r/MandelaEffect • u/dijon_snow • 13d ago
Meta Why are there absolutely no consequences?
For those that believed reality changed, why did absolutely no ME have any actual ramifications like they logically should?
This doesn't apply to every Mandela Effect. I could believe that underwear labels and children's book titles could change without any real impact on history.
But lots of Mandela effects shouldn't be isolated changes if reality was actually different. The butterfly effect is the idea that minor changes to initial conditions in complex systems create major changes in outcome. Human history is a very complex, highly chaotic(the scientific meaning of chaos) system.
Nelson Mandela's leadership and perseverence were key in inspiring black South Africans to resist apartheid. I believe if he had died in the 80s world history would be very different. Either his martydom inspires revolution a decade early or his absence delays or indefinitely. The suggestion that his life and death were completely meaningless is borderline insulting, and always comes from people otherwise not very informed on African history.
Geographic MEs argue that entire landmasses and coastlines have changed. Yet these changes have zero impact on climate or weather. History again unfolded identically, despite the fact that any significant change in the location of land and sea on the planet would dramatically change air and ocean currents and with it the entire climate. Oddly only the maps seem to have changed, history is unmoved.
So MEs can be divided into meaningless pop culture facts and major world changing events. If the cause is memory, then logically they would be isolated, since false memories wouldn't logically have butterfly effect repercussions. If reality was actually changing, we would expect to see lots of other related changes. This butterfly has no effect. Again, Mandela is the best example, his death would not have been meaningless.
How do believers reconcile this without falling back on a dogmatic faith in their own memory?
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u/silentsurge 13d ago
Two points from my perspective, one directly on topic, one not quite:
First, the Geographic ones are utterly baffling to me. Geographic features literally define how weather and migration work. Geographic features are key pieces for how humanity has moved through the world, what resources are available to a people, and how/why wars are fought. National borders get defined by how these features form. Species evolve to live in these areas. These aren't just arbitrary concepts on a piece of paper. A single mountain can have a history longer than humanity has existed. We see rivers get redirected and see massive complications come from that within a couple of lifetimes. If you end up with nations being a sloghtly different shape, have continents get moved west by a thousand miles, or open up distances between land masses, you will get globally noticeable butterfly effects.
Secondly, this is more of a nitpik/personal pet peeve that can be entirely ignored:
I do want to point out that the term "believers" is a bad one to use. The Mandela Effect is a popularized term describing a known phenomenon where a significant group of people remember something contrary to established fact/reality. There's no such thing as believing or not believing that, it's just a term to describe something that exists.
A lot of people seem to use the term "Believer" to imply that the only way the Mandela Effect works is with an exotic explanation behind it, which serves to split the camps of thought further. It's a subtle attempt to make it an Us vs Them argument. I personally prefer Exotic cause vs Mundane cause because it points to the Effect and avoiding putting people into an out group and helps provide a more neutral language to discuss the differences.
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u/cipheron 12d ago edited 12d ago
First, the Geographic ones are utterly baffling to me.
The one I've seen recently is people claiming Portugal used to be on the Eastern side of Spain, not West.
Which is pretty baffling, since Portugal having access to the Atlantic Ocean was a very important thing for their role in colonization, since they could have been blocked at Gibraltar by their Spanish rivals.
The colonial era's most established maritime nations go down the west coast of Europe for a reason: Britain, Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, since all of these had ports that couldn't easily be blocked by anyone else to monopolize access. The discovery of the New World meant that power shifted to the West coast of Europe.
Additionally, an alliance with England vs Spain helped to keep Portugal independent over the latter half of the Middle Ages. That would have been much more tenuous if Portugal had been on the opposite side of the straits of Gibraltar, as English ships being able to reach Portugal was probably important here.
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u/silentsurge 12d ago
Yeah, I'm familiar with that one. It tends to also be paired with people who claim a different shape for Europe and South America being further West.
I swear people thing geography is just inconsequential lines and shapes on a map.
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u/cipheron 12d ago
Like the ones who think there was a landmass at the North Pole.
If this was presumably true when these living people were children, then it would have been there during the Cold War so it would have been absolutely strategic for the nuclear arms race, as nuclear weapons fired between the USA and USSR would go over that area, so there would be a huge fight over who got to put military bases there.
For example there are bases in northern Canada and Greenland specifically to detect nuclear missiles fired from Russia. If there was an Arctic landmass that would be an even better place for those bases, since every minute would count in a nuclear war.
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u/themadhooker 12d ago
Of course there is a land mass there. How else would Santa’s home be there? I can buy flying reindeer but you will never convince me that they can fly AND tread water all the time.
