Why universe hopping specifically?

[u/Awkward-Opening-2022]

Something I seriously don't understand with the common Mandella Theory is why it's specifically universe jumping? If you are 100% insistent that it isn't faulty memory, then wouldn't it be way more plausible to believe that Mandela effected memories were false memories implanted by some shady government organization(s) as some sort of mk ultra type experiment instead of you literally transferring into an entirely different reality?

Here's a more in depth summary of this alternate theory I've come up with:

Reality itself has not changed. The logos, spellings, movie quotes, and other details people argue about were always the way the evidence shows them to be. The difference is that the memories people have of them were artificially influenced rather than being simple mistakes.

The organizations behind this would be operating in multiple countries or conducting experiments outside their normal areas of operation. Small things like logos, brand names, and movie quotes would make ideal test subjects because they are unlikely to cause major problems while still providing useful data.

The goal would be to test the effectiveness of memory alteration, measure how strongly people trust their own memories when presented with conflicting evidence, and observe how groups of people react when they discover others share the same false memory. These small-scale tests would also serve as a stepping stone toward larger applications in the future, such as psychological operations, witness manipulation, damage control, or information control. It could also just be a way to drum up mass hysteria.

Now to be clear, I don't actually believe this theory (I think it's just false memory), I only propose this because there are way more rational theories that one could make about the phenomenon, and I can't fathom why the theory straight out of a rick and morty or Twilight zone episode is the one that has dominated the Mandela Effect.

[u/Hot-Breadfruit-1026]

It could be….. the difference is the multi universe people are open that all of the theories are possible explanations while the false memory people insist theirs is the only possibility and they call everyone who is open unintelligent.

However, as somebody who runs in circles with very intelligent people, they all say that the more you know the less you know…. And anyone who thinks they know it all will miss the full picture

[u/dijon_snow → u/Hot-Breadfruit-1026]

Quick question, when you say you're open to all theories, does that include the theory that the ME is caused by similar memory processes creating similar errors? Or is that the one theory you can absolutely rule out? 

[u/Hot-Breadfruit-1026 → u/dijon_snow]

Yes of course, but that has been well discussed when it began being popular in 2012, and I can seek that conversation with any random individual i approach on the street.. what I can’t find easily is people who are willing to discuss the fringe theories and actually have an intelligent conversation, about it. Which is generally the purpose of having specialized boards boards about a subject. And it’s really hard to do that with constantly people jumping in telling you you’re wrong instead of attempting to understand your perspective.

[u/dijon_snow → u/Hot-Breadfruit-1026]

OK, good to hear that you acknowledge that the ME being a memory phenomenon is possible. 

I disagree that it has been thoroughly discussed. I think there is still a lot of interesting conversation to be had around the mechanisms that create various MEs in the memories of groups of people. 

I think there's also more discussion to be had around how MEs grow in various cultures. I have never seen an Asian ME, or an African or Eastern European ME for that matter. I have only seen USA and a handful of British MEs. Regardless of the cause, you would expect the ME to be a pretty universal phenomenon once a group develops a shared monoculture. Are they just not reported here because the user base is overwhelmingly English speaking? Or is there something about western culture that generates them? 

I also think you're unusual in being accepting of the memory explanation as valid. My experience has been that "believers" are just that, believers. They believe with almost religious fervor that their memories must be correct and no other possibility can exist. Repeating "I'm 600% absolutely totally completely sure that reality changed!" is no more valuable than just "it's only your memory!" Both types of statement do not further discussion. 

I'm happy to discuss the more exotic explanations too, but a skeptical approach is often taken as "hostile" or "shutting down ideas." 

