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Here's a Mandela Effect for the older crowd:
What do you remember about the Lindbergh baby? When you look up what actually happened, does it jive with your own recollection?
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intro - can't get to a computer much today or tomorrow, so all apologies that I'm not thumbs-up'ing all the new bleacher bums. Will return to that shortly, but in the meantime muchas gracias very much! - Jeff.
We were just getting a baseball-comments tsunami going and please don't let this distract. :- ) The last 4-5 threads are really hoppin'. Please enjoy them on Wednesday. But for those who enjoy the "Life Is Sports" aspect to SSI:
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ROHRSCHACH (INKBLOT) TEST
BPJ asked us to put up a column on the Mandela Effect. His comment was the first I'd heard about it, which is cool, because it's always fun to hear about a new sci-fi / paranormal subject that has anything to it but silliness.
80, 90% of the topics that are worth a look, wind up going into the wry smile area for me. Those that wind up (for me) being in the "Truth is Stranger than Fiction" category ... Double Slit Experiment, Yoro Fish Rain, Deathbed Visions, Precognition (in very limited applications), N'Kisi the telepathic parrot, a few others ...
HERE COMES THE -LIFE IS SPORT- THINGY
"Skeptic" should mean that --- > you're in extreme doubt about a thing. But you are going to investigate. Like a scientist should: wanting VERY convincing evidence, but with a reasonable openness to the idea that it might be true.
Science is a method of inquiry. Period. It is not a worldview that says nothing exists apart from the periodic table and the laws of physics. Science is not materialism.
"Skeptic" on Wikipedia has been appropriated to mean that --- > you know before you start that the hypothesis is hollow and false. You go through the motions of investigating, but any data that is suggestive is suppressed. It's the worst possible mindset to be in, to be pretending to investigate a thing.
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So, just spent a half-hour looking up BPJ's issue. Here's a talk stub for anyone interested.
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BPJ: I would absolutely love to get your take on the Mandela Effect.
Specifically, I remember:
1) Berenstein Bears, not Berenstain
2) It was "Luke, I am your father", not, "No, I am your father"
3) I remember 5 people in the Village People, not 6. There wasn't an Army guy where I'm from.
4) The line in Snow White was, Mirror, mirror on the wall, not Magic Mirror on the wall like it is here
5) I remember 4 people in two rows of seats in the car when JFK was assassinated, not a 3rd row with a 5th and 6th person in the middle of the car...
6) The witch in Wizard of Oz said, "Fly my pretties, fly." Now she just says, "Fly, fly, fly"
7) C3PO didn't have a silver leg...
8) I remember watching Billy Grahams funeral on TV, but he's still alive??
There are others, but I specifically remember all of these one way only to find out it was never that way, it's blowing my mind.
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Disclaimer: personally am not friendly towards The Mandela Effect. Would be delightful if such a new vista were real, though. So, quick thoughts as first impressions:
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CON: Unfortunately, at age 54 with memory dysfunction, cannot remember these 8 things clearly enough. Sigh. For ME it would be sufficient to find ONE thing along the lines of "What, Jimmy Carter was not the President before Reagan?" ... which, I guess is the Mandela thing. (Unfortunately I don't remember reports of Mandela's or Graham's death at all. Guess I'm from the other universe!) If YOU remember Berenstein like it was yesterday then you'd have my blessing to believe anything you find credible about the ME.
CON: Almost all of these seem like Hollywood/Media things where the "Conspiracy" running like "The Illuminati decided to go back and airbrush as widely as possible." THAT conspiracy does not seem farfetched ... to me.
CON: I don't get why such a high percentage of items are "text changes" as opposed to "there were never any ducks in the wild?" or "I didn't know FDR was on Mt. Rushmore."
CON: I thought time-traveler / alternate universe synch-ups would --- > produce larger changes. (Counter: maybe it's like the river flowing around the rock and re-setting itself.) Also, I don't buy alternate universes with our periodic table. (But amusingly, Robert A. Heinlein once made a world that was exactly the same without the letter R.)
CON: Many, many of these items seem explainable by the fact that --- > our brains fill in details when we speed-read; our brains are good at saying "that SHOULD have said XYZ." Most of these examples COULD be, "Luke, I am your father" being a much, much more natural "fill-in" of the scene. In other words, it's our fault.
