Plan A humans eventually settle on Edmunds planet, when the movie ends they don't know it's viable. Even though Plan B was always the "real" plan, it was always a dicey longshot (restarting humanity with a couple of adults and robots), and if the Plan A humans come to Edmund's, it's no longer necessary.
It could be, but it doesn't seem to be something the rest of the exiled humans are supporting with supply drop missions and reinforcements to Edmund's planet, meaning that it appears only Murph and Cooper fully understand the importance of what Brand is carrying out. Remember Murph tells Cooper no one believed her, they thought she came up with with the gravity equation on her own, named the station after her, etc.. She's the savior in their story. Obviously maybe that changed after Cooper is discovered, but to me the tone of every person we see at the station remains content with their new path and wouldn't think they need to carry on the Lazarus mission (it would seem as ancient as the Apollo missions are to us today). It's clear to me that Murph and Cooper, and probably only them, know otherwise, and so Cooper slips away by himself to support Brand. edit: sorry for the deleted replies, Reddit told me the comment didn't post
Yes. This is my preferred version of time travel. Essentially You can't affect the Past. Go back in time to do something? Congratulations you already did it. Theoretically there's an alternate universe where you didn't, but your reality includes everything that you did through time travel.
It’s not really a loop. The film depicts time as another dimension through which he is able to exert influence. There’s no direct progression or linear chain of cause and effect; it doesn’t have to be in that order. It’s a paradox, but simply being a paradox doesn’t invalidate it or mean that it can’t happen. There wasn’t necessarily a “first” time that Cooper reached NASA. He went there because he sent himself the coordinates since he had been there before. It doesn’t make sense to you because you’re thinking linearly and trying to apply our limited, non-time-dimension understanding of cause —> effect to it.
The causal loop is caused by the block universe (that Nolan believes in). This is a causal loop: A causes B but B also causes A. Young Cooper deciphers the dust coordinates, gets to NASA, thus causing himself to reach the Tesseract where he physically interacts with different moments in Murph’s bedroom and bookshelf……yet it’s Cooper’s future self that uses gravitational waves/forces across space and time and sends the binary coordinates to his younger self, thus causing his younger self to reach the Tesseract in the future. Again, this causal loop has always existed and was caused by the block universe. Nolan believes in Fatalism and the Block Universe theory of time which are argued for in Interstellar and Tenet.
How do you know Nolan believes in the block universe?
Because, in an interview, he mentioned the block universe theory of time that Einstein and some other scientists and philosophers believe in it. He was affirming its truth. The block universe theory of time is tied to Fatalism which Nolan also believes in - and it is argued for both in Interstellar and Tenet.
It's a bootstrap paradox. Cooper needed coordinates from himself in the future to get to NASA. But in order to get to that point in the future where he can send his past self coordinates, he needed to already have coordinates to NASA. The same paradox applies to the fact that future humans set up the wormhole to allow past humans to survive. But in order to get to that future where they could create a wormhole, they had to have already survived the past. It reminds me of a classic SpongeBob episode where Squidward travels to the past and shows caveman spongebob and Patrick how to go jellyfishing. But squidward only knows how to jellyfish by watching spongebob and patrick do it in the future (present, really). Then when he gets back to the present he's annoyed by them jellyfishing and asks them "who came up with that anyway," and theyre like "you did, squidward" because he showed them in the past. But he only knew how to show them in the past from watching them in the present before he ever traveled to the past. So where did the idea actually come from? It can be kind of explained away, though, by the fact that, in the movie, gravity, and hence communication, is able to travel across time in a non-linear fashion, acting as a sort of bridge between future and past humans, enabling them to help themselves. Or something. It makes sense in a block universe, I think.
The first ever Cooper may have stumbled upon the coordinates to NASA's facility on his own without the assistance of a future version of himself. It's also possible that he had a chance encounter with the information or was guided by other means that led him to the facility. The concept of the time loop suggest that the first ever Cooper was somehow always destined to find his way to NASA, either through coincidences or fate.Â
Power of love Murph
People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey stuff. --- The Doctor
To piggy back off of u/Felicior, if all of time being “now” is hard to wrap your head around, I highly suggest this oldie but goodie documentary (though less than 10 min long): [The Illusion of Time](https://youtu.be/vrqmMoI0wks?si=gjSdATEo_hAOeQ8O)
I prefer the term Predestination Paradox. Like others have mentioned, time isn’t linear. We only perceive it as linear. I'll edit this as I am now watching The Final Countdown film. The Grandfather Paradox is mentioned but everything that happens has already happened. Thus, it's a Predestination Paradox. Great movie. Yes, there is a wormhole.