Magic 8-Ball Theory aka The Function of the Loop by Albert Awol

Eloise hawking is a (if not THE) major player, privy to infinite chronological revisions via a looping temporal delivery. Daniels only function is to take the seemingly empty text 30 years into the past, placing it into the hands of her younger self. The information in that book is NOT scrawling of Daniel's equations, but rather an actual magic 8 ball. All questions can be answered by her older self, but thinking 4 dimensionally in this infinite loop, it could appear to the observer (Eloise) that her own questions were in fact being answered sequentially. The very act of writing the question down changes history. And thanks to the time shift, the answer really just loops around. The book appears blank, but is probably encoded secretly with hidden writing (like in the National Treasure movie).

But alas, as Eloise said, she no longer knows what happens next. In fact, from her point of view, there was no extra time. While near infinite power was at her finger tips, I'd have to imagine she is responsible for many of the freaky coincedences, such as Hugo winning the lottery. Unless that was Hugo, which is far more likely. Stuck in the past, he does the only thing he can think of to attempt to dissuade himself from ever coming to the island. He picks his own lottery numbers, knowing his future self would play them in his own past. That's a hell of a temporal delivery. Again, this is perceived by the viewer (Hugo) as a function of the loop.

Christian probably gave jack that 5 speech in order to change his future, seeing as how Christian is alive and well waltzing around the island subtly influencing events. Imagine the shock, discovering your changes have destroyed your very delivery mechanism in the first place, your shoes. No wonder they eventually come along anyways, what with both the power to remember instant changes to the timeline, but effect them as well. The dead Christian on the island is actually a future version of the one we see alive and well. Time travel explains this without any nasty resurrection nonsense.

No matter who the major players end up being, Alpert seems to be something different. In a way, he too is taking advantage of a time shift, but not the same one everyone else is using. He's got his own little secret in the temple. Like the white rabbit, his ingenuity allows him to not only escape harm, but to both live and not live "every single day". Any day that is utterly uninteresting, he signals himself to skip it. He is not in fact older than dirt biologically speaking. While his body may be 50, he might have skipped quite a bit more. Perhaps he's only "lived" a couple hundred days total since his reign as RA over ancient Egyptians. He and the rest of us will perceive him as "there" for every significant event on the island, but he skips (and disappears) all the rest. Since it's a temporal signaling mechanism, Richard can determine after each day whether or not it's worth skipping. It's like passing yourself in the hallway of time, and telling yourself that yesterday w! as uneventful, hit the next door instead. Perhaps this is how he saved young Ben. In the temple he signals himself in the past to do something that ensures Ben survives Sayid.

What the island is, is a temporal email server to yourself, if lucky enough to have by hook or crook managed to somehow secure delivery to yourself.

I wonder when suns father made the mistake that cost him his parcel. Once a change resulted in jin letting Michael keep that watch likely cost mr. Paik likely lost his status as a player, perhaps being outmaneuvered by another player into never knowing about the island. Perhaps Paik was even the original big bad if Lost ended with only one season.

What we are seeing play out is the ultimate chess game, with several players protecting their ability to make temporal deliveries as well as remove that ability from their opponents. It is a power that in fact is easily obtainable by anyone smart enough to figure it out.

Take Daniel, who is savant enough to grasp the physics of 4-dimensional thinking, but remains constrained by time and space by not using the power on himself. Hearing Charlotte mention chocolate before dinner should have clued Dan into two things. One, by not remaining passive he did in fact cause her to come back to the island and die. And two, in fact caused the incident as well.