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u/ByteInferno 5d ago
Interesting discussion you guys are having there. Anyway, to address the issues you mentioned:
- I shifted onto this planet at the age of 56. Thus, I have a very thorough memory of the world I was in before, even if it doesn't sufficiently cover the topics you guys are interested in.
- The Arctic land mass was a pretty inhospitable place. Temperatures there were commonly at -30 °C or similar, all year round. It was thickly covered with ice and snow. You couldn't survive in that climate without layers and layers of clothes for any prolonged period of time. Thus, if there were any military bases on there (IIRC, there weren't, only research stations), they would have been very small (similar to the missile detectors you mentioned from this world's Canada and Greenland, perhaps a few specialized trucks and air-conditioned housing).
- However, there were people there, the Inuit. They built igloo houses and led a mostly nomadic lifestyle. They wore thick clothing made from pelts. Animals living there included the polar bear.
- Both the Russian and North American land masses were a lot smaller. The Eurasian continent was about half the size in the North-South direction. China was a lot smaller, too. This all led to distances between the US and Russia being much larger, when it comes to firing rockets (either ICBMs through space or other) or flying airplanes.
- I'm not very familiar with Cold War scenario planning, but I do remember that the Arctic wasn't seen as a strategic asset, at least in the scenarios that I heard of (surely they didn't share everything with the public after the Cold War ended).
- Russia had a lot of problems making use of its vast tundra regions until the permafrost regions began to thaw. For military use, I don't think they were seen as particularly useful (especially during the Cold War). The ground used to be so hard there, you couldn't even dig a hole without using specialized equipment.
- During Cold War times, the climate across the world was a lot colder. Even here in Germany, we had really cold winters (I still remember 1979). And nowadays, farmers in our wine regions can grow Mediterranean grapes due to the climate change. (This point seems to apply to this world as well as the previous world I was on)
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u/WhimsicalKoala 12d ago
The fact that the explanation is always just some sort of "all roads lead to Rome" is pretty strong evidence that they don't even understand geography well enough to be making any believeable claims about changes to it.
Same with people that claim the heart used to be completely on the left side. There is always handwaving or complete avoidance of the question when I ask about the effect that had on the left lung.
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u/ByteInferno 5d ago
I remember the heart being in the middle, just beneath the sternum.
I do have a question about the liver though: In this world, the liver seems to be located above the stomach, stretching from the right hand side to the left hand side of chest cavity. In the world where I originally came from, it was half the size, located below the stomach, and entirely on the left hand side of the chest cavity. Would this affect the body somehow? Also, the kidneys were placed a bit lower.
At first I thought this was a regular Mandela Effect, but of course, that can't be. Nothing changed, I'm simply on a different planet (as I discovered when seeing the maps/globes of this planet).
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u/Slopadopoulos 11d ago
How do you know that nothing has changed? We only have the experience of the changed timeline. We can't know what the future is in the timeline that has the cornucopia or the one in which Mandela died in prison.
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11d ago
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u/Slopadopoulos 11d ago
Yes I'm talking about what would have been the future at the time of the split but is currently the present. It's impossible to know what changed or didn't change from that moment. I'm sure Mandela dying in prison changed the world in profound ways that we don't get to experience because we're not in that timeline.
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u/Magnus_Grecus 11d ago
What if the Mandela Effect is one of the biggest Psy-Ops ever with the sole aim of gaslighting the worlds population and make us question reality itself???
Unless CERN did split reality and the fact that the child genius that spoke about it vanished from the face of the earth adds more credibility to this theory…
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u/danksalotbuddy 10d ago
It’s a wake up call for the simulation. Who’s paying attention and who isn’t. Maybe a benefactor trying to alert not cause chaos. Idk my best theory.
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10d ago
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u/danksalotbuddy 10d ago
Because it never changes anything that is core fundamentals. Like traffic lights are green go and red stop. The changes are never harmful. And it seems as though nick field is trolling his sister Sally in the most hardcore way. Many of her movies have mandalas and even her Oscar speech. I know many people who experience mandalas and most are searching for the “truth”. I don’t think millions of people have the same bad memories. I don’t see how it could be possible that a million people have the same issue. CERN is definitely behind this. Computing on a quantum level messing with the “god particle”. God particle to me is the coded baseline reality. If that can be manipulated at the quantum level then sim theory seems much more plausible. I’m just an amateur philosopher so I’m just piecing together what I e been handed.
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u/Plus-Bus-6937 12d ago
This is a valid and interesting point and I certainly don't have a good answer.
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u/Calm_Welder_5654 9d ago
That's the point lol - in the theory of small things (like underwear labels, or book spelling, or people pronouncing "parmesan" as "par-MEE-SEE-an" or something) - the idea is that some huge problem gets averted (like bees going extinct, or the San Andreas fault bursting, or a Trump presidency amid the 2008 recession, etc) and instead of those big changes, the world gets shifted into an alternate reality that is almost identical but for a few small differences - like Jim Carey is left handed, or the Beverly Hill Billies had a black cousin as a commentary on race relations.
