Mandela Effect: Simple to Exotic

Explanations for what the Mandela Effect is ranges from simple to exotic. At its simplest it is faulty memory experience by a relatively few individuals. For example one can count the number of people who assert that in their childhood Froot Loops was actually Fruit Loops in the hundreds to maybe a few thousand people. Statistically the number must be exceedingly small compared to the set of everyone who ever saw a box of the cereal. A few people go as far as claiming the box art changed recently and sometimes even as they watched it happen. While the claims of Fruit being the spelling and people claiming to have seen it in the store, nobody seems to have thought to buy the box and keep it as proof of their experience.

There are many other spelling, logo and grammar and punctuation examples to give, but they all lead to the exact same place: Either something changed the past or the claimants are self-reporting their memory fault. Memory faults are not necessarily a disability or critical malfunction. The way humans store memory is fraught with the opportunity to infill missing pieces and for personal preference to color what the memory consists of.

In some instances a memory trace is colored with an agenda that must be maintained. Such is the discrepancy in the size of the Presidential Limo of the JFK Assassination on November 22, 1963. The claimants of a 4-seat limo neglect the presence of Mrs. Connally. She necessarily must have been elsewhere if the limo did not have 6 seats. To account for that missing personage, the 4-seat claimants must infill their memories with alleged evidence that she indeed was elsewhere for some good reason. There are several alleged images of a 4-seat limo, but at critical review the photo fails to substantiate the 4-seat claim.

JFJ Limo at the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit
used by permission from Robert Carlson

The following picture is purportedly shown a 4-seat limo but still shows the partition between the driver row and the middle row where Gov. Connally is sitting. Notice the missing steering wheel and driver if this is a 4-seat limo.

This photo is a non-evidentiary photo shot to accompany the magazine article. Notice the wilted flowers to suggest this is the limo but the total lack of blood splatter anywhere in the back seat.

These three photos suggest nothing of the Mandela Effect in this matter. Maybe some evidence still persists, but we have not yet seen any of it.

Timeline Alterations

A few people have become convinced that they are from an alternate timeline. They have slid into this reality from one where what they remember is what actually was the conditions and events of their earlier lives. They arrive here with a snapshot recollection of how it was in their world, but cannot fit it into a cohesive cause and effect timeline the remainder of us experience.

Some of them have visual memories of Australia being 1,000 miles further south. Some of them claim for them South America was 1,000 miles further west than it is in the reality most of us have ever known. While they have a strong emotional connection with their recollections of South America they all fail to mention that 1,000 miles would also have shifted the internationally recognized time zone layout of South America.

Every single mention of alternate continental placement on the globe can be attributed to flat map projection differences. How is it that a person can believe they came from an alternate Earth over the idea the cartographer was not very accurate? Just for the Flat Earth readers of this Post: If the Earth were indeed flat, the map makers would not have had to resort to so many different projections. One would do.

Earth Two

A couple of the followers of Mandela Effect strangeness have also cited the massive relocation of Earth from the Sagittarius Arm to the Orion Spur as an explanation for why they remember facts and figures which are otherwise dubious and not recognized by their peers. Whether the Earth and solar system was moved or whether it was replicated 10,000 light-years away is not germane. Somebody would have had to go to extreme limits to accomplish such a task to benefit “such poor little lambs as we.”

The assertion is the New Earth is not quite the same as the Old Earth. They make a few errors in their pre-move survey. Some people remember Old Earth while those who are now awake see the New Earth for what it is. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy discusses the summary destruction of Earth to make way for an Inter-galactic super highway. Afterwards the Galactic council must rebuild the Earth and repopulate with those people who were unjustly destroyed. They decide to make it a better place than before, somewhat like a Disneyland perfection.

I’d say the construction crew did not go nearly far enough to fix the ills of the Old Earth. I expect more than a return to “normal.”

Simulated Reality

I like the concept that we live in a simulated reality. If that is true then there is no “higher” level to go. We are just subroutines running in some supermassive computing system. Frank J. Tipler wrote about such a future of mankind in his book, The Physics of Immortality. At some point in the future we will be able to resurrect every person who ever was, including those who died as infants, or never really existed because the egg was not fertilized and carried to term. We would necessarily do that in a cyber environment due to the limitations of universe energy to support all the flesh and blood bodies. But then it would make no difference. If we are conscious beings with a real or imagined Free Will being “real” or simulated would be no different.

Issac Azimov posited the problem of Entropy in the short story, The Last Question. In that story all the stars were burning down and at some point there would be zero energy to power the continuation of mankind’s’ consciousness in the simulated world to which we were forced to move.

The Real Simulation

All science fiction aside and all conspiracy theories dispelled, we do exist in a simulated universe. Ponder this: We do not actually see a tree in the forest or a building on the street. What we see is only the light waves reflecting off their surfaces. That patterning of light is ALREADY A SIMULATION. Your entire eye is smaller than a chicken egg. The light sensitive surface inside is about the size of your thumbnail. It being so small doesn’t stop you from seeing the panorama of the Grand Canyon. The image on the thumbnail sized retina is actually upside-down. It is physically inside your skull (whether or not you believe our skeletons changed to add boney parts behind the eyes). You see it as though it was “out there”. Several miles of horizon image fits on the retina and in your head. Then later your brain can “resimulate” it again as you dream about seeing the Grand Canyon. Quite an amazing simulation if I do say. Each and every conscious mind is its own computer processing a shared database of “reality.”

Sounds work the same way.

The Takeaway

Everyone can have fun imagining what causes the phenomenon of memory not matching the current reality. Just don’t take it all too seriously or you may be relegated to the ranks of the goofy and eccentric.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
- Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio

Keep pondering and speculating, the answers to your questions may yet to be revealed.