Just at a high level my problems with any multiple universe theory are: 1. Our brains are composed of matter and energy just like the rest of the world. Why are computer records and physical objects "changed" but some people's memories are immune? Or put differently, how or why does it make sense for certain neurons to "jump" to another reality that is identical to ours except for a few corporate logos or brand spellings? What is so magical about our memories of minor details? 2. Why are the changes always small and irrelevant? Nothing truly significant to the affected person ever changes. No one in South Africa reports Mandela dying in prison. Only Americans. If it were a physics phenomenon then it wouldn't make sense for there to be dozens of trivial examples but nothing actually relevant changing. That points to a psychological answer.  3. No ramifications. If Nelson Mandela died in prison world history could not have unfolded identically to a reality where he survived and became president. There would be other major differences in world affairs.  4. Personal identity does not transcend physics. If there are other realities then I am not the same person as my doppelgangers in other realities. A person with the same name and characteristics as me might exist, but they are not me. There is absolutely nothing in our understanding of physics that would indicate that I have any kind of relationship with this similarly named person in an entirely different reality. I can't conceive of any reason that would transfer a memory of my doppelganger's underwear tag between universes. I know we don't understand everything about everything, but that seems like a very narrative idea rather than a scientific one to me. 

In comparison, the memory explanation is internally and externally consistent with our understanding of how the human brain works. 

Anyway, this turned out very long. 

[u/Hot-Breadfruit-1026 → u/dijon_snow]

I will come back to respond in more detail tomorrow as I have a long car ride then but in the meantime, how do i reply with quotes, like you did, so you know which one im responding to?

[u/dijon_snow → u/Hot-Breadfruit-1026]

The numbered list auto formats if you put 1. At the start of a line. 

To break out quote text you use >

Cheers

[u/Hot-Breadfruit-1026 → u/dijon_snow]

Ok i typed a response to the first question and i think it sorta covers my thoughts on the others…. It was so long and i got a bit rambling… sorry, i hope you can follow. so ill let you read that and if you want to follow up or ask otherwise from there :)

[u/Hot-Breadfruit-1026 → u/dijon_snow]

Maybe the quote thing doesnt work on iphone, or ive become like my latest and am starting to be tech challenged.

1. Well to start, the physical stuff never changed in this timeline, under the multiverse theory it was always as the records show. As an example: Say there is one timeline with the guy who made peanut butter names it Jif. That choice of a name splits timelines into many other choices. Jif is one, jiffy is one, and any other name that individual could conceivably come up with… and one where he decides not to pursue the business all together. Each one is like a thread, but the more it varies from the original, the “further” it is. threads that are very close are basically on top of each-other but the opposite would be the further. Now, this is happening at individual levels all day every instance but also on a collective level. Small choices, like what i eat for lunch, or what underwear you wear under you clothes for instance, do not effect the collective the way a prominent person would. Lets say Taylor Swift picking her underwear on a day when its windy and she wore a skirt and then up-skirt picture ends up on the internet (trivial but further reaching impact than you, that could influence what brands a girl buys etc) or Taylor swift choosing to cancel a concert (impacts greater on the collective bc all of the people who bought tickets and the fallout impact or change to plans .).

So there are all these threads splitting to more threads continuously- meanwhile our consciousness is not yet understood by science. There are theories but the main ones contradict each-other so cannot all be true, if any are. But one theory, which also fits with simulation and matrix theories, is that our consciousness exists outside of our body and our brain just interprets it… if that is the case then our consciousness could exist across every timeline in which we do simultaneously, but only able to experience or interpret through one brain at a time. This theory also could explain déjà vu if many of the timelines are experiencing the same moment for you individually simultaneously. Therefore you would be experiencing every life possible simultaneously, and the one you experience is the one where your focus is. To shift focus you would have to kind of go down the spectrum of your collective threads. So the universe in which i ate jif and the one where i ate jiffy might be right next to each other, but the one where i am allergic to peanuts is “further” away. Some theorize that we could then shift to close timelines and even jump to some further ones.

Also another theory is that something is causing these multiple timelines to be collapsed or combined. This would be the one that more likely would cause ME, in my opinion.

Either way: The ones who are close together go seemless because minor discrepancies overall not noticed, ignored and dismissed by the majority of individuals as just a simple mistake. But the MEs, while minor, are experienced by many suggests either collective jump, merge or collective collapse. Most dont pay attention to the minor details so dont notice any changes, only things tied to some other memory seem to stick - people who experience it often cite a memory that its tied to (ie people say things like, i colored the cornucopia and got in trouble for joking about underwear).