Jacob's tapestry is probably his delivery mechanism. At some point the fabric he weaves is delivered to a younger version of himself via the islands temporal shifting. Locke's is the compass of course. Heck, even Shannon's asthma medication could have been used by someone in the very powerful family of her and Boone (and hence so important to find, and why it's missing in the first place)

The actual delivery mechanism doesn't matter. So long as you hold an object that you will return to yourself at some point in your future, you can revise or add information to the delivery mechanism and your revision will "loop around" giving you instant access to future knowledge (from your temporal point of view). It's a freaking accurate Magic 8-Ball. Young Eloise need simply think of a question that could be answered by her older self. Older eloise then writes the answer in hidden text in the journal, hands it to her son who in turn hands it to young Eloise to read. While this type of information loop appears to be infinite, from a viewer outside the 4 space-time dimensions there is no paradox. The infinite universe theory allows for all possibilities, and Eloise is just picking via trial and error which universe she chooses to be in. All possibilities play out, but from her temporal point of view, the changes are instantaniously available in her secret book.

In order to best anyone with this type of system in place, you need a "loop hole" that breaks the infinite loop. This is why MiB had gone to such lengths to defeat Jacob. He has to not just kill Jacob, but break the temporal loop giving him unlimited temporal information, and not get outplayed himself. Any lesser attempt would simply make J aware of your attempt, and perhaps cost you or your parents their lives before you even get to make the attempt. (grandfather paradox)

This is in fact Eloise's mission. First and foremost, when dissecting Lost, you need to throw the chronological order of events out the window. MiB defeated Jacob, that's WHH. Can anything undo that? Eloise is the leader of the others and certainly among her duties is protecting Jacob. In "cause and effect order" (not chronological) Jacob dying probably happened first, triggering a temporal timeline race backwards in time. Every move Eloise makes to counter MiB defeating Jacob is in turn countered by MiB, ad infinitum. This isn't your great-great-great-great-great grandfather's backgammon. Exploding Jughead to prevent 815 from crashing should keep MiB from being able to kill Jacob right? Well, that's what she's waiting to find out. Assuming it doesn't, her next iterative temporal communication might be to undo that little attempt and try something else.

This is actually both WHH an ALT combined. WHH is a function of the loop to the observer, while ALT is what someone sitting outside the 4 dimensions would see. Basically all universes are possible, with each appearing to conform to WHH, yet the variables themselves choose (alt) which whh they live in.

So, will 815 land in lax? Yes, and no. The events that lead up to the losties being on the island aren't necessarily in chronological order. 815 landing in lax is probably what happened before (pre infinite loop) the temporal battle began. We might glimpse what would have happened had the major players never gained the temporal delivery mechanism. It might become undone, only to be alt'ed back to the island.

And how does this whole thing work? Except for Richard (whom is using a different day skipping mechanism in the temple) the delivery is setup via "unsynced" persons on the island. Since the beginning of season 5 I've been really bugged by the fact that only SOME of the folks on the island started timeskipping with no real reason or rhyme as to "why them". The only explanation as to "why them" I can come up with is that they themselves simply haven't been on the island during a wheel spin yet. If the island exists in a different time than the outside world, perhaps every spin of the wheel "sync's" the non-synced back 30 years. In other words anyone who didn't flash, didn't flash because they at some point in their past (but possibly the islands' future) already flashed. I'd love to hear any other concise explanation of why some people flash and others don't (jacob's touch doesn't). I posit that non-flashers simply already flashed. Spinning the wheel puts you in sync with the ! island time, approximately 30 years in the past and only the people who "haven't been synced before" are affected. If you want to setup your own "temporal email account" all you need do is get an island newb to give you something in your own past. Voila, you're a major player, possibly unkillable, and can only be course-corrected out of your power.

So it's Eloise vs MiB (whom I think is just Locke, but outside the scope of this theory) playing a temporal game of mousetrap with the ultimate prize being the life or death of Jacob. It still remains to be seen which side are the "good guys" though. Likely Jacob's death results in RA losing his time skipping ability, which in turn means RA never makes it into the future to bring the temporal technology to the past in order for him to get to the future to get it in the first place. RA wants immortality and Jacob is HIS right-hand man. Locke figured this out and is attempting to overthrow the "reign of RA"