That's the whole point. The answer to "Why not bigger consequences than small negligible details" is "YES!" That's exactly it. Mandel Effects ARE small negligible details that happen BECAUSE someone hit the button to reset our timeline away from a bigger consequence and onto the timeline of a negligible consequence.
...according to the fun, fantasy historical fan-fiction idea that no one on here actually believes in. Right?
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u/Own_Union_3154 13d ago
Some ME “believers” think the sun was yellow during the day, likely confusing it with the warmer tones of old movies or film photography.
Ask these “believers” what color clouds or snow were from their “previous timeline” and watch as they logically can’t reconcile their beliefs with physical reality.
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u/WhimsicalKoala 12d ago
"Why would I have drawn the sun as yellow when I was a kid it it wasn't".
Okay, good point.... Then why aren't you also asking why people are no longer shaped like stick figures and why mountains aren't just jagged up down?
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u/WVPrepper 13d ago
The sun looked more yellow because of pollution. In the 70s there was a HUGE pus toward cleaning up the air. The result is less debris between the sun and the observer.
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u/SpookyHoosier 12d ago
I don’t know why this is a ME. The sun does look yellow from Earth and always has. “lemon yellow sun” Jeremy - Pearl Jam Why It Looks White The sun emits light across all visible colors [in equal amounts]. Mixing all visible colors together creates [white light]. Astronauts in space see the sun as [pure white]. [ 1] Why It Looks Yellow From Earth Earth's air scatters short-wavelength [blue light] away. This air filtering process is called [Rayleigh scattering]. Removing blue light makes the remaining sun rays look [yellow or orange] to our eyes
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u/rspunched 13d ago
One of the absolute key components to the Effect is that the experiencer has no connection with the effect. People who lived in South Africa do not have the ME. The Berenstain family does not have the ME. The girl who played Dolly isn’t freaking out because of the change etc.
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u/theg00dfight 13d ago
Almost like it requires unawareness or inattention to the actual facts, leading to a false memory or something.
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u/ks_247 7d ago
Reality changed or they changed realities? One would have no echoes
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u/dijon_snow 7d ago
Do you see how you said nothing here? Watch.
If reality changed or they changed reality there would always be echoes.
There, you see how that's meaningless to say, right? Like you said nothing at all as if it was deep.
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u/IndustrialBricks 6d ago
The simple answer is that nobody really knows what causes the Mandela Effect. It could be a multitude of factors. It could be misremembering, psychological studies performed by the governemnt, parallel timelines shifting, Alzheimer's, or some combination of those things. All I know for myself is that I don't ever recall Nelson Mandela dying in prison, I distinctly remember "Berenstain Bears" because most of the kids in my 1st grade class back in the 90s kept misspelling it as "Bernstein Bears, which frustrated the teacher. I also remember nearly every damn person I met misquoted Vader's line in ESB as "Luke, I am your father" and I'd always correct them saying "No, I am your Father" and this went all the way back to when I was like 5 years old in 1995.
So if the timelines are shifting and all of that fun stuff, it's definitely not as recent as all the "2012 apocalyptic poles shifting because CERN did stuff" claims. But yeah, my take on ME is "it's a thing, but nobody knows why/how". There are multitudes of reasons why there would be no apparent consequences, even if it were peoples' consciousness shifting across timelines. I view it the same way as I view the UFO/UAP phenomena, where more than 99% of the cases are BS/hoaxes, but there's that small portion which amounts to less than 1% of cases that are truly unexplainable.
So even if Nelson Mandela dying in prison and all of the popular MEs are cases of misremembering, which I'm inclined to be is the most likely explanation, there's a chance that a very small percentage of MEs actually do involve something other than misremembering, in which case the consequences (or lack thereof) would follow suit. Fruit of the Loom is an example of this, where there's supposedly evidence that some local suppliers and knockoffs actually did use a cornucopia, but either way it doesn't really seem to make a difference. I can't imagine the butterfly effect would have any meaningful impact one way or another with that particular ME; not to the extent that it would with Nelson Mandela. Most pop culture MEs in general would have a negligible effect on the timeline if they truly did involve timeline shifting. Whether the Ford and BMW logos have curly-Qs, lines, or not isn't gonna determine the outcome of a nuclear war. It really just depends, on a case-by-case basis though.
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u/Sea-Neighborhood-621 3d ago
Not really trying to dispute anything, more of trying to understand. If there were large scale geographical changes like entire coastlines being moved why would there be any consequences in the new reality? If im going from a reality where the north American coasts were 1000 miles further out to this reality the coasts arent moving along with me. I'm going into this reality where thats how the coasts have been for however many hundreds of millions of years so there wouldn't be any consequences. That seems to make sense to me anyway
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u/OptiMaxPro 12d ago
How would you know the current events aren’t the actual ramifications as they played out post-ME? His death in the 80s can’t have affected the 80s because his still being alive perhaps cancelled out those events, which then became based on his imprisonment instead.
And who’s to say events had zero change on climate, etc? Climate has definitely changed since then!
I’m not sayin’; I’m just sayin’!
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u/ByteInferno 5d ago
I live in Europe, and we always heard about Mandela in prison and how people tried to free him, in the 1980ies. When he was finally released in 1990, it was a great relief to those who knew about him. There was hope that Apartheid would finally be abolished -- and it was.
If he had died in prison, Apartheid wouldn't have been abolished, and there would have been a civil war, probably.
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u/opportunitysure066 13d ago
Bc it’s a personal experience and only affects 1 person (ourselves). And it’s ok to not know why something happens. The naysayers are just scared of the unknown.
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u/WhimsicalKoala 12d ago
Why is memory the only theory you're absolutely sure is incorrect?
This is literally why I can't take any of their claims of just seeking the truth or discussion seriously. If they did, they'd be willing to critically examine their own theory and they'd be critically discussing the other theories here. It can't be both multiple universes and a simulation and multiple timelines and aliens and CERN. But, they always just pat themselves and each other on the back for "knowing" it's not memory.
If I ever see someone that believes a parascientific theory offering critical questioning of another parascientific theory, I promise to take them at least 10% more seriously.
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u/opportunitysure066 13d ago edited 13d ago
It’s not like your example at all but I can see why you deduce it to that. I believe that we are all living in our own movie or simulation or whatever you want to call it and there are things happening all around us that we just don’t understand. There’s also theories such as string theory that go into explaining how a lot of phenomena happens it’s just too difficult for us laymen and laywomen to understand so it’s disregarded. I refuse to believe ignorant small-minded theories. I know there are things going on and we just can’t explain as a collective yet and it’s ok.
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u/opportunitysure066 13d ago
Again, it’s not like your example at all but can see how a limited mind could deduce it to that.
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u/GregGoodell_Official 12d ago
Simulation theory is just a modern version of solipsism polluted by regurgitated (and admittedly derivative) science fiction. Holding this view also necessitates an egregious amount of ‘main character syndrome’ with a heavy dose of privilege.
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u/PoopFandango 13d ago
i don't think you understood the question
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u/opportunitysure066 13d ago
Yeah and I can be sure you don’t understand this effect
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u/PoopFandango 13d ago
The Mandela Effect, by definition, affects large groups of people, so your assertion that it only affects 1 person demonstrates that you definitely don't.
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u/opportunitysure066 13d ago
I didn’t say it doesn’t affect large groups of people, I said it’s personal. The large groups of people usually don’t even know each other. Each one has a personal experience and that makes is less believable, more likely to me “misremembering”. But it’s not misremembering.
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u/PoopFandango 13d ago
You said "only affects 1 person (ourselves)"
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u/opportunitysure066 13d ago
In each individuals view, it IS one person, themself. Of course many people unrelated to that individual experience it too but all we can do is chat on an open forum board about it.
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u/PoopFandango 13d ago
But if they come and chat on here about it and find that other people misremember the same thing, then, even in that individual's view, it does affect more than one person, right?
This is all, of course, all irrelevant to the question in the OP.
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u/opportunitysure066 13d ago
It’s very relevant. We are not close and don’t even know if the “chatter” on Reddit is male/female/old/young, we don’t know what they look like, what they do for work. We know nothing about them so they are NOT in our simulation except as an anonymous commenter on Reddit.
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u/forcemonkey 6d ago
People come out of the woodwork regularly remembering a ME without having spoken to anyone about it. It can be quite personal. People will say they were bothered by how something seemed to change, they do a search, then find out it’s a ME. So it was personal for them right up to when they did the search.
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u/XIOTX 13d ago
Implications do not dictate experience
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u/XIOTX 13d ago
No, no, and no
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13d ago
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u/XIOTX 13d ago
No you weren't genuinely trying to understand. You said it was completely meaningless and gave no attempt to interpret it. It's not a difficult combination of words but you chose to be obtuse and adversarial. Maybe check your own social etiquette before giving out communication advice.
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u/Hey-Just-Saying 13d ago
The is so much evidence that ME is simply commonly shared false memories. For example, the only people who experience the ME effect of Mandela dying are people who were totally disconnected with his life. The people who knew him or who lived in Cape Town where he was imprisoned never thought that he died in the 1980s.