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14th March 2018, 10:19 PM | #201 |
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Look, find me one person who was a resident/citizen/anything of South Africa in a timeframe ranging from, oh, around 1962 into recent years who believes Nelson Mandela was dead until 2013, when he "died again." That's all I'm saying. There's a reason this "effect" only happens with regard to stuff that's kind of peripheral to our daily lives. Like movies, book titles, ads, and foreign public figures. Our memory banks don't need that stuff, so it gets bungled and overwritten.
Do supporters of this Mandela Effect ever claim they wake up one day only to find that their car has a different license plate than they remember? That their spouse has a mustache when they didn't the prior evening? That arithmetic has changed? And if so, has schizophrenia been clinically ruled out? I'm not being a dick. These are important questions to ask yourself if you're starting to accept this tosh. ETA - And yes, yes - I'm aware of the semi-fringe Mandela Effect characters who claim things like the sun is brighter/colored differently than they remember, or New Zealand is in a different place on the map. The myriad possible explanations are still mundane as hell. Map scales are not all made by the same uniform process (some are more scale-accurate than others, etc.), human memories suck, most people don't gaze upon world maps that often, etc. (Does anyone from New Zealand think their country has moved? I'm honestly asking.) As for the sun, people's eyes often become less tolerant of bright lights as they age, human memory again sucks, people who are paranoid start to imagine crazy ****, probably global warming and the ozone layer's ailments, etc. Seriously. If the people who are worried about this put half the time they dump into fantastical redditing volunteering at soup kitchens or some ****, this country might stop being the world's veritable Nickelback/Carrot Top/Carlos Mencia. |
15th March 2018, 01:54 AM | #202 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Great post, isissxn!
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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15th March 2018, 01:56 AM | #203 |
Penultimate Amazing
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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15th March 2018, 03:50 AM | #204 |
Scholar
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I most admit, I am quite fascinated by the Mandela effect. It's like a crowd sourced Phillip K. Dick novel, or Fringe spin-off. And could possibly lead to new insights about the nature of the human mind.
But even ignoring all the quantum mysticism, there is need for skepticism. The claim is that "thousands" or even "millions" of people have the exact same wrong memory. But do they? E.g the Berenstain Bears. I had never heard about them, but I googled and it's clear that people misspell their names in countless ways. It can be quite comical, people will swear they are excellent spellers and have very good memories and they vividly 120% remember it as Berenstein, then the next sentence they write Bernstein or Berenstien or even Bearstein. Other ME's allow quite a lot of wiggle room. Nelson Mandela according to ME lore died "sometime in the 80's". But an ambiguous context-free quote from Google Books that mentions a date in 1991 somehow counts as a hit. New Zealand "moved" from somewhere else relative to Australia. Some say north, some west, northeast seems the most common, but they don't even give a ballpark figure for distance. The inherent suggestibility of people also inflates the number of individuals who misremembers the same way. And exaggeration by true believers, and bloggers who need clicks for their ads. |
15th March 2018, 04:36 AM | #205 |
black goo
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it may not be the most exciting content, but it is content that is relevant to this thread,
that being the possibility that some of these mandela effects are the result of large scale experimentation in suggestibility and exploration into the mechanics of altering the memory of societies and individuals. which is something worth entertaining as a possibility IMO |
15th March 2018, 04:40 AM | #206 |
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There are some who claim human anatomy has changed, e.g eye sockets and the location of the heart and other organs. To me (and a lot of patient commenters) it's a mix up of popular misconceptions about anatomy and surgery. And possibly a feeling of unease over their aging bodies.
There is a weird defensiveness among the ME supporters about not remembering everything perfectly, as though it equates to being crazy. It doesn't of course. But then there is the ME-lore concept of "flip-flops". E.g a common ME belief is that Flint-stones used to be Flin-stones. Except some claim that they remember the discussion was reversed, the cartoon was called Flin-stones and people misrembered it as Flint-stones. I am wholly unqualified to diagnose anybody for schizophrenia, but this seems to indicate at least some form of cognitive problem. |
15th March 2018, 04:52 AM | #207 |
Illuminator
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15th March 2018, 04:55 AM | #208 |
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but they say that Sunny guy from the raisin bran cereals lost his sunglasses.
Still, there are Yahoo question threads from ten years ago about why the sun is wearing glasses. they say that skeptics can not explain that. Im not American so Im not familiar with that brand. |
15th March 2018, 04:56 AM | #209 |
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Plenty of people in the chemtrails conspiracy crowd claim that they remember the sky being bluer, there being less clouds, there not being certain types of cloud, etc.
It's strange that arguing with a lot of people about the the foibles of human memory just makes them double down and assert louder that their memories are unassailably reliable. |
15th March 2018, 04:57 AM | #210 |
I say nay!
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Memento Mori |
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15th March 2018, 05:08 AM | #211 |
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15th March 2018, 05:10 AM | #212 |
Illuminator
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Relying on Yahoo Answers for anything is usually a terrible idea.
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15th March 2018, 05:12 AM | #213 |
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That's a very silly idea.
How exactly are people being made to falsely remember that Nelson Mandela died in the 1980s? Whenever people look into it, they always find that there's no record of him dying in the 1980s. So where are the false memories coming from if they're the result of some bizarre experiment? This makes no sense at all. |
15th March 2018, 05:37 AM | #214 |
black goo
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i said some of the mandela effects.
Like the more simple ones that are to do with media, like spellings, names of products, things in popular culture such as Dolly's braces. And there are many ways that memories could be altered, such as subliminal messages in mass media. And by subliminal i do not mean flashed images, i mean the more subtle and effective methods Discussed in the video i posted |
15th March 2018, 05:45 AM | #215 |
black goo
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An rudimentary example of such an experiment could be the following:
A research group identifies something that the public regularly mix up. Maybe 80% of people remember adult nappies as 'depend' and 20% as 'depends'. Using various media sources and techniques they can try to alter this ratio within the population. They can then measure the effectiveness of the effort and method by re-testing the population. Maybe they shift the ratio to 60% thinking it is 'depend' and 40% 'depends'. Just a very basic example to give you an idea of how this is NOT a silly idea. Such technology if elaborated and developed to be very effective could have great potential for propaganda purposes, for engineering consent, for defense and military purposes and for influencing public opinion at home or abroad of historical events. |
15th March 2018, 05:58 AM | #216 |
Show me the monkey!
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Here is a vintage Raisin Bran box, probably from the 1960s-70s. In later years the Sun character was given a more detailed face and open eyes. Kelloggs never put sunglasses on the Sun. But there certainly were Raisin characters with sunglasses. And that makes sense too because they become raisins by sitting beneath the bright sun.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2066/...2ce9fd207a.jpg |
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15th March 2018, 06:01 AM | #217 |
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So 'The Mandela Effect' is perhaps just making a few more people think incorrect things that some people already believe for well understood reasons? Can you explain how you think this actually works? Like hypothetical examples of how 'various media sources and techniques' (a rather uselessly vague phrase) could be utilised to perpetuate these false ideas without any record in the media of the false ideas actually existing in the media?
I've an idea myself for how you can get people to believe this kind of crap. Put up a post on Reddit claiming that you remember something that isn't true and before you know it, people will come crawling out from under the woodwork agreeing with you and saying they remember it as well. No need for grandiose social experiments involving placing false facts in the media (for which there's no evidence anyway).
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15th March 2018, 06:02 AM | #218 |
Show me the monkey!
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Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot skeptics are both plumb crazy. Each spends more than one minute per year thinking about Bigfoot. |
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15th March 2018, 07:27 AM | #219 |
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Yeah, but there was no actual content. Nothing but some vague musings while walking dogs. Pisses me off to have wasted almost 4 minutes of my time above ground. The only upshot is that I know now not you watch vids you link. Was that your desired outcome? It is the predictable one.
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15th March 2018, 07:33 AM | #220 |
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15th March 2018, 07:40 AM | #221 |
Penultimate Amazing
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I recall that the sun started wearing sunglasses during one of their ad campaigns, but it was a short-lived thing. I remember thinking about how they were trying to make their brand cooler or something. There was no confusion with raisins, it was a very specific image tied to that sun, whose rays became more vibrant as well. It is faulty recollection shared by many, and skeptics can explain it handily.
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15th March 2018, 07:57 AM | #222 |
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It could be that a cartoon of the sun wearing sunglasses is a very common image, so common that lots of folks conflate that image with an iconic brand image. Nah, that's crazy, its probably just an alternate reality version of that that brand.