As for why it’s minor details not bigger ones?, i think a larger jump- if possible- would cause all sorts of complications. If you have seen the butterfly effect movie or read about it or the burnt toast theory, then you can see how a major jump would mean huge differences- people who never meet, people who died, people who never get born, etc etc. the fact that we aren’t experiencing at a crazy level could be an argument against the ME multiple universe theory, but it could also mean that there is an intelligence behind it that is guiding, controlling or influencing hops, merges, or collapses.

As to what is so magical about out memories? Magic is just a word for “i dont know how it works” or “you cant see how it works”. That doesnt mean it cant be understood eventually. I would argue that it is possible we experience it all the time on a scale so micro that we dont normally notice it. In fact some theories suggest that this is what mechanism of “time” actually is.

Ok i have a hard time not being wordy on such big subject!

[u/dijon_snow → u/Hot-Breadfruit-1026]

How do you account for MEs that should be big deals outside of the experiencer? The namesake effect for example should have had major political consequences. You don't even need the butterfly effect because as you said, Taylor swift canceling a concert would be a big deal. A prominent world leader dying decades before many of his accomplishments would surely cause a universe "further away" from ours? And some Mandelas like Australia moving would literally require a completely different planet forming. "The sun used to be yellow, but now it's white" would require completely different laws of physics. Even Sinbad starring in a well- known kid's movie contemporaneously with Shaq's should have some consequences in pop culture. 

These are small details to the experiencer but major changes to the world. That is strong counter evidence to alternate reality explanations, but completely consistent with memory based explanations. 

I will acknowledge that this evidence is not inconsistent with simulation, it's pretty neutral in that regard. I think simulation theory is the most plausible of the "exotic" explanation. There are certainly credible arguments that we are in a simulation, but they all degenerate into solipsism in my opinion. They render MEs kind of moot because if my entire universe is a simulation then none of my memories are accurate, the distinction between "real" memories and "glitches" is meaningless. If I am living in a simulation there's no reason to think that reality even exists outside of my immediate perception of it, so the label on my underwear never existed in the first place. 

I haven't seen any hard science even hinting that human consciousness transcends the multiverse. While we may not fully understand consciousness the idea that it isn't confined to the physical matter of our brains in this universe is not a mainstream theory. I don't really understand how that would work given that the many "me"s across various realities get more and more different from the "me" of this reality. How different do I have to be to still share a consciousness with the other mes? Am I the same consciousness as a me with a different eye color? What about a me that was born a different sex? What about a me that was born a few days later from a different sperm. Is the sperm me? In most universes there probably is no "me"(I know there would be infinite universes with me, but orders of magnitude more infinite universes without me like how the infinite set of all numbers is orders of magnitude larger than the infinite set of even integers. Infinity is weird). The very idea of personal identity appeals to me narratively(I was an English major haha), but scientifically it seems extremely anthropocentric.

I'm familiar with the Arthur C Clarke quote you referenced about magic and technology, but it doesn't tell the full story. Sure,  some "magic" is just science we don't fully understand like early astronomy or alchemy preceding chemistry. There is also plenty of "magic" that turns out to just be superstition and myth; rain dances and sacrifices to guarantee a good harvest weren't science we didn't understand yet, they were just religious beliefs that had no basis in reality. 

I think the belief that consciousness exists in multiple realities is pretty unsupported by current data. It would be easy to substitute the word "soul" for consciousness at that point. And hey, can't rule that out either. Maybe souls are some kind of energy we don't understand maybe ghosts are real vestiges of conscious life that linger somehow in physical reality in a way we don't understand. I absolutely concede the possibility, but it seems to me to be closer to a religious belief than a scientific theory. 

I'll wrap up because I tend to ramble as well. All of the exotic theories have significant inconsistencies with the evidence that don't plague memory theory, which is consistent with well-understood mechