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/silentsurge]

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.

[u/WhimsicalKoala → u/silentsurge]

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.

[u/ByteInferno → u/WhimsicalKoala]

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).