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PRO: It wouldn't be tough for me to fit a Mandela Effect into my own worldview; in fact it would enhance it. As does the Double Slit Experiment. I would take the ME as being a Transcendent Intervention about 15 degrees off the Double Slit Experiment (the universe "snapping into place" as man observes it), if the ME turns out to have substance in reality. Which I (currently) much doubt it does.
PRO: Read some thing on Reddit about the Chakotay / Mandela item ... two different people walked up to the actor and asked about a weird "alternate universe" death episode on Star Trek. The actor was confused. But the two fan-strangers emphatically remembered the episode the same way. Point is, usually if five people "hallucinate" the same exact pink elephant, then the pink elephant is actually there. Cross-hallucinations should not be presumed to be nonsense. It is precisely this factor that, for me, means you go to Level 201 Scan, still skeptical.
PRO: I put little credence into the type of "debunking" replies that say things like "our memories would be wiped in an alternate universe. QED." Yep. Like we know all about what happens in alternate universes and time travel.
PRO: I put little credence into the flippant / dismissive debunkers who merely reply "you can't trust your memory." Yes you can. Sometimes. Barack Obama was the last President and that is the fact of the case, based on memory alone.
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Haven't yet seen one of these Mandela Effect items that couldn't, in theory, be explained by an agenda to go re-edit the movies and books and newspapers. And none registered for me like "I'm SURE about my memory on this one." But ok.
So, this one's got me baffled at first take. :- ) This little post I put up represents the first 2% of a fair investigation into a phenomenon that seems impossible. BPJ, you said you had a well-fleshed theory. Your turn. Slap in in below, mate :- )
Best,
Jeff
Comments
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Read somewhere that the theory has the "alternate universe phase clash" in the 1990's. Wouldn't make sense if we're going to back to Lindbergh. But ... another thing based in newspaper archives, right? An annoying problem for me.
Thanks BPJ. Don't forget to give us your theory!
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Misquoting a thing, in parody or just emulation, can alter people's memories of what a thing is. Many of these have been parodied multiple times to my knowledge, from SNL to In Living Color to Mad magazine (MadTV even). When those misquotes (which may have been intentional for copyright purposes) get repeated around the water cooler they supplant the actual memories. Like I can quote a Dana Carvey parody of George Sr. but not the actual verbiage of the ex-president as reliably.
That's my theory
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Especially when the switch is small and very plausible.
Wouldn't call that syndrome the end of this particular discussion but it is a key part of it.
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The retelling often becomes the new "reality". Trust me, I can see Russia from my house.
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Ok, so as much as I try and understand what is going on, why things are changing, the more I realize I cannot come up with a reasonable explanation.
So, please join me for a few minutes beyond on the outer bounds of reason as I break this down. We will get off the Mandela Effect for a minute, but I'll explain how/why I think it is interrelated. I'm not the only one with this theory, but it is the only one that makes sense to me.
In the year 2000 a person began posting on the internet named John Titor. He claimed to be a time traveler of all things. Yeah, right!! Right?
Well, Titor went on to not only give out details about such events in the future as the hadron collider at CERN. The fact that they would make breakthroughs with black holes. He explained back in 2000 (before CERN ever actually began trying to pull it off) how they would use these black holes to achieve travel to another "worldline". Among his evidence was a very interesting photo of the device and blueprint of the device.
Hoax or not, the man wove an incredible tale. Whether you can believe it or not, it is an interesting story which plays out in the form of a big Q&A session.
So, theory being, that this time traveler ended up on our worldline and initiated a butterfly effect that seems to have taken us off the path our future seemed bound for and brought us to where we are today. He told us about what happened in his own worldline from the year 2000 to 2036, the year he claimed to be from. If indeed he did change our future, it created some butterfly effects that we are beginning to notice changed about our past as well.
The namesake, Nelson Mandela, died in prison in the early 90's, right? No, he passed away at at age 95 in 2013. 6 people in the JFK car?? Dolly not having braces in Moonraker?? Lindbergh baby found dead, killer electrocuted? Luke, I am your father??? Mona Lisa smile, or no smile? We are the Champions doesn't end with "Of the World"?? Did you watch Billy Grahams' funeral too? Apparently not, he's still alive..
