So Dr Manhattan uses future knowledge as the entire foundation of his relationship with Angela but can't evaporate a few trucks from inside the house or whatever. Why does Angela have to walk out there and shoot any of them when he is there? Is there any reason for a god weapon who single handedly won a war to just not bother handling an obvious threat like this without getting like three feet away from them to do some hand zaps and then turning his back to a gigantic Nazi laser?
I can only assume that, although it looks stupid to not just blast the 7K trucks out there, he is acting as he does for the furtherance of other, more far future, goals.
I haven't gotten around to the episode yet, so this may have already been brought up, apologies if so. The way the episode title is worded, has some word play in it, "Abar" instead of "a bar." I googled Abar up and apparently there is a 1977 movie called "Abar : The First Black Superman." The synopsis is "An African-American doctor experiences racist threats in his neighborhood, and employs a man who leads a militant civil rights group as his family's bodyguard while he develops a serum that gives ordinary people superpowers." There are a ton of other references which may send us down a rabbit hole. But I don't want to dig too deep for concern of spoilers.
The old question: given that we are expressions of and subject to the laws of physics, which are either deterministic or probabilistic depending on how you look at it, can we be said to have free will?
Well, the first question is "free of what?" You cannot will yourself to violate the laws of physics. You can form the intent but you cannot complete the action and none of your thoughts will themselves be violations of anything.
So it seems that either we are all little clockworks who absolutely will do what we are pre-ordained to do or we are Schroedinger randos in which case our actions are not predetermined but neither are they in our control in any meaningful way.
This connects our story and Dr. Manhattan to a fundamental principle of quantum theory: information is never created or destroyed. All of the information, including every qubit in your mind, existed at the moment of the big bang and will continue to exist long after the Earth is destroyed.
In the classical world, if you burn a picture, it's gone. But the universe still has all of the information required to reconstruct the picture. And the picture existed in the evolution of the universe's wave function when the big bang happened. So in one sense, we've always been here and will always be here.
How does that square with quantum uncertainty? Because its the evolution of the wave function not on the evolution of any particular observation of that function that is deterministic. How does that square with particular observations altering the evolution of other wave functions? That's above my pay grade, but basically the whole universe has one big wave function and we've all always been represented in it as a probability.
BUT...
The information in a burned picture, while still being present in the universe, is in now way accessible to us. It has disappeared behind the wall of entropy. It's present, but unrecoverable information. It cannot be reconstructed.
And if you take a complex, classical evolving system that's 100% deterministic, you can demonstrate that the future state of that system cannot be determined reliably without stepping through all the intermediate steps. Conway's Life program is often used to explain this. It's akin to the Halting Problem. Computer programs are 100% classical. But there's no way to tell if a computer program will halt without running it.
I think many of these ideas are at play here. Dr. Manhattan can see his entire existence, but he cannot reliably know the significance of what he's seeing at any given point unless the meaning of that information is clear to him in that moment. He is as trapped in time as anyone else, it's just that he can see where the forward evolution of his wave function will take him.
Tachyons have been the most literal application of this, but even without them, it's like the Oracle said: you already made the choice. Now you have to understand why.
I'm half way through the podcast so I might be shooting myself in the foot but I thought the Peteypedia memo was a direct reference to the carnage outside the Abar house. The redacted names probably being Angela and Cal.
The old question: given that we are expressions of and subject to the laws of physics, which are either deterministic or probabilistic depending on how you look at it, can we be said to have free will?
Well, the first question is "free of what?" You cannot will yourself to violate the laws of physics. You can form the intent but you cannot complete the action and none of your thoughts will themselves be violations of anything.
So it seems that either we are all little clockworks who absolutely will do what we are pre-ordained to do or we are Schroedinger randos in which case our actions are not predetermined but neither are they in our control in any meaningful way.
This connects our story and Dr. Manhattan to a fundamental principle of quantum theory: information is never created or destroyed. All of the information, including every qubit in your mind, existed at the moment of the big bang and will continue to exist long after the Earth is destroyed.
