historical determinism theme
Some variant of the philosophical concept of determinism is discussed. Determinism is the idea that events can only unfold in a certain way given the preceding state of things; thus history (past, present and future) is fixed and "free will" is perhaps but an illusion.
5 total · 2 major · 3 minor
| Story | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| Collection: Devs (2020) | major | The story features a future predicting quantum computer, inviting the viewer to ponder whether its predictions were inevitable, and therefor predetermined. In Episode 4, Katie argued that the future is fixed in just the same way as the past. In an Episode 6 long drawn out Socratic dialogue with Lily, Katie conveyed that randomness is an illusion and everything is deterministic. In Episode 8, Lily got her knickers in a twist because Forest had used his machine to predict what she was going to do and therefore, she stated, he had stolen her agency. Forest objected that he could not have stolen something she never had, implying that agency is an illusion anyway. |
| movie: Minority Report (2002) | major | One revelation of the film is that people can change their future once they become aware of it. |
| movie: Next (2007) | minor | Cris and Agent Ferris debated about free will in the SUV. |
| tz2019e1x03 | minor | Dorian told Nina that the number of a lotter drawing were determined at the moment of the Big Bang. |
| voy5x11 | minor | The Doctor posited it was determined at the start of the universe that he would choose to save Harry |