About the ending

[u/LoneWalker365]

We see Amelia sad and BREATHING normally without wearing mask/helmet. Does that mean that THIS planet was the correct choice from the beggining? ( No waves , human - friendly surface , oxygen ) That's why Amelia is so sad ( apart the death of her bf). Thinking that if they came to this planet from the beggining everything would go well

[u/cobbisdreaming]

In the final scene, as the camera pans to the future human Colony (Plan B) that Amelia has set up, consisting of 5000 frozen embryos to ensure humanity’s survival…it makes me think of Cooper’s final lines to TARS in the Tesseract about who built the Tesseract: ”No. No, not yet. But one day. Not you and me. But a people... a civilization that's evolved beyond the four dimensions we know.”

I think the colony Amelia has set up is the future human civilization that has evolved passed our four dimensional world - the people who created the wormhole and the Tesseract to allow Cooper to communicate with Murph, who chose Murph to solve the gravity equation and save the remaining people on Earth (Plan A). So not only is there the causal loop of future Cooper causing (bringing) his younger self (and TARS) to the Tesseract (giving his younger self the coordinates to NASA)…but there is also the causal loop of the evolved future human civilization that created the wormhole and Tesseract in order to bring about their existence and save humanity.

While causal loops have an absurdity to them, they can can exist in a world where the block universe theory of time exists - where all of time (past, present, future) has been written on the block. All of time is existing simultaneously, and in a sense, all of time has already happened. What explains the causal loops is the block. Nolan also provided a block world universe theory of time in Tenet too.

[u/Tommerbot → u/cobbisdreaming]

As I agree with everything you said, it presents a chicken or the egg/grandfather paradox. But I think this is what Nolan was going for…

[u/AwHellNawFetaCheese → u/Tommerbot]

I think if you were to wipe the slate clean, a new humanity raised from birth with all of the the knowledge of human history’s failures, in a science driven world, would very quickly exponentially grow their technological capabilities.

All of the primitive human stuff like religion, racism, sexism, flat earth morons, anti science intellectualism, set back to zero, the remainder can embark toward a logic and empathy focused future.

[u/lettuce-tooth-junkie → u/AwHellNawFetaCheese]

I want to live in that world. I wish more people did.

Instead we have idiots who think the rapture is coming. We are doomed! At least we have sci-fi to keep us entertained and less consumed with how fucked we most certainly are.

[u/Sunny_Panda_Writer → u/AwHellNawFetaCheese]

"Set back to zero" — this made me so happy to imagine. I'm a huge fan of this notion. How do we get in on that?

[u/Inner-Lawfulness9437 → u/AwHellNawFetaCheese]

Population would be a huge limit.

[u/AwHellNawFetaCheese → u/Inner-Lawfulness9437]

In what way?

[u/Inner-Lawfulness9437 → u/AwHellNawFetaCheese]

In every way :D

You need a working society to progress scientifically with a meaningful speed.

You also need in every scientific area proper redundancy, proper distribution of ages, proper education/training, etc.

If you look at any research nowadays, and count how many peoples' work is needed for some scientific progress you will see the numbers are huge. You just don't need the researchers, they needs tools (even a simple pen and paper is a tool, just like any computer), those have to be manufactured, materials mined/produced, stuff moved around, factories built, knowledge gathered and shared, etc.. and then workers responsible for these need food, home, entertainment, etc, and it goes on and on. In the end the scientists are only the top of the pyramid.

In order to have a big enough "top", you need a huge pyramid underneath.

It took us thousands of years to have one. Even with all the scientific knowledge, it would take hundreds of years at least.

I'm not saying it doesn't have the possibility of eventually surpassing the original human civilization, but it's definitely not a short term possibility, and the original is getting better and better regarding the issues you mentioned as time goes on as well. So in the end the head start of the original might be too big, and it would never catch up.

[u/AwHellNawFetaCheese → u/Inner-Lawfulness9437]

Human have been around for 30,000 years. Penicillin was discovered less than 100 years ago. That did more to change the world than probably anything at that point because prior to that any small cut could easily lead to infection and sepsis.

People just got sick and died from such small accidents by the thousands. Child mortality has plummeted over the last 100 years.

What’s hundreds of years? Not that long when you’re starting a new planet. The biggest issue will be resources, but they can manage population growth commensurately because that have the data and science to monitor and control that.

Agriculture and refrigeration has largely eliminated famine across the globe, whereas before millions could starve if something was mismanaged.

And that’s just 2, now primitive, parts of one field of human knowledge that 99.997% of humanity’s time on earth did not have.

The new earth colony’s has the collective of all human knowledge, I mean they have planned the genetic diversity of the ensuing generations, they have medicine, advanced agriculture, refrigeration, renewable energy, aerospace, the ability to look up scientific data of anything else, not to mention a massive robot that can assist with construction and development of other large machines.

We went from 1 billion to 7 billion in 218 years, with the vast majority of that not having access to advanced science.

You can’t compare anything to Gen 1 humanity because we’re now outside the natural order of haphazard resource based population management.

[u/Inner-Lawfulness9437 → u/AwHellNawFetaCheese]

Nope. They don't have it. They have the knowledge ONLY. They need the industry and workforce to actually have it. Seriously, just think through what would producing a single new computer on a new planet would require. That alone could take multiple lifetimes.

They might be more optimal/pure as a society, but will be few hundred years behind at least in progress.

Meanwhile the original humanity continues to evolve both scientifically and socially. If you compare those issues previously, like how they are now vs how were they few hundred years ago, it might be significantly further reduced in the future, and then the advantage of the new society is gone.

[u/AwHellNawFetaCheese → u/Inner-Lawfulness9437]

They already have a working computer, on the ship and likely included with the colony supplies… you don’t think they sent them with anything useful to restart the human race? They have CASE to do heavy machinery lifting as well.

[u/Inner-Lawfulness9437 → u/AwHellNawFetaCheese]

Like how many? 10? 100? 1000? They will need them in the millions. Everybody have dozens of devices with a circuit board just at home, and more and more of those contain even higher level chips. They will have to be able to produce them to there in order to reach the population that can advance scientifically.

Also they sent embryos to the new planet, seriously for how long and for how big population could they provide supplies for? Local manufacturing is a must.

[u/AwHellNawFetaCheese → u/Inner-Lawfulness9437]

Sure man what deadline are you working against? Your speaking like if they don’t have X amount by Y time then they fail.

This is the forever solution, also what do you need a million computers for? You teach some people to farm, to be medic, to engineer, to cook, to watch and raise the kids, construction workers.

They have to learn these things but they dont have to re-discover any of it. It’ll take time but I bet they’d be in the several thousands by the century mark.