The Mandela Effect Finally Explained

who is this person wrong there is no Elvis Presley and there never was this rock and roll icon's name is actually Elvis Presley now of course that's not true his name is Elvis Presley but the earth-shattering feeling you just experienced is what some might call the Mandela effect and you're going to want to buckle up the Mandela effect is a real phenomenon described as when a group of people adamantly believe in incident or experience occurred that never did scientists at the University of Chicago described the Mandela effect as quote an internet phenomenon describing shared and

consistent false memories for specific icons in popular culture they found that it is both empirically observable as well as so far having no clear explanation the term was created by a self-proclaimed paranormal consultant Fiona Broome in 2009 after she discovered she was one of many people who wrongly remembered Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s while the South African civil rights leader lived on until 2013. in one of the most popular instances of the Mandela effect people adamantly claim that there's a 1990s movie about a genie called Shazam and starring actor and comedian Sinbad

the obvious explanation would be that those who remember this are simply confusing this with a 1996 film Kazam about a genie starring Shaquille O'Neal and conflating it with one of the several Sinbad movies from the same time in a smaller instance take a look at this image of the Pokemon character Pikachu many fans of Pokemon remember the character is having a yellow tail with a black tip however Pikachu's tail has never had a black tip the Mandela effect has also shown up in instances regarding how people remember movie lines for example one of the most

widely quoted movie lines in the Star Wars franchise is spoken by Darth Vader in Star Wars episode 5 The Empire Strikes Back many people remember the line as Luke I am your father however the word spoken are actually no I am your father similarly in 1937 Disney released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and although many people still quote the line mirror mirror on the wall who's the fairest of them all this is not actually spoken in the film the actual line begins with magic mirror on the wall now I must mention that I too

have personally experienced this phenomenon like many others on the internet I grew up with a popular children's book series that I thought was The Berenstein Bears only to find out that it is now and always was the baron stain bears but how could this be some believe the Mandela effect may be due to the many worlds or the Multiverse theory of quantum mechanics in this Theory people like Broome are not misremembering but instead their reality got crossed with another though it's now popular in the Marvel Cinematic Universe the many worlds interpretation theory was developed in

the mid-20th century and basically states there are many worlds which exist parallel to our own in space and time the theory was originally developed by Irwin Schrodinger as a way to explain a phenomenon in quantum physics and purports that there are no alternative outcomes to events all outcomes happen simultaneously in 1955 Hugh Everett a then PhD student introduced the idea of the universe quote splitting into alternate versions of itself when faced with a Quantum choice each possible outcome of a choice creates a new universe and these universes are identical up until the moment where the

event is triggered it might go without saying but just in case Quantum physicists in the 1950s developed the mini world's interpretation Theory to explain experiments in quantum physics and not the Mandela effect but by this logic both timelines the one where Mandela died in prison and the one where he lived until 2013 exists but in separate realities those who remember one reality but find it didn't actually happen are not misremembering they may have lived in one universe and somehow switched into another or reality itself has shifted but since there's no doctor strange or Green Goblin

in the real world how and why might our realities be shifting so wildly a popular explanation for how realities are shifting involves CERN the European Organization for nuclear research some believe that CERN is conducting experiments that have caused us to enter an alternate reality and their Large Hadron Collider is at the center of this conspiracy the Large Hadron Collider which opened in 2008 and was recently turned back on in July of 2022 after a Hiatus is the world's most powerful particle accelerator and was created to help scientists better understand the structure and building blocks of

the universe this idea has gained traction on Tick Tock where a supposed whistleblower has gone viral making claims such as quote CERN is opening parallel Dimensions that causes the change in climate it has long been the topic of fear and conspiracy but when it was announced it would be going back online some conspiracy theorists and fans of Netflix hit sci-fi comedy musical show stranger things spread rumors that it would open a portal to an alternate universe as more conspiracy theorists have started discussing cern's work on Tick-Tock certain particle physicist Claire Nellis has taken the responding

