With Desmond looping back to his past and reliving it, gave me the idea that perhaps the entire world is stuck in a time loop and Dharma are the only ones who know the exact time when the world loops back on itself (Valenzetti Equation) and are researching (through the experiments on the island) how to somehow Change the events of the future to free the world from the time loop. That is why everyone in the Dharma Initiative is working to "Change" any of the numbers 4,8,15,16,23,42 which likely represent a time frame of when the world loops over.

Thoughts?

http://www.thefuselage.com/Threaded/showthread.php?t=69289