That's the Cliffs Notes. Time traveler sets off butterfly effect which not only changes the future we were expected to have, but changes some things about our past. John Titor claims to have made stops in 1975 and 2000.
Titor isn't the cause of this. He's the result. CERN creating black holes NOW which get used in time travel in the 2030's, and we were told about this by John Titor in 2000.
If you follow the link I'll post, and at the top click Posts by Date and start from Nov. 2000. Belt in, because you're in for a wild ride. Physics, history, future, it's all in there. No matter where you land on the belief, it's an interesting way to spend some time!
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"...of the world" exists just fine as we remember. Perhaps certain versions or written lyrics omit it. Here's a live performance by Queen to confirm:
https://youtu.be/04854XqcfCY
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The YouTube you linked to trails off without the last phrase ...
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And you having studied it thoroughly, will treat your theory as if it were an answer key :-) and take a look at it from that angle. Thanks BPJ!
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have upgraded my interest to "bemused." If you're interested.
Your description is nice and logical, though I now find this scenario much tougher to imagine. Helped me organize my thoughts though.
Your objective, matter of fact short description, with respect to the reader, encourage about your own suspicions, is a model of what that kind if " truth is stranger than fiction" intro should be BPJ. Thanks :-)
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I thought dolly in Moonraker had the specs only, to offset Jaws' braces. Thought Mona Lisa was always smiling slightly, as if hiding a secret.
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question for others – do you remember anything about Mandela dying in jail? I've got no memory of it. That would be the biggie so far. Not just an airbrush text issue.
I agree with you about the wild ride. Will be a lot more fun to play around with van watching more politics tonight ;- )
ironic - dr. detecto blindsided and flummoxed by a Konspiracy Korner - The tables are turned!
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Perhaps there is no connection between the Titor story (fairytale?) and any possible Mandela Effects.
If I was alone in remembering these things happening differently, I would probably dismiss the idea(s) altogether. But so many of them are different than I remember, that other people also seem to vividly remember the way I do, that makes me believe there's something to it all.
The correlation between the time-traveler and the Mandela Effects may be non-existant. Neither seem likely to have/be happened/happening. Yet, to me, it fits perfectly. If you're going to make the jump to believe in a time-traveler, I don't have a hard time thinking that maybe our universe merged a little or something. Some things were done/happened slightly differently on another time line, where now that's our past reality, but it's not what we (I) remember..
The Berenstein Bears one alone is enough for me even if so many of the others didn't feel so off also. I spent hours learning to read with those books. BerenSTEIN Bears was one of the first things I ever read, and did so hundreds of times after. Seeing it the first time, recently, with Berenstain Bears felt so foreign and wrong. Like if Harry Potter started being Hairy Pottur, it's something you notice, and it doesn't feel right. And these are books in my home that I now read to my son.
Here is a link that shows some of the "evidence" that Titor produced. Browse around this site as a supplement to the first. Between the two sites, you'll get a fair first glance at the Titor story.
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If that were true for me, about the Bears? If I were so clear about it that I was sure of the memory, like I am sure that Alvin Davis was a mariner, then I would keep a hold of my belief that there is something to it –
For me the It would baseline at an illuminati style conspiracy and go from there ...
We can't let the debunkers convince us that our memories and our eyes are worth less than their debunking – Basic tournament chess insight – don't let a grandmaster talk you out of the truth; if you believe in a move, play it.
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I'm on the other side of this one. I remember being really confused by the spelling of what was pronounced bear en steen. Ai says ay not ee.
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Turns out *some* of the Berenstain products were incorrectly labeled BerenstEin on the spine of the VHS tapes (and possibly elsewhere...)
http://heavy.com/news/2016/08/berenstein-bears-proof-reddit-prove-mandel...
My family had a few of these tapes, but they're long gone so I have no idea if they had the conflicting labels or not.
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also saw a librarian who said, convincingly, that for 27 years, it was always with an E, about eight years ago it started with an a, she always alphabetized them, for sure no false memory :-)
i was like 97% sure of the E, not good enough for me ;-
what a pity she did NOT say whether the SAME books changed spelling when she went to put them back :- )
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It's funny, look up "Berenstein" on ebay. People who are selling the books- with the spelling right in front of them- and are still listing them as "Berenstein", because it's not something we really need to proofread. Even more interesting are the people who are listing toys that have no tags. Lots of "Berenstein".
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It was a widely televised event. Anybody else remember watching it? Along with the Mandela death in jail, it seems to be the biggest event that people remember differently (or not at all, in this case).
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I was 90% sure that Franklin Graham, stepped up because of his dad's death a while back. But just 90%.
as you say, the list accumulates, though. Mirror mirror is a good one – three PO's leg – still, have got to acknowledge that most of these are fill in the blank's items for me. My memory is strongly what I would expect to see so there is a bit of the stage magician doubt here .
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Come on, every living president spoke at his funeral, the blue background was memorable, and so forth –
Seems to ring a bell with me, but I am still looking for my slam dunk memory LOL ... The fact that so many people are so sure about so many things, though, make this one of the meatiest of the worlds great mysteries ... thanks for pointing it out BPJ!
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It's pretty intriguing! Your incredible range of interests- from high level chess to Mega man video games- leads me to ask if you ever happened to see the movie Shazaam with Sinbad? He played a genie, I rented the movie from Video World one day with my mom, the same day I rented Earth Girls are Easy, a Jim Carrey movie. I remember because Shazaam was funny, but Earth Girls are Easy showed a nipple, so... The only problem is Shazaam never existed, apparently. What!?
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I'm curious if people either remember them all one way or the other.
There are plenty Mandela Effects people claim that I have no idea about. Either don't remember or never knew. These ones for the most part seem pretty clear to me how I remember them.
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Pardon the subject digression for a moment, but you mentioned chess axioms and it reminded me...
You bring up aiki philosophy/mechanics and martial arts a bit, as well as tournament chess. Is it strange that, after 15 years of me finding your high focus on those issues amusing, if a bit outsized, as I mature into my mid 30s, I am now completely transfixed by the same topics? Starting a karate class (really enjoying it so far despite being woefully out of shape), watching intense move by move analyses of chess tactics and tournament highlights on YouTube, buying an account at Chess.com so I can make use of the tactics trainer and the coaching offers and such?
Obviously way too late in my life to ever be a grandmaster at chess, but that's not my goal...
Is it because you've influenced me or is it because a mind like mine (and, I suspect, yours) that really thrives on constant intellectual stimulation, and new challenges, follows a common progression?
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GM Andy Soltis once replied to a wag who had written into Chess Life: "As we all know, nobody ever gives up chess." Bruce Pandolfini hasn't played for 20 years, but has written 20 books, imagines himself a far better player, and schemes his return to the tournament board wearing hat and glasses.
No REASON to give up chess. These days the doctors tell all the old folks to keep playing Sudoku.
Hey, maybe see you on chess.com sometime. My handle is jemanji.
Martial arts... in his natural state, Man is wired to fight off foreign raids, no? Karate classes are a great way for older men to maintain some testosterone and some enthusiasm for physical challenges.
Nope, you keep right on trying to max out your "ki" (life force, power) and your mental acuity. You know HOW to LEARN and could be one of the odd ducks who plays his best chess in his 50s and 60s.
Go get 'em Matt ...
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I am good with chess theory, but TERRIBLE with tactics. I saw they had a tactics trainer program and played a few sample tactical puzzles to get a feel for what it does...I loved it.
I'd be terrified to face you across a chessboard Doc...you'd crush me like a popcan. :) Then again...I'd probably learn a lot so...
I'll look you up there once I get settled more and have time to explore.
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Alternative theories that I subscribe to.:
- That there were advanced civilizations in place that were wiped out by the meteor strikes that caused the Younger Dryas.
- That UFOs are a real, if as yet a not sufficiently explained phenomenon.
- Pete Carroll's 'long body' of group dynamics forming a singular conciousness
Other theories I give credence to but do not fully subscribe to:
- Rupert Sheldrake's Morphic Resonance
- Ingo Swann/Hal Putoff and Remote Viewing
- Multi-dimensionality
All this to say that I feel comfortable in declaring that I'm a fair bit more "woo-woo" than the average American. I've looked into the Mandala Effect as well as John Titor and, as surprising as the ideas presented were, I found insufficient data to give credence to either. I love that you're willing to look into these ideas, BPJ. I'm afraid that, at this time, I remain unsold.
