“Look Both Ways”: Counterfactuals in the Movies

This 2022 Netflix movie may deserve something more than its IMDb of 6.2, if only because it is perhaps the most extended counterfactual conditional movie of all time.

Russian Doll: Time, Many Worlds, and Computer Simulations

For the first episodes, the Netflix series Russian Doll seems to be a darker reworking of Groundhog Day. Fatal accidents on the night of or day after Nadia’s 36^th birthday party keep bringing her back to the bathroom sink in the party apartment during the festivities. Nadia retains her memory of all the repeats, and the memories cumulate in an orderly fashion, e.g. she does not on loop 2 have memories of loop 1 and on loop one have memories of loop 2. So it is possible to regard each loop as having its own local time, embedded in order in a super-time experienced only by Nadia. This far we are within the Groundhog temporal metaphysics.

“It's a Wonderful Life” -- the Metaphysics

Memory of Christmas movies being about to fade away for another year, it is high time to explore the metaphysics of counterfactuals – as Frank Capra no doubt did when screening for his own family every Christmas George Bailey's odyssey in Bedford Falls and Pottersville.