Talk:Mandela effect

Defining the effect...
This article begins "The Mandela effect is the pseudoscientific belief that some differences between one's memories and the real world are caused by changes to past events in the timeline."

I don't believe this is accurate. I think the Mandela Effect is better defined by the collective misremembering of events themselves, not by the pseudoscientific explanation for those misremembered events. The effect is simply that people share these false memories; be it rationally explained by events like media reenforcement, psychological stimuli, or confusion with other events; or irrationally explained by time travelers or wormholes or some nonsense.

I think its important to distinguish the perfectly valid recognition of a very real pattern of human behavior, from the ridiculous explanations for those patterns that bunk peddlars come up with.

Lacking a singular credible source for the definition of this effect, the internet certainly provides conflicting definitions. I believe this pidgeonholes the discussion in favor of the pseudoscientific, as the ridiculous arguments carry the 'name brand', rather than simply being one silly explanation among many more rational explanations for the greater overarching topic of false collective memories.

Examples in favor of this redefinition:
 * Snopes: "The Mandela Effect is a collective misremembering of a fact or event."
 * Wikipedia: "Similar false memories are sometimes shared by multiple people...In 2010 this phenomenon was dubbed the "Mandela Effect"..."

96.27.152.233 (talk)


 * I came here to post about the same thing. At the very least, the first sentence should make it clear that the article is addressing the superstitious perspective of the effect specifically.

128.76.238.18 (talk) 19:33, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Except...
YOu do realize that the patent office literally calls Jon and Stan Berenstain BARENSTEIN in 2001?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcfnI5uEZGg&feature=share

Yes, thats true. What you claim is some dumb scientific effect is actually a documented phenomenon. I'll give you that evidence beyond that Youtube video.

http://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pnam=Stanley%20Berenstein%20and%20Jan%20Berenstein%20%20

Explain why this is spelled with an "e". if the "Barenstain" bears was never spelled as such?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_and_Jan_Berenstain

Here is how the masses are claimed it was spelled now. I gave you evidence in the patents otherwise. From a linguistical perspective as well, "Barenstain", what sounds to be of German origin, is orthologically INCORRECT. Barenstein is obviously much more suitable and any German speaker here would confirm this (I admit to my stilted German)

Fopr all i know this will be deleted since the folks at Rational Wiki are always butthurt at differing opinions, but feel free to challenge these irrefutable facts if you are up to the task.75.175.107.128 (talk) 15:11, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
 * "What you claim is some dumb scientific effect is actually a documented phenomenon." What is this I don't even 90.205.108.150 (talk) 18:14, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
 * another Jewish conspiracy by (((Laurogeita Hamabost)))  (talk) 18:29, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
 * The Berenstains are of Eastern European Jewish, not German Jewish, descent. So what's etymologically correct in German is irrelevant; among Jews in the Slavic countries, -stain (or even -shtain) is more etymologically expected than -stein. 76.10.181.112 (talk) 17:13, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Daily mail as a good source?
They are legit crazy. 11:58, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Wait who thinks the Daily Mail is a good source? I am not the Ombud's man 21:24, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

A new page
How About a New Page To debunk all of them
 * Reverend Black Percy (talk) 23:27, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

The bible and it's words have been hanged or disremembered. And the world is changing... Idiot time travelers? or government conspiracy?!
Well Im not going to be insulting to you intelligent folks. But the fact is either we have been remembering things wrong or somethings been tampering with history....
 * What the hell do you mean, exactly? Reverend Black Percy (talk) 19:21, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

a new page
how about a new page to debunk all of them? --Godonaldgo (talk) 05:31, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

proof has surfaced that shazam movie is real
please update the article accordingly

FWIW, that video is an April fools joke from a Youtube series called CollegeHumor Originals. They got Sinbad to act in their fake 'found video'.FairDinkum (talk) 08:29, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

tone of the article
The tone of this article is extremely critical of those who believe in or are interested in the Mandela effect.

For example this sentence: What truly distinguishes a Mandela effect from a run of the mill error is that the discovery of this particular error was so profoundly disrupting to the person's basic sense of life, liberty and the pursuit of tentacle porn on the internet that it triggered a panic attack is inappropriate and, quite frankly, rude.

This sentence: The idea of the Mandela effect is mostly pushed by people who like to think the whole world revolves around themselves, so obviously if they remember anything differently from others then the world must be wrong, not their memory. is incorrect and nothing to do with why the Mandela effect theory exists. It exists because people have found it interesting that they and many others have conflicting memories of actual facts and want to theorise as to why that is.

Please update the article so it isn't so one-sided and biased against those who simply enjoy researching this the person that wrote it clearly has issues with it so shouldn't have in the first place. When writing articles like this, you should remain neutral and let others discuss their points of view separately from it. Thank you. Niamhzorina (talk) 13:46, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
 * This is not Wikipedia. 13:54, 17 April 2018 (UTC)


 * that doesnt excuse sloppy writing and piss poor jokes. aside from that the opening paragraph is full of shite not supported by anything in the article. Changes in past timelines and alternate realities? who thinks this? no one. AMassiveGay (talk) 15:38, 17 April 2018 (UTC)


 * If anyone with more time, and interest in writing, cares - here could possibly be a little explanation, perhaps: https://www.reddit.com/r/MandelaEffect/comments/9e1ubl/geordie_rose_founder_of_dwave_computers_insists/

mentioned in this article
http://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/26357/1/26357.pdf#page=97 19:45, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

f zero x
Hello together,

a mandela-effect thing i and many more people can swear on is the "multiplayermode" in f zero for the super nintendo entertainment system. it is widly accepted that this game has a multiplayer/splitscreen-mode, in fact it never had.

especialy young folks (30 - 35 years old) will remember this as a given fact that the game had a multiplayer-part.
 * I remember, quite specifically, being annoyed that there was no multiplayer and I had to trade controllers with my brother. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 21:23, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

This article is very biased and not rational at all.
ME could be a yet undiscovered physical phenomena, involving Multiverse and/or Quantum Physics, breaking our perception of reality, and can't be proven/disproven yet. Rational person would be open-minded and not dismiss something only because it sounds ridiculous when there is no evidence it's false. If scientists had the same attitude, we wouldn't have Relativity. I agree most examples are probably misremembering, but Fruit of the Loom is what has puzzled me to date. It's not one person misremembering, but many in the same way. Why would they all imagine cornucopia that doesn't fit the image? I suggest watching Quantum Businessman on YouTube, with a pinch of salt, of course. And be more open-minded.
 * You say:"only because it sounds ridiculous when there is no evidence it's false". The time to believe something is when there is evidence that it is true. And please - if you have arguments to make - make them yourself, and not via youtube links.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 16:51, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I've experienced it myself, but it's hard to prove to others. I remember when people argued that Laughing Cow had a golden nose ring which had never existed and skeptics said they mistook it with her golden earrings. But meanwhile the earrings changed to cheeseboxes while the discussion remained. Proof is here. Attacking someone because he has different opinion, like the article does, isn't very rational. It's just bullying. If Fruit of the Loom never had cornucopia then why this parody exists? How do you explain it? 89.77.120.188 (talk) 18:18, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * So we know that people misremember things. It's a mundane explanation. It's the sort of thing that happens every day.
 * You have not actually proposed an alternative more plausible explanation. I don't want to put words in your mouth - so what is your explanation?  Please - your words - not a link.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 18:58, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * You didn't answer my question about Flute of the Loom. Do you actually believe author of this illustration didn't check original logo before he made parody? I'm open to any possible explanations but misremembering just makes no sense. I personally think it's retrocausality, which is even supported by physicists. Altering the future could result in altering the past. There are experiments that prove it, but in microscopic scale. If I didn't use links you'd say I'm lying or have no evidence. Things I linked are no evidence, as it's impossible to (dis)prove ME, but they are hints on what's going on. Flute of the Loom one is really conviencing to me as FOTL was a popular underwear brand and author had them. There is interview with him on the internet and he said that he wouldn't make this logo like that if cornucopia had never existed. Answer my question: how could so many people imagine cornucopia that wasn't there? This makes no sense. 89.77.120.188 (talk) 19:43, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * So what is your personal explanation for the phenomenon? Then the next question is how would you test this explanation?Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 20:18, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I mean, it's not hard to explain why people would remember something that didn't exist. Let's use your example. This image is of a pile of fruit, which we normally see depicted with a cornucopia, except in this case it isn't. So we're used to remembering something one way, and are thus quite susceptible to suggestion. So when someone suggests that there was a cornucopia, we're more likely to believe them because we're used to seeing a cornucopia in similar images. This is related to "false memories" and other such phenomena. 21:09, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Author of Flute of the Loom looked at his FOTL underwear before he made an illustration. How could he get that wrong? Explain it. 89.77.120.188 (talk) 00:12, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Easy. No proof it happened. 00:33, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Firstly, yes I actually did answer your question, so "Nuh uh! [Repeats question here]" is not a valid response, but Argumentum ad nauseam. Secondly, the name of the company is "Fruit of the Loom", not "Flute of the Loom". This goes to my point about cognition and memory, since it's very easy to get worked up and mispronounce names or misremember logos, and with a bit of suggestion (intentional or unintentional) your brain will attempt to sort out the contradiction, with one type of memory overwriting another. The human mind is very fluid that way. 02:00, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I just want to note that while your point stands, when the Notorious A.I.P. talked about Flute of the Loom, he was referring to the parody that he linked earlier on, which erroneously contained a cornucopia. He asserted that the artist for that album cover (a man named Ellis Chapell), wouldn't have been likely to get the thing that he's parodying for that album cover incorrect, given that references for drawing may have been abundant. A random person on reddit (a member of r/MandelaEffect, surprise, surprise), claimed to have gotten into contact with him, and said that he asked him a bunch of questions regarding the Mandela Effect, but no answers to any of the questions were ever posted.  And while there is a distinct possibility that Ellis did look at a reference before painting the album cover, there also exists a possibility that he did not.  We haven't heard anything from the horse's mouth, (or even anything from somebody who claims to have an ear in the horse's mouth).  You can't claim one way or the other that he did or didn't do it from memory, so this example of the ME is inconclusive at best. Representative Slip Represent Yourself 02:31 21 January, 2020


 * Hello, I'm here to talk to you because you said the word "quantum". Do you want to know more about quantum mechanics and how it works, I'd love to teach you.  But it's really important that we start with some basics.  Quantum mechanics has no mechanism that would allow you to "remember" alternate universes.  Our perception of reality is very stable on the macro scale, and thought experiments like schrodinger's cat would collapse in femptoseconds.  Whatever part of quantum mechanics you think could possibly explain your bad memory can't, and I'd be happy to help you run the math on that if you have any particular theories you'd like to suggest.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:25, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * In my universe, it's not spelled Berenstain or Berenstein! ... It's Bloodstain. 22:56, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I still remember how the Bob-omb enemy, I kept calling it "Bomb-omb". 23:07, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I always thought "Bob" was pronounced like the name. 00:39, 21 January 2020 (UTC)


 * "Quantum mechanics has no mechanism that would allow you to "remember" alternate universes" How you do know? It hasn't been veryfied yet. Give me a mathematical proof that ME is just misremembering. You should know that many key elements of quantum mechanics has yet to be discovered and we still know very little about nature of reality (but very much at the same time). Attacking people that believe in ME is just rude and unprofessional. Even now you use argumentum ad personam, stating that you have more knowledge than me, which isn't a valid argument. 89.77.120.188 (talk) 00:12, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * That's not how argumentation works, dude. You are making the extraordinary claim, so you have to back it up. If you're not gonna do that, then we can and will dismiss you out of hand. 00:31, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Actually, no let me defend this one. "Many elements of quantum mechanics have yet to be discovered" is a bit inaccurate.   What we lack nowadays are: A. quantum gravity and B.  Extremely high energy particle physics(and some think those are probably the same thing).  The behavior of say, an electron traveling at non-relativistic speeds and interacting with other "conventional" particles is relatively well understood and can be described with just a couple equations, like the Dirac Equation.  Now, unless you're making the case that these memories are literally falling from the sky, let's rule out quantum gravity as a plausible concern.  And nothing inside your head operates at relativistic energies, not a single particle.
 * All that means we're dealing with conventional standard model physics. So... what mechanisms for communicating information to the atoms of your brain are there.
 * Conventional physical interaction. Photon bounces off the book that always fucking said "berenstain bears" hits your retinas, energies an electron in a cone, which raises an energy level, deforms a protein, releasing chemical energy stored therein, changing the state of the cell, triggering the neuron to fire, combined with several other retinal neurons, sending a signal to your brain that triggers a memory of the fairly common "stein" ending which is similar, and thus creating a (quite literally) delusional state of thinking it says berenstein.  Welp, conventional interaction is out, because it implies correctly that you're fallible and this is wrong.
 * Entanglement, spooky action at a distance. Ignoring for the moment all the experiments like the Quantum Eraser that show that it can't actually carry information per se,  entanglement occurs when two particles(most commonly electrons for common experiments) occupy a set of states where some combinations are mutually exclusive.  For example being the +1/2  spin 1S shell electron and the -1/2 spin 1S shell electron in a hydrogen atom.  If one were to be changed by an outside force, the other would simultaneously change to maintain the mutual state exclusivity.  Or more realistically, they have mutually exclusive probabilities of possessing each state, such that one has an 80% of having the +1/2 spin the other would necessarily have a 20% chance of having +1/2 spin.  ANYWAYS.  Such entanglement comes from having very very close interaction with each other in very small scales.  The moment one of two must necessarily have one state or the other, the entanglement collapses and both have the specific state the mutual exclusion implies.  This "collapse" comes from what we call observation, but more strictly refers to directly interacting with any other particle.  An entangled electron hitting a wall at high speeds would leave a mark, and collapse the state for both itself and its partner.   So how could we construct an alternate universe where entanglement crosses universe lines?  We can't.  There's no mutually exclusive states with alternate universes.  None of the eiganstates of any particle are informed by that.
 * Once we have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how incredibly probable, is the truth. Namely that you're full of it.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 16:28, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Why the burden of proof lies with the one making the extraordinary claim
Excalibur is buried in my back garden. Prove it isn't. Avida Dollarsher again 21:19, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I can't and thefore I won't say it's necessarily false. And most importantly, I won't insult you only because you think that way and I definitely won't make an entire article stating it's not true when I have no evidence. I'll just leave it and go on. This article is nothing but slurs. I know ME is real and I know I can't prove it. I had been paying close attetion to one particular information every day and it changed to me overnight. I know you won't believe me, I know why, but that doesn't me you have a right to make fun of ME. Let's assume for once it is real: What should I do? Let you guys insult other people? It really doesn't sound very rational of RationalWiki. It would be rational if it had both arguments for and against, not just insults. Actually, you are making the same mistake conspiracy theorists do, you don't even consider arguments against your side. 89.77.120.188 (talk) 22:42, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * 22:48, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I see you're just going to ignore my counter-points... Ok then. Live in a delusion. Because that's what you're doing. You ignore what others say and insist you are correct, even when proven wrong. 00:14, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * That's not actually the mistake of conspiracy theorists, FYI. Failure to apply hanlon's razor is probably the most common one, followed by failure to apply occam's razor, which is the one you're dropping the ball on.  If you can show me an explicit metaphysical way that an alternate universe can create an effect on eiganstates for even a single particle's wave fuction, I'll reconsider your arguments' merits.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 02:04, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Rationalism demands dealing with probabilities. Nothing can be proven with absolute certainty; using that as a standard of evidence leads inevitably to solipsism. Ultimately, invoking a multiverse just to explain the Mandela Effect is a far more complicated solution than it simply being a memory effect, an idea which is supported by the evidence. Furthermore, there are infinitely many possible explanations for the Mandela Effect (it could, for example, be caused by magical emanations from Excalibur in Avida Dollars' back garden). Since there is no compelling reason to believe these ideas, a rationalist approach demands the acceptance of the simplest explanation that fits the evidence: in this case, cognition is fallible and biased. 35.2.205.26 (talk) 03:07, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * We're being generous about "possible" here, since we know it's that people's memory sucks and they can't see even the most minimal fault in themselves under any circumstances. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 17:07, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Indeed, we know that people make many mistakes when they remember things. This known, demonstrable, commonplace explanation has to the default. We would need a mountain of alternative evidence - not opinion, conjecture, or firm beliefs - to demonstrate that an explanation involving alternative universes or whatever was the explanation. But we have zero evidence in favour of this. Nothing.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 19:43, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Naming issue
Isn't this known as the 'Mengele Effect'? --Scherben (talk) 21:31, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Forest Gump
The famous line of Forest Gump is often given as an example of this but in reality there are two versions - the promotional trailer ("Life is like a box of chocolates") and the actual movie ("Life was like a box of chocolates*). so no false memory involved--BruceGrubb (talk) 22:30, 14 March 2022 (UTC)