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They deserve to be late-nighted... like a fine Arsenal DVD ....
All six of those items, in one form or another, I have also found to have interesting substance behind them. For example, flocks of birds and fish show 'long body' movement, turning as a swarm faster than is theoretically possible.
UFO's are last on my list. No idea why EMP pulses have not been detected in the galaxy, for instance, or Von Neumann probes. And the Drake Equation / Fermi Paradox seem nearly decisive.
Remote Viewing, that's got a Presidential Seal of Approval (Carter relaying the plane incident). For spiritual reasons i steer clear of that, but that's me.
Familiar with the Antykathera Mechanism, the Baghdad Battery and Egyptian brain surgery? Got other quickies on ancient civiliations?
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But the Hypogeum of Malta fascinated me when I first learned about it something like a decade ago. In some TV special on it, they went into great depths to describe the mastery of acoustics which were necessary to carve out the Hypogeum 5,000+ years ago--and then someone did an experiment, possibly on an unrelated episode covering the same island whree the Hypogeum was built, which demonstrated how by employing large bladders (cattle stomachs? don't remember exactly...sorry) they could create powerful vibrations in the carts which lugged the stone away from the work site, which decreased the amount of effort needed to cart the waste material away from the site.
I was never 100% *sold* on the bladder vibration theory, but its presenters were pretty insistent that the people who built the Hypogeum were EXTREMELY knowledgeable about acoustics and harmonics, and they put forth the vibrations-via-bladders-played-like-bagpipes theory as a plausible mechanism which might have been used to help 'lighten the load' by decreasing friction during transit.
A lot of this stuff is *probably* simple pattern recognition run amok, but what better way to engage our brains than by contemplating potential symmetry?
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And the article claims that the same frequency is a teen at other places around the world. Receptive to male priest voices but not to female, and so forth.
Impossible to imagine how they could design this, unless across millennia of trial and error .
Not an intrusion at all; would be grateful for any other mysteries that have substance to them. At minimum they are fun reading and challenging puzzles. Thx! Jeff
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since that's about as far as I tend to get into this type of thing. One that captured my imagination, due to my pre-existing fascination with Egyptian history, was the Orion correlation theory.
Another that I always enjoyed pontificating was our collective intelligence plateau leap(s?) which propelled us to the point where we are today. It was clearly not a gradual process; something instigated the process, and to date I have yet to find any satisfying theory as to what it was. But articles like this one help shed some light on possibilities. Also, the Common Male Ancestor revelations which seem to gain steam every few months, when yet another 'common male ancestor' is determined for massive ethnic groups, are incredibly thought-provoking. It's easy to say 'oh, they must have had better intelligence, or perhaps they had stronger immune systems, which is why these MRCA's (most recent common ancestor) were so relatively successful compared to their peers. There are even subgroup MRCA's discovered to have existed for European or Asian subgroups as recently as three thousand years ago. So I guess that anthropology opens up all kinds of fascinating questions for me that might not have much traction for others.
Recently a breakthrough was made which produced a previously 'unacceptable' form of matter called Time Crystals. Speculation is wild about what this might mean, but at the very least it represents the peeling back of yet another layer of obscuring ignorance--and now I'm off on a tangent (beg pardon) as to where I think philosophy and science run headlong into each other regarding in which *direction* those layers are being peeled.
Traditionally, when we think of the peeling off of a layer, we think of something like an onion which we're attempting to access from 'outside.' And indeed, we see terms like 'drilling down' pop up whenever we discuss scientific inquiry. But to me, knowledge has always seemed to be an 'expandable' sphere with the number of legitimate, plausible questions correlating to the surface area of that sphere--for every question you satisfactorily answer (via drilling/peeling), you'll run into some greater number of equally legitimate questions. So--again, to me--it seems pretty easy to flip the script on the 'drilling down' metaphor and to imagine that we're 'trapped' inside a closed structure akin to an onion or a (possibly infinitely) laminated eggshell, so we're really 'drilling UP' when we pursue enlightenment. We're peeling back layers from the INSIDE, exposing a greater number of valid questions in the process, and expanding our 'known' sphere (the hollow in the middle, which we CAN define in reasonable terms since none of it is opaque).
