Lets just take the sideways flashes. It's supposed to be the "what if the plane never crashed" world. But look at all of the huge differences. Sawyer is a cop not a conman, Ben never gets to The Island, The Daniel was now never a scientist but an artist, Sun is pregnant although they were not supposed to be able to have children if not for the miracle of The Island, Desmond never meets Penny, yet Kate is still wanted, Jack is still a Doctor (he just has a family now), Locke is still wheel-chair bound, Sayid still a former Republican Guard haunted by his past, etc. If you could claim to make rhyme or reason out of this beyond the arbitrary whims of the writers you'd be a liar. It's not "what if the plane never crashed" it's "what if some of them had mostly different lives except where it's convenient for us to have them be the same".
This is really fascinating to me.
So you look on all that with suspicion and lend bad intent to it?
Is this, like, ISTP tertiary Ni "suspicion of The Man" going off here?
Yes, all the facts you stated are true, but I just look at it as a story unfolding and take it at face value. There is no standard it has to meet, although you seem to be assuming there is one. You think it seems arbitrary, what changes occurred and what didn't? Well, yes, that's because it's all up to the writers to decide what happens, and they're deciding. Maybe some of the elements were chosen to be completely new, maybe some were chosen out of convenience.
I suppose you are saying that the two lines should have been identical until the point of separation? Well, should they have been? It's not a bad point to make, but we don't know that. The past has changed, when the bomb went off. It affected more than a "reboot" ... there was a few decades between the bomb incident and the present time, and we don't know what got changed.
I guess I focus on the inconsistencies that are immediately obvious and have to be dealt with, while things that are still unsure or clouded in mystery I can easily set aside.... because I'm not sure yet if it's an inconsistency or if it's merely something I don't know. You seem to feel as if you know what "should have happened" and it must be ineptitude driving it; I can't make that determination yet, so I suspend judgment.
So now lets look at Desmond realizing "something is up" once he starts pursuing Penny, why does Penny's mother discourage him and offer the "you don't know what you're doing" warning when there's no fucking way she should have any idea about the alternative time line what so ever?
Who says?
This, again, is you trying to assume you know everything already.
You could be right.
There could also be things you don't understand about the time split and Daniel's mom that will help reconcile this for you in the future.
See what I mean?
I see a huge S vs N conflict here, I just see various possibilities in play and I'm going to wait and suspend belief on the ones I can't answer yet. But if you only have one way of approaching it, and they're at loggerheads with it, I suppose I can see why you are critical...
What about Daniel just mysteriously deciding to tell him about the formula and it's implications? How does Daniel the artist even grasp the implications of the formula? It's been posited that near death is what gives them realization of the alternate time line, but he just one day wrote this formula and had a scientist friend tell him what it meant and figures he must have already detonated a neutron bomb? Really? I could go on and on and on...
You could, but it would be redundant.
The same mechanism is driving your discontent.
Edit: While I'm at it, when they go in to Rico's back story, The Man in Black tries to get him to kill Jacob, but when he tries Jacob goes all Jet Li on him, disarms him, and kicks his ass. Yet when Ben kills him, he never attempts to defend himself, he's all "don't do this, you don't have to do this"?!?! GTFOH!!!
Again, yes, I noticed this. I'm curious to see why things changed over 140 years. You really need to think outside the box, though. Scenarios like amazingly common in our culture. Think about the whole "Jesus" thing, for example, probably the most common -- was he a victim or was his execution part of his plan? Believers say he allowed himself to die because it served his end goal (resurrection and salvation of the world).
Likewise, did Jacob plan this? Did he merely allow it? Why or why not? He seemed surprised when Ben killed him ("I was hoping you were better" or something to that effect, he said about it later in ghost form). Right there, you have him thinking that Ben would rise to the occasion and didn't... so maybe he just misplayed his hand... although at the same time, he really put Ben in a vise with his response to Ben's obvious disillusionment, jabbing him when he didn't have to. So... not sure yet.
So come on, stretch a little. Is this an inconsistency, or was Jacob not thinking 1864 was a good time to die, but the time was right in 2005-6 or whenever it was? We also see it was the first time the Man in Black tried to have Jacob killed, so Jacob had no idea who Ricardo was or why he was sneaking up on him. In our current time, the Game was far more apparent, and we've already seen that Jacob prefers not to sully another person's choice. Instead of a stranger trying to murder him (which is just an act of violence), now Jacob saw it as a moral dilemma for the potential murderer... and we know for certain that Jacob believes that people can rise above evil choices, while the Man in Black believes that power corrupts and people will fall into their baser desires; Jacob has been working to prove the MIB wrong for decades and "win" the game of moral Go/Backgammon they've been playing.
So yeah, I easily see a potential thread where Jacob's past action -- as inexplicable as it seems to you -- might actually be consistent. I just don't know yet, and I won't know until more information is revealed, so I don't pass judgment and in the meanwhile I treat it as if it is consistent, to enjoy the show and also to give the writers a chance to spin their tale and prove their moxie before I would derail it.
Which leads back to my first mostly jesting post in this thread:
Oh dear.
You didn't understand any of it, did you?
You might not have.
I'm not sure, yet, that I have either.
I just see through-roads, so I have a "wait and see" attitude.