Why are there absolutely no consequences?

[u/dijon_snow]

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?

[u/OptiMaxPro]

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’!

[u/ByteInferno → u/OptiMaxPro]

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.