Tonight on Numbers, Charlie Eppes (childhood math genius now young, dynamic genius professor/mathematician) made an interesting statement that I think relates nicely with Lost. In this episode a soldier’s family was kidnapped to bring the soldier out of hiding (for some reason: presumably revenge). The Soldier came out of hiding to hunt down the kidnapper (presumably to get his family back then kill the kidnapper). But for some reason, the kidnappers weren’t killing the Soldier, just stringing the Soldier along. Eppes points out how the math is all wrong. Statistically speaking the Soldier should’ve been confronting his kidnappers already, and have been killed: yet he wasn’t dead. What’s going on?

“They’re playing by different rules.” Eppes then used an awesome example of a basketball game. A player on the court is playing by the rules of the game, feigning right on a player who is weak on the right side, aiming to use the weaknesses of the players against them. Yet, if the players offensively attack each other, and the opposing team merely hangs on to the ball while fending off the blows they’re playing by a different set of rules-just not the rules of basketball. In that same way, the kidnappers weren’t playing by the rules of revenge-they were playing by the rules of demand. They wanted the Soldier alive.

Jump over to Lost. Ben points out that Whitmore Widmore (thanks Jenn) has changed the rules and yet, the rules had not changed with the beaching of Widmore’s forces, Widmore’s hunt for the Island, Ben’s betrayals to hide the Island, Widmore’s hunters taking out the Losties or Ben putting a spy on Widmore’s boat. None of these things were a change of the rules. Apparently they were part of the standard rules of the game.

When the rules were changed were when the girl underneath Ben’s purview of protection, be it in an altogether adoptive capacity, is killed.

Then FutureBen is spending all his time off the Island doing things very unrelated to defending the Island but in direct retaliation to Widmore. And yet, not as far as killing Widmore: something the Old Man says is not allowed (even with the changed rules). Instead Ben points out that he’s attacking someone underneath Widmore’s purview of protection.

Therefore the “game” is one where the Island stands as the central ground between aggressor (to find it and take it) against defender (to protect and obscure it). As such there’s some things the “player’” aren’t allowed to do and the repercussions of crossing these lines only allows further line crossing except for the ultimate transgression: killing the opponent.

Of course, none of this sheds light on who created the game, why the game even exists and how do you declare a winner (heck, it can even be one of those Gnostic dualistic things where you constantly have to have black versus white, ying versus yang, Vader versus Luke.