In the classical world, if you burn a picture, it's gone. But the universe still has all of the information required to reconstruct the picture. And the picture existed in the evolution of the universe's wave function when the big bang happened. So in one sense, we've always been here and will always be here.
How does that square with quantum uncertainty? Because its the evolution of the wave function not on the evolution of any particular observation of that function that is deterministic. How does that square with particular observations altering the evolution of other wave functions? That's above my pay grade, but basically the whole universe has one big wave function and we've all always been represented in it as a probability.
BUT...
The information in a burned picture, while still being present in the universe, is in now way accessible to us. It has disappeared behind the wall of entropy. It's present, but unrecoverable information. It cannot be reconstructed.
And if you take a complex, classical evolving system that's 100% deterministic, you can demonstrate that the future state of that system cannot be determined reliably without stepping through all the intermediate steps. Conway's Life program is often used to explain this. It's akin to the Halting Problem. Computer programs are 100% classical. But there's no way to tell if a computer program will halt without running it.
I think many of these ideas are at play here. Dr. Manhattan can see his entire existence, but he cannot reliably know the significance of what he's seeing at any given point unless the meaning of that information is clear to him in that moment. He is as trapped in time as anyone else, it's just that he can see where the forward evolution of his wave function will take him.
Tachyons have been the most literal application of this, but even without them, it's like the Oracle said: you already made the choice. Now you have to understand why.
This is what I meant when I said that I didn't want to get too noodly with the science
When it comes to Copenhagen vs Many Worlds, put me in the "stop thinking about it, start doing the math" Richard Feynman camp
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh! THAT'S what Ozzymandius is reading in his jail cell! I couldn't see too well when I saw it and I thought it said "Fundraising" So then of course I was like "What the fuck is so lonely about fundraising?!?! What is Lindelof trying to say there!?" FOGDANCING. As in the Fogdancing book excerpt in the Peteypedia. Ok got it now. Jesus my head was riddled about fundraising. Like, is this some shitty prison library where the only books available are a hodge podge, thrift store level variety including failed how-to books? Fogdancing.
Also it doesn't sound like Jim will be waffling on his theory anytime soon. *Ba Dum Tss!*
Apologies if this has already been asked... but it the Game Warden is the original Mr. Phillips, where is the original Ms. Crookshanks?
My only guess was the prosecutor from the trial? I have zero evidence than she seems to be smarter than the average clone. But now that I say that, I think that was mainly my impression from the first time we saw Mr Phillips try to give Ozy a horseshoe to cut a cake. Now we know that wasn't stupid, just premature. Still, I am curious how he knew it was something Ozy would need eventually.
So Dr Manhattan uses future knowledge as the entire foundation of his relationship with Angela but can't evaporate a few trucks from inside the house or whatever. Why does Angela have to walk out there and shoot any of them when he is there? Is there any reason for a god weapon who single handedly won a war to just not bother handling an obvious threat like this without getting like three feet away from them to do some hand zaps and then turning his back to a gigantic Nazi laser?
I can only assume that, although it looks stupid to not just blast the 7K trucks out there, he is acting as he does for the furtherance of other, more far future, goals.
So Dr Manhattan uses future knowledge as the entire foundation of his relationship with Angela but can't evaporate a few trucks from inside the house or whatever. Why does Angela have to walk out there and shoot any of them when he is there? Is there any reason for a god weapon who single handedly won a war to just not bother handling an obvious threat like this without getting like three feet away from them to do some hand zaps and then turning his back to a gigantic Nazi laser?
I can only assume that, although it looks stupid to not just blast the 7K trucks out there, he is acting as he does for the furtherance of other, more far future, goals.
Either that or it's simply a plot hole
What if Dr. M’s inability to use his knowledge to change the future is his own limitation. Maybe his lack of imagination leads him to accept the furrier as it has been presented to him. What if Angela eats the waffle or whatever and delivers a bad ass line about that’s how he did it, but I’m not him and then she does use her knowledge of the future to change things? In Marcel comics it turned out the Silver Surfer wasn’t actually trapped on Earth a fret betraying Galactus, it was a mental block. And Molecule Man could only manipulate non-organic molecules until he realized it was a limitation he imposed on himself. Just a thought.
Is this the first episode with a post-credits scene?! That was awesome.
Yes. I went back and checked the others. I didn’t know about Rick and Morty post credit scenes until I had been watching for a while and I thought I had made that mistake again. Did anybody else immediately go back and check old episodes?
So Dr Manhattan uses future knowledge as the entire foundation of his relationship with Angela but can't evaporate a few trucks from inside the house or whatever. Why does Angela have to walk out there and shoot any of them when he is there? Is there any reason for a god weapon who single handedly won a war to just not bother handling an obvious threat like this without getting like three feet away from them to do some hand zaps and then turning his back to a gigantic Nazi laser?
It's not that Dr M can't evaporate the trucks or that Angela has to walk out and shoot them...it's that he doesn't evaporate the trucks and Angela does walk out and shoot them. Just like he knew that the Viet Nam war would come with regrets, but did it anyway (and did it in a way that didn't curb those regrets). He experiences time in a non-linear fashion, that lets him know what will happen - not allow him to change what will happen.
I get that but why would it happen that way in the first place? Everything else he does makes some sort of sense for why he would make that decision in the moment even if he knows it's the wrong one or he'll regret it in the future. Standing around making waffles while his lover goes to confront a bunch of masked gunmen and then just wandering haplessly in front of the laser seemed like it made no sense unless he knows he has to get blasted by it for some reason.
He's not omnipotent in that he knows and sees all things at all times, he simply knows what will happen and experiences time in a non-linear fashion. If you were to isolate him in his present time (even though no such thing exists for him) he doesn't have knowledge beyond his locality, so when he's making waffles he doesn't know that there are gunmen outside etc. he only knows that because he knows what will happen. So...while he's making waffles he doesn't know what IS happening, he simply knows in the present what WILL happen - including what is happening in that moment. It's like he has a memory but from the future, not the past.
Watch a movie. Then watch it again. Knowing how the movie will end doesn't give you the power to change the story. Things still happen as they happen, you just know it beforehand now. His non-linear experience of time is like him watching his own movie. The story is what it is. Having a more full and complete knowledge of the story, the ability to project 'future' wisdom into the past or present etc doesn't change the story...it just means that he can pick which part of the DVD his laser is focused on at any given time.
I don't want to get too science noodly, but the writers are playing off of two quantum theories - the Copenhagen and the Many Worlds interpretations - and what they mean in terms of causality and/or vs determinism.
Ok but what if you watch Jaws. The. You watch it again with a friend and right before Chief Brody delivers the line you lean over to your friend and say, “I wonder what Brody thinks of the boat’s size.” Then he says “We’re going to need a bigger boat.” Then your friend laughs or eye rolls or whatever. That didn’t happen the first time you watched it. Honestly I’m not sure what I think about Dr. M and free will/destiny and its rules in this show.
I was thinking about the Peteypedia. Puzzle box shows are suffering from the Internet creating a hive mind that can out think the writers. We’re not watching the shows with just our SO and friends at the water cooler anymore. I think the Pete pedía was Zion. It was an attempt by the show to drive the speculation. Most of the docs helped answer questions that were reveled next episode anyway but spending time on them kept people from using that time on the bigger mysteries. Is this a dumb idea?
For my earlier point it's not even necessarily about free will or using the future to his advantage, more just the way he was so reckless and a relatively minor threat got the better of him. Feels like a weird way for a character framed as a god to go out unless it's intentional.
The larger discussion around Dr Manhattan... if he's supposed to just be some kind of cosmic joke about the futility of free will then I don't really see why any of this is interesting. Everything is the way it is because that's the way it is is a really boring philosophy.
The larger discussion around Dr Manhattan... if he's supposed to just be some kind of cosmic joke about the futility of free will then I don't really see why any of this is interesting. Everything is the way it is because that's the way it is is a really boring philosophy.
And yet people find it fascinating. I used to think I was missing something for a long time, but I wasn't. Eventually I realized I'm more interested in psychology than philosophy, and that people can watch a character study and not get it in the same way.
For my earlier point it's not even necessarily about free will or using the future to his advantage, more just the way he was so reckless and a relatively minor threat got the better of him. Feels like a weird way for a character framed as a god to go out unless it's intentional.
The larger discussion around Dr Manhattan... if he's supposed to just be some kind of cosmic joke about the futility of free will then I don't really see why any of this is interesting. Everything is the way it is because that's the way it is is a really boring philosophy.
It's 100% about free will, and that's what you seem to be stuck up on. Everything has, will, and is happening. Dr. Manhattan can't use the future because it's already in the future when he sees it. Everything is predetermined. That's the point. It's Moore's take on how silly time travel fiction is. If he was able to do anything to prevent getting teleported, he wouldn't have been able to prepare to do something about getting teleported, because he wouldn't have seen himself get teleported, because he wasn't teleported.
He can't stop the transportation thing because he doesn't know he's going to be hit by it until he's hit by it. The way he perceives time means he sees everything at the same time, but he can't react to it. He's experiencing what's going on in the exact same way we are watching the show.
For my earlier point it's not even necessarily about free will or using the future to his advantage, more just the way he was so reckless and a relatively minor threat got the better of him. Feels like a weird way for a character framed as a god to go out unless it's intentional.
The larger discussion around Dr Manhattan... if he's supposed to just be some kind of cosmic joke about the futility of free will then I don't really see why any of this is interesting. Everything is the way it is because that's the way it is is a really boring philosophy.
It's 100% about free will, and that's what you seem to be stuck up on. Everything has, will, and is happening. Dr. Manhattan can't use the future because it's already in the future when he sees it. Everything is predetermined. That's the point. It's Moore's take on how silly time travel fiction is. If he was able to do anything to prevent getting teleported, he wouldn't have been able to prepare to do something about getting teleported, because he wouldn't have seen himself get teleported, because he wasn't teleported.
He can't stop the transportation thing because he doesn't know he's going to be hit by it until he's hit by it. The way he perceives time means he sees everything at the same time, but he can't react to it. He's experiencing what's going on in the exact same way we are watching the show.
Yea, no, I get it, I'm not stuck up on free will or the way he experiences time. I'm not saying I think he should have read the future to figure out how to handle the situation, I worded the first part of my first comment poorly trying to make a couple of points at the same time. I don't really know how else to articulate this.
That said, I do think it's kind of dumb he can use his knowledge of the future for some things but not for others. Veidt had to plan around his ability to read the future to keep him from stopping the giant squid plan. I don't see how the watching a movie analogy holds up with the way his relationship with Angela plays out but that's a different point and it's already been discussed to death.
That said, I do think it's kind of dumb he can use his knowledge of the future for some things but not for others. Veidt had to plan around his ability to read the future to keep him from stopping the giant squid plan. I don't see how the watching a movie analogy holds up with the way his relationship with Angela plays out but that's a different point and it's already been discussed to death.
I don't think he has ever used his knowledge of the future for anything. Veidt thinking he needed to shield himself from Dr. Manhattan doesn't mean Dr. Manhattan would have stopped him. Dr. Manahattan knew exactly what was going to happen because Veidt explained his plan, and he still couldn't stop him. There's also the infinite amount of time he could experience post-squid. He also doesn't change anything with the relationship with Angela. It all plays out exactly how he saw it playing out.
It's the same as any other time travel fiction. It's just frustrating if you try and think about it too much.
I love debates about free will, but I think this is more of a plot issue. Dr. Manhattan is a plot-breaker so you have to manufacture a limitation for there to be credible conflict. This show uses Tachyons as a vague limitation that works however it needs to similarly to how the light of the yellow sun (or lack thereof) and kryptonite are used to create conflict in Superman stories.
None of these limitations are very consistent within their narratives, but it’s the price you have to pay for having a character like Dr. Manhattan or Superman in a story.
The yellow sun thing is ludicrous on its face. What about during the night, or indoors, or how his outfits only expose his hands and his head to the sun whether he’s in costume or not, is he weaker in the morning, why isn’t his super costume just a speedo or no clothing at all so if can get as much as possible, etc.
I enjoy the show because of its characters and themes. I don’t think you should look to Watchmen for any kind of hard-SciFi consistency.
Not sure if anyone brought this up yet, but did anyone catch that line from Adrian about the “8 million children” standing in their cribs awaiting his return on earth?
I was thinking if Dr Manhattan had his accident, got superpowers and lost his humanity along the way due to being omniscient. Could Senator Klansman get superpowers, lose his inhumanity and say "Hey, race don't really matter" as he pops all the Kalvery's heads?
I love debates about free will, but I think this is more of a plot issue. Dr. Manhattan is a plot-breaker so you have to manufacture a limitation for there to be credible conflict. This show uses Tachyons as a vague limitation that works however it needs to similarly to how the light of the yellow sun (or lack thereof) and kryptonite are used to create conflict in Superman stories.
None of these limitations are very consistent within their narratives, but it’s the price you have to pay for having a character like Dr. Manhattan or Superman in a story.
The yellow sun thing is ludicrous on its face. What about during the night, or indoors, or how his outfits only expose his hands and his head to the sun whether he’s in costume or not, is he weaker in the morning, why isn’t his super costume just a speedo or no clothing at all so if can get as much as possible, etc.
I enjoy the show because of its characters and themes. I don’t think you should look to Watchmen for any kind of hard-SciFi consistency.
I get what you're saying, and the fact that it is limiting might be a plot convenience for the writers, but the idea that in spite of all of his power that Dr Manhattan is still bound to a pre-determined future isn't inconsistent with his narrative at all...it's the logical consequence of the quantum theory that he's the living embodiment of.
So Dr Manhattan uses future knowledge as the entire foundation of his relationship with Angela but can't evaporate a few trucks from inside the house or whatever. Why does Angela have to walk out there and shoot any of them when he is there? Is there any reason for a god weapon who single handedly won a war to just not bother handling an obvious threat like this without getting like three feet away from them to do some hand zaps and then turning his back to a gigantic Nazi laser?
It's not that Dr M can't evaporate the trucks or that Angela has to walk out and shoot them...it's that he doesn't evaporate the trucks and Angela does walk out and shoot them. Just like he knew that the Viet Nam war would come with regrets, but did it anyway (and did it in a way that didn't curb those regrets). He experiences time in a non-linear fashion, that lets him know what will happen - not allow him to change what will happen.
I get that but why would it happen that way in the first place? Everything else he does makes some sort of sense for why he would make that decision in the moment even if he knows it's the wrong one or he'll regret it in the future. Standing around making waffles while his lover goes to confront a bunch of masked gunmen and then just wandering haplessly in front of the laser seemed like it made no sense unless he knows he has to get blasted by it for some reason.
He's not omnipotent in that he knows and sees all things at all times, he simply knows what will happen and experiences time in a non-linear fashion. If you were to isolate him in his present time (even though no such thing exists for him) he doesn't have knowledge beyond his locality, so when he's making waffles he doesn't know that there are gunmen outside etc. he only knows that because he knows what will happen. So...while he's making waffles he doesn't know what IS happening, he simply knows in the present what WILL happen - including what is happening in that moment. It's like he has a memory but from the future, not the past.
Watch a movie. Then watch it again. Knowing how the movie will end doesn't give you the power to change the story. Things still happen as they happen, you just know it beforehand now. His non-linear experience of time is like him watching his own movie. The story is what it is. Having a more full and complete knowledge of the story, the ability to project 'future' wisdom into the past or present etc doesn't change the story...it just means that he can pick which part of the DVD his laser is focused on at any given time.
I don't want to get too science noodly, but the writers are playing off of two quantum theories - the Copenhagen and the Many Worlds interpretations - and what they mean in terms of causality and/or vs determinism.
Ok but what if you watch Jaws. The. You watch it again with a friend and right before Chief Brody delivers the line you lean over to your friend and say, “I wonder what Brody thinks of the boat’s size.” Then he says “We’re going to need a bigger boat.” Then your friend laughs or eye rolls or whatever. That didn’t happen the first time you watched it. Honestly I’m not sure what I think about Dr. M and free will/destiny and its rules in this show.
Right, but you're a detached neutral observer. Pretend that Jaws was a true story and Chief Brody was a real person and that 'scene' really happened to him and was recorded by a friend with a home movie camera. If Chief Brody lived through that moment and then later watched the movie of it, him knowing that he was about to say "We’re going to need a bigger boat" doesn't allow him to not say that in the movie that he's watching because that is what happened. When you remember something that happened, that doesn't allow you to change what happened in the past. Dr. Manhattan is experiencing all time at once...his past, present, and future are all concurrent. So in what is our observable present, he can 'remember' the future...but he's not retroactively recalling something, he's living it at that moment (and all other moments).
I love debates about free will, but I think this is more of a plot issue. Dr. Manhattan is a plot-breaker so you have to manufacture a limitation for there to be credible conflict. This show uses Tachyons as a vague limitation that works however it needs to similarly to how the light of the yellow sun (or lack thereof) and kryptonite are used to create conflict in Superman stories.
None of these limitations are very consistent within their narratives, but it’s the price you have to pay for having a character like Dr. Manhattan or Superman in a story.
The yellow sun thing is ludicrous on its face. What about during the night, or indoors, or how his outfits only expose his hands and his head to the sun whether he’s in costume or not, is he weaker in the morning, why isn’t his super costume just a speedo or no clothing at all so if can get as much as possible, etc.
I enjoy the show because of its characters and themes. I don’t think you should look to Watchmen for any kind of hard-SciFi consistency.
I get what you're saying, and the fact that it is limiting might be a plot convenience for the writers, but the idea that in spite of all of his power that Dr Manhattan is still bound to a pre-determined future isn't inconsistent with his narrative at all...it's the logical consequence of the quantum theory that he's the living embodiment of.
That framework would work if they applied it consistently, but they don’t.
The whole tachyon thing related to the initial squid attack is hard to explain in a way consistent with the tachyon thing related to the 10-year-tunnel-of-love as Jim was struggling with on the full cast.
He can’t use information from the future to act in the past/present because it’s all already written. That also doesn’t fit the squid narrative with the attack having to be hidden to avoid his taking action. It doesn’t fit his asking Will in the past the question from Angela about Judd from the future. It doesn’t fit his acting on his future love for Angela in the past at the bar. It doesn’t fit with his apparent planning with Will to address disposition of his unborn adopted kids when he gets teleported in the future,
These are a few of the actions that he took based on future knowledge that had a direct effect on future events. I’m sure there are others.
It isn’t detracting from my enjoyment of the show or anything, but it’s a fair criticism if you’re trying to take it as anything other than super-hero-movie rules.
Comments
Either that or it's simply a plot hole
You mean that despite their own reservations with the philosophy, they're...
...wait for it...
...Veidt Supremacists?
The old question: given that we are expressions of and subject to the laws of physics, which are either deterministic or probabilistic depending on how you look at it, can we be said to have free will?
Well, the first question is "free of what?" You cannot will yourself to violate the laws of physics. You can form the intent but you cannot complete the action and none of your thoughts will themselves be violations of anything.