That doesn't even have to suggest that there's no end to the 'drilling' or 'peeling' process, but I've always found it bizarre that people thought they were 'drilling down' into something. In order to do that, wouldn't you need to define, in rough terms at the VERY LEAST, the scale of the object you're 'inquiring' into with your 'drill'? Never made much sense to me.
Anyway, sorry for the rant.
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Traditionally, when we think of the peeling off of a layer, we think of something like an onion which we're attempting to access from 'outside.' And indeed, we see terms like 'drilling down' pop up whenever we discuss scientific inquiry. But to me, knowledge has always seemed to be an 'expandable' sphere with the number of legitimate, plausible questions correlating to the surface area of that sphere--for every question you satisfactorily answer (via drilling/peeling), you'll run into some greater number of equally legitimate questions.
Have you ever read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? If you haven't, it sounds right up your alley. It got me started on a lifetime of meditative practice and a greater appreciation of holistic experience in addition to our default "objective" bias. Here's a quote from it that your observation resonates with it strongly:
"For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. The more you look the more you see. "
This is what Persig, the author, calls the fundamental problem with using science alone as a source of "proof", the "hole in the bottom of reason".The story follows his personal transistion from scientist to philosopher in pursuit of ultimate knowledge. But fundamentally, he realized that he would be unable to find any meaning or value of life in any legitimate way through science alone, contrary to our default assumptions about Western life. Our preoccupation with breaking things into imaginary objects completely forfeits our ability to appreciate anything resembling intuition, or in his main examination, beauty and quality.
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... and agree. I picture knowledge as the branches of a tree, ever expanding into infinite hypotheses. NOT some diagram that indicates you are "cornering" a Grand Unified Theory by triangulation. Seriously doubt the answer is 46 at the end of the Double Slit Experiment.
The more you know about chess, the more questions you have, I know that much for sure. Most Denizens would apply the same to sabermetrics. How do 'flu-like symptoms' affect launch angle?
Great post Anatta. +2
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Found a copy, will read it as time allows!
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Had a chance to prove one as a kid. I remembered a scene in the Empire Strikes Back my dad couldn't, swore up and down it wasn't there. We watched the VHS, no scene. But one day it played on TV, and there is was. One of Lucas' many cuts. I felt great.
I remember a number of these. Berensta/ein, Vader's quote and 3PO's leg (that was really shocking after seeing the red arm in Episode VII), et cetera. All seem to have reasonable 'didn't have reason to notice the detail before' explanations. Our brains are nigh-magical at seamlessly filling in what we don't (need to) focus on. Billy Graham was an easy one for me, though - I paid close attention to that situation, remember Franklin stepping up due to Billy's fading health, but being surprised when he never actually passed. Because of my interest (I assume), that's one that never got me.
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That sent me down the parody train. I recall multiple Mad Magazine and SNL parodies purposely misspelled, Meyer. However, from the song, "My baloney has a 2nd name, it's M-A-Y-E-R". The recollection I have is that it never changed, people are merely remembering the parody over the original.
I told other kids in the 80's they were misquoting Darth Vader. This is one of the most often quoted lines from film. Up there with "Are you looking at me?" Except that is also a misquote of possibly the best unscripted scene in movie history. Deniro, in Taxi Driver, where the script said merely :Talks to himself in mirror: , Says multiple times "Are you talking to me". Emulators misquote and we remember the (dozens of other movies, in this case) of misquotes over the actual quote. It has always been "Are you talking to me", just as it's always been "No, I am your Father".
The only one that continues to stump me is Berenstain, but I'm uncertain. It could have been from something similar.
You tell me Led Zeppelin has an A in it or the Beatles doesn't and I'm certain. Most of the others never mattered to me enough to be even partially sure.
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There are some that are ridiculous, like Fruit Loops and Looney Toons. I dunno.
But I can't explain away watching Billy Grahams funeral. I remember scoffing when Bill Clinton was speaking, thinking how inappropriate it would be if he would have been smoking a cigar at the time...
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