Your Guide to Understanding the Mandella Effect
In 2009, Fiona Broome went to a conference after which she made a series of observations on her website.
She was communicating with others about the tragedy of former South African president Nelson Mandela. They recounted his death in a South African prison in the 1980s. People remember seeing news coverage of his death. The speech by his widow. Large amounts of people tuned in BUT this never happened!
Mandela didn’t die a prison at all but rather passed away due to illness in 2013. This inspired Broome to publish about such incidents and coin the term “The Mandela Effect”.
The Mandela Effect is the belief of a large number of people in an event that never actually happened. There are many different examples of such incidents taking place. Let’s look at a few below.
Luke, I am your father
In Star Wars Episode V the iconic line “Luke, I am your father.”
To my surprise, the actual line is “No, I am your father.” Until the moment of writing this post, I believed it was the former version.
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
In Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs, the line goes “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” This is also FALSE and is instead “*Magic*mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”. I am convinced that was the other timeline.
The Parade post covers 50 more of these incidents. One of them talks about double Stuf Oreos versus double stuff Oreos to entice you.
So why do these happen in the first place?
There are 2 theories to make some sense of it. One of them builds on Quantum physics and one of the sciences of Memory consolidation.
Quantum Physics
The theory states alternative timelines exist all the time and intermingle with the “reality” we experience. Each choice has 2 possibilities that go on from moment to moment leading to infinite realities.
This is a stretch idea but there is also no way to disprove this idea. The probability might be super small that it exists but super small still means non-zero. The mystery passes on from generation to generation with different names but holds the same effect.
The second explanation-based memory involves looking at the science of false memories.
Let’s take Alexander Hamilton, for example, you learn of him as one of the founding fathers of the United States and how he wasn’t a president. Still when people are asked, “Did Hamilton hold the presidency?” it is a surprise a lot of people tend to believe he was a President.
The area of the brain where memories for presidents of the USA are stored uses something called memory traces. The means to store these memory traces are called engrams.
These engrams collect to become frameworks in which similar memories are associated with each other as schemas.
The interconnected neurons get activated when the thought “Alexander Hamilton” occurs, which turns on the area of memories associated with Presidents.
It’s supported by evidence that recalling memories instead of perfectly recounting them changes details that become ground truth over time.
Memories are not a reliable source of information in the long run.
That’s another reason why techniques like journaling are good at making sure the details stay intact even when our memories will fail us.
I found it pretty interesting there’s a whole community on Reddit focused on Mandela Effect. Now you know about it too and maybe this will become a Mandela Effect in the future itself. Who knows?
Have a great week.
What’s one memory you remember differently than someone else’s recount of the story?
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