We need a Sliders reunion episode in which they visit the universe responsible for all the most common Mandela effect examples. Ok, maybe just a 10 minute funny or die sketch? Ok, it wouldn't be that funny but still. |
15th March 2018, 09:01 AM | #225 |
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15th March 2018, 09:04 AM | #226 |
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Jesus, I'm only 44, that's some bloody rapid geography going on there! I figure the Mandella effect is just a way to work out what portion of the population have an ego so grossly inflated that they're prepared to believe the world changed rather than accept that they can't remember stuff right. Occam would have spent about six seconds on this one. |
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15th March 2018, 09:13 AM | #227 |
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Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot skeptics are both plumb crazy. Each spends more than one minute per year thinking about Bigfoot. |
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15th March 2018, 09:28 AM | #228 |
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I'm probably repeating myself but, yes this. It really amazes me that anyone could learn that it was always Berenstain Bears not Berenstein Bears and walk away thinking anything other than, "Wow, memory is weird man!" let alone thinking, "**** the whole universe changed!"
Its not even an anomaly. Pretty much all the evidence is that we construct are memories and we do it badly. The Mandela Effect was explained before it was even observed. |
15th March 2018, 09:42 AM | #229 |
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15th March 2018, 10:49 AM | #230 |
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I keep telling people this.
The human brain is busy receiving input from all five senses and sorting it all out to keep on an even keel. I'm not a shrink, but in my daily life I catch myself disregarding incorrect perception four of five times a day. I'll think I see someone in a secure area on my security cameras, and run down to intercept only to find no one, and upon reviewing the footage there was never anyone on the screen. The problem is I have 12 cameras to keep track of on top of my other duties, and sometimes my brain drags nonexistent movement onto a screen covering an area where we've had problems with intruders. And yes, just as often there are intruders. Goes the other way too, like the time a tanker truck was hiding in my blindspot. Somehow I had missed the thing come up behind me. The truck and the people popping up on my cameras don't drop out of a parallel universe, I'm just focused on other things, so part of my brain is on auto-pilot as I suspect other people's are too. It's part of the fun of being human, |
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15th March 2018, 11:00 AM | #231 |
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Yes, that is what it makes it fascinating. If it were just me, I wouldn't give it a moment's thought. If it's a lot of people all claiming the same thing, then it gets a little weird. Nor is it just "going along with the crowd". I distinctly remember thinking "that can't be right!", when I heard it was spelled -stain.
The most parsimonious explanation is some mass failure of memory, maybe based on how the author's name is pronounced. But I wonder what someone like Dmitri Mendeleev would have predicted about the outcome of the double-slit experiment. |
15th March 2018, 11:06 AM | #232 |
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I've found so many residuals of They Live! in German. It is Sie Leben in German, but so often I find Sie Leben! with exclamation point.
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15th March 2018, 12:25 PM | #233 |
black goo
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well as a possible explanations go, i think perception/memory experimentation ranks higher than overlapping alternate dimensions,
As a possible explanation it had not been part of the discussion on this thread, and so i thought it only fair to add it. BTW, suggesting a new and possible explanation is not the same thing as stating that it IS the explanation. In fact i think a lot of the effects, such as names like depend and depends, those kind of close things, could be put down to marketing. Brand names and even stage names often are more 'sticky' to the human mind when they are just slightly off what is expected. And so not only are such names more likely to be successful as products, and chosen by companies as a result of market research, but also marketing people will actively seek out such 'slightly off expected' names intentionally. One good example of this is Cliff Richard. Cliff has said himself that the name Richard was chosen over the more common Richards (popular second name in the UK) because people would expect it to be Richards get it wrong and then argue over it, or have a double take when reading it or hearing it. |
15th March 2018, 02:22 PM | #234 |
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There was another version involving the movie Apollo 13. Some swear up and down that Tom Hank's line, which is "Houston, we have a problem," was originally "Houston, we've had a problem". Back when I used to try reasoning with these people, I 'splained that it was probably because somewhere along the line they learned that Jim Lovell's historical statement was "we've had a problem" and the movie misquoted him, and they likely just conflated to the two lines but of course that wasn't it at all.
At any rate, many months after that discussion (and long after I'd given up taking any of these people seriously), one of the participants breathlessly begins a new one declaring that the line had been switched back! Just the other day he watched Apollo 13 and Tom Hanks says "Houston, we've had a problem"...except a number of individuals who actually own the movie were quick to bring up that they checked and found the line was still "We have a problem" in their copy, and a large discussion ensued over whether the line had switched yet again [dimensional-slip theory] or whether the "Effect" simply hadn't gotten to those peoples' copy of the movie yet [unknown editing-force theory]. |
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15th March 2018, 02:30 PM | #235 |
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"¿WHAT KIND OF BIRD? ¿A PARANORMAL BIRD?" --- Carlos S., 2002 |
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15th March 2018, 03:03 PM | #236 |
Show me the monkey!
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Here is a really bad way to explore the Mandela Effect and it might be a really common way as well.
A James Bond fan website did a Twitter survey with relation to Dolly's braces. They found that 47% of the respondents "remembered" Dolly wearing braces. But not so fast! The obvious problem was that the questionnaire was multiple choice. Another problem is that the question being asked is not necessarily legitimate. It went like this... What factor first attracted Jaws to Dolly in Moonraker (at first sight)? Pigtails Braces Boobs Glasses Those were your choices. She does have pigtails, big boobs and glasses. But she doesn't have braces. Putting that aside, it's not necessarily apparent if Jaws is attracted to any particular body feature on Dolly. Now, a person who is relatively unfamiliar with the scene might think that the pollster is totally honest. Jaws is attracted to one thing, and Dolly has all of the listed things. The person may have no memory of seeing braces because she didn't have braces. They know for sure that Jaws has metal teeth because everyone knows that. So if they use logic they would think that braces ought to be the attractor even though they have no memory of seeing them at all. For this person, choosing braces seems to make sense and is likely to be the correct choice. But it's not really a false memory as much as it is a trick of the pollster. Even a person who strongly doubts the braces might still pick it. Now, a person who is quite familiar with the scene is going to get confused. The question makes no sense and there is a bogus answer sitting in there because she wasn't wearing braces. How is this person supposed to respond? Maybe they don't choose at all and just ignore the whole thing. You see, it really would be best not to ask as a multitude choice question. Ask the respondents to write in their own answer to the question. If they remember braces as being the initial attractor they will write it. Now how many answered braces? Or ask the question differently. "What were a few of Dolly's most prominent visual aspects which Jaws saw?" If they remember braces they will write it. Maybe the braces are the only thing they remember and that's fine. So I think you can see that it appears (at least to me) that this Mandela Effect might be misrepresented and sometimes isn't really a false memory per se. The pollster may be causing a spontaneous Mandela Effect when one was never really there in the first place. A person who has no memory of her wearing braces at all could tell you that she wore braces. It's because of the way it was presented to them, not because they remember something that never was. Here is the link to the survey article: https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/arti...ot-wear-braces The results... 21% Pigtails 47% Braces 19% Boobs 13% Glasses |
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15th March 2018, 03:34 PM | #237 |
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15th March 2018, 03:57 PM | #238 |
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15th March 2018, 04:49 PM | #239 |
Show me the monkey!
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This could be so complicated that the pollsters are naive and ignorant of what their poll is doing. They may also misrepresent the results and not realize that they are doing it. Some woo is like that. A person who has no recollection of Dolly wearing braces might answer that she wore braces and then still not remember that even after answering. That's not supposed to be what the Mandela Effect is.
They might tell us that 47% of people polled remember her wearing braces which would then potentially imply that 53% do remember that she is not wearing braces. But that's not necessarily true either. Some might think she has braces but that Jaws was first attracted to her boobs. Also it's important to understand that some would refuse to answer because the survey has no correct answer and they remember her not wearing braces. It seems that you must somehow probe a person's memory without prompting them at all in any way. You can't mention braces at all in the question or the context. You have to somehow find out if their pure recollection is that she wore braces. Like this... "Tell me what you remember about the appearance of Dolly in Moonraker." If they remember that she wore braces they ought to tell you right away. It would be the significant answer and feature because she mates up with Jaws who has metal teeth. It would mean that it's a memory that was already in their brain and wasn't suddenly planted there by you. Note the difference between... "Describe the cartoon Sun on the Raisin Bran box." and: "Does the cartoon Sun on the Raisin Bran box wear sunglasses?" The first one asks you to describe your already existing mental image memory. The second creates a fresh mental image and asks if that already resided in your memory. It could cause you to answer as if you have a specific memory when you really don't. |
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Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot skeptics are both plumb crazy. Each spends more than one minute per year thinking about Bigfoot. |
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15th March 2018, 05:50 PM | #240 |
Penultimate Amazing
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So, anyone ready for the "Episode IV" argument?
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