So it seems that either we are all little clockworks who absolutely will do what we are pre-ordained to do or we are Schroedinger randos in which case our actions are not predetermined but neither are they in our control in any meaningful way.
This connects our story and Dr. Manhattan to a fundamental principle of quantum theory: information is never created or destroyed. All of the information, including every qubit in your mind, existed at the moment of the big bang and will continue to exist long after the Earth is destroyed.
In the classical world, if you burn a picture, it's gone. But the universe still has all of the information required to reconstruct the picture. And the picture existed in the evolution of the universe's wave function when the big bang happened. So in one sense, we've always been here and will always be here.
How does that square with quantum uncertainty? Because its the evolution of the wave function not on the evolution of any particular observation of that function that is deterministic. How does that square with particular observations altering the evolution of other wave functions? That's above my pay grade, but basically the whole universe has one big wave function and we've all always been represented in it as a probability.
BUT...
The information in a burned picture, while still being present in the universe, is in now way accessible to us. It has disappeared behind the wall of entropy. It's present, but unrecoverable information. It cannot be reconstructed.
And if you take a complex, classical evolving system that's 100% deterministic, you can demonstrate that the future state of that system cannot be determined reliably without stepping through all the intermediate steps. Conway's Life program is often used to explain this. It's akin to the Halting Problem. Computer programs are 100% classical. But there's no way to tell if a computer program will halt without running it.
I think many of these ideas are at play here. Dr. Manhattan can see his entire existence, but he cannot reliably know the significance of what he's seeing at any given point unless the meaning of that information is clear to him in that moment. He is as trapped in time as anyone else, it's just that he can see where the forward evolution of his wave function will take him.
Tachyons have been the most literal application of this, but even without them, it's like the Oracle said: you already made the choice. Now you have to understand why.
When it comes to Copenhagen vs Many Worlds, put me in the "stop thinking about it, start doing the math" Richard Feynman camp
But I’m all in on “Dead Man’s Waffles”
Also it doesn't sound like Jim will be waffling on his theory anytime soon. *Ba Dum Tss!*
And yet people find it fascinating. I used to think I was missing something for a long time, but I wasn't. Eventually I realized I'm more interested in psychology than philosophy, and that people can watch a character study and not get it in the same way.
He can't stop the transportation thing because he doesn't know he's going to be hit by it until he's hit by it. The way he perceives time means he sees everything at the same time, but he can't react to it. He's experiencing what's going on in the exact same way we are watching the show.
Ultimately: things are the way they are because the writer wanted it that way.
It's the same as any other time travel fiction. It's just frustrating if you try and think about it too much.
None of these limitations are very consistent within their narratives, but it’s the price you have to pay for having a character like Dr. Manhattan or Superman in a story.
The yellow sun thing is ludicrous on its face. What about during the night, or indoors, or how his outfits only expose his hands and his head to the sun whether he’s in costume or not, is he weaker in the morning, why isn’t his super costume just a speedo or no clothing at all so if can get as much as possible, etc.
I enjoy the show because of its characters and themes. I don’t think you should look to Watchmen for any kind of hard-SciFi consistency.
The whole tachyon thing related to the initial squid attack is hard to explain in a way consistent with the tachyon thing related to the 10-year-tunnel-of-love as Jim was struggling with on the full cast.
He can’t use information from the future to act in the past/present because it’s all already written. That also doesn’t fit the squid narrative with the attack having to be hidden to avoid his taking action. It doesn’t fit his asking Will in the past the question from Angela about Judd from the future. It doesn’t fit his acting on his future love for Angela in the past at the bar. It doesn’t fit with his apparent planning with Will to address disposition of his unborn adopted kids when he gets teleported in the future,
These are a few of the actions that he took based on future knowledge that had a direct effect on future events. I’m sure there are others.
It isn’t detracting from my enjoyment of the show or anything, but it’s a fair criticism if you’re trying to take it as anything other than super-hero-movie rules.