to some and sharing more about her work with the Large Hadron Collider I've seen a lot of videos going viral making claims about CERN and when I see that it tells me we need to communicate even further because they're getting informed by the conspiracy theories they hear but not everyone believes we're living out the plot of Marvel's phase four or five I don't know I can't keep track anymore some people have a more technological approach and think we're actually living out the plot of the freaking Matrix as explained in a video that I also made

and is in my opinion worth a watch some believe that reality as we know it is simply just a simulation and that we are either being controlled or confined by other beings this scientific theory can be traced back to a seminal paper about the simulation argument from 2003 by Nick Bostrom but the theory was widely introduced to many people by the 1999 science fiction movie The Matrix the concept of a simulation even has its roots in ancient works like Plato's Cave allegory or zhuangzhou's butterfly dream if there were an error in the simulation and the

programmers fixed it it could lead to false memories offering a possible explanation for the Mandela effect as is theorized a simulation might be created to see how we might react to certain situations and alternatively the mistake could actually be on purpose as our programmers might hope to make us suspicious to see how we might react to that essentially any awareness of a simulation could in fact be part of the simulation itself what makes many of these theories compelling is that although you cannot prove them you also cannot definitely disprove them the biggest flaw in the

idea that the Mandela effect is caused by the many worlds interpretation is that the theory only works along the understood lines of quantum physics if information cannot be transferred across worlds so for the same reason the idea seems plausible it must also be rejected as for cern's work with the Large Hadron Collider the board of the international Mandela effect conference has said CERN is just as valid of a theory as any other at this point however one of its members has also noted that the quote earliest Mandela effects were happening long before cern's Large Hadron

Collider fired up in response to conspiracy claims a spokesman for CERN said quote cern's research captures the imaginations of lots of people which is why CERN has been featured in a lot of science fiction books even movies around the world but excluding the idea that we might be living out the plot of the Multiverse of Madness stranger things The Matrix or any number of the Cars movies there are possibly real world explanations according to a 2020 study in the Journal of psychological science 76 percent of adults made at least one detectable error when asked to

recall information even though most test subjects scored very high most people's memories are still capable of making even a small mistake some believe that the Mandela effect is the result of our brain reconsolidating memories MRI research has shown that memories are stored in our brains nearby to similar memories Caitlyn amode a neuroscientist explains quote memories are organized in the brain so that similar memories are stored in nearby neurons when a memory is recalled those cells are able to change their connection which allows for the addition of new information but because neurons that fire together wire

together sometimes false memories can emerge from erroneous connections for example if you learn that Alexander Hamilton was a founding father at the same time you learned that he was not president but other founding fathers were you are more likely to misremember that Alexander Hamilton was President because neurons fired when asked about Hamilton were also fired when asked about presidents a popular example of this could be found in the case of Nelson Mandela's death in 1977 another anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko did die while imprisoned both baiko and Mandela were Leaders with similar achievements it is therefore

possible that people who remember Della dying in prison have actually just woven the memories of these men together Additionally the internet might be participatory in a certain amount of suggestibility according to emote suggestibility is the tendency to believe what others suggest to be true this is why lawyers are prohibited from asking Witnesses leading questions that suggest a specific answer there is also research to prove that when false information is given to us by someone else it can actually weaken the Fidelity of an existing memory so if someone was to suggest that you had read The

Berenstein Bears your brain might create a memory of you doing so like before the internet I doubt everyone individually decided that their least favorite word was moist perhaps prior to Reddit people might have met stinky or rat trap was similar to stain and I'm sure if given enough time you might also be able to come up with an instance or two where large groups on the internet have fervently formed communities around to put it nicely wrong information another theory might also be that people just can't admit when they are wrong according to scientists many people

tend to believe their own memories over someone else's this could be due to Ego protection or cognitive dissonance the state of knowing conflicting information but still resisting a change in opinion or behavior whatever the reason this one's a real head scratcher it also seems that each instance of these false memories could have their own case specific explanation what we do know for certain is that at this moment all we have is the here and now so be nice to yourself and everyone around you and maybe nobody will misremember you as being anything but [Music]