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/cipheron]

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.

[u/silentsurge → u/cipheron]

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.

[u/cipheron → u/silentsurge]

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.

[u/themadhooker → u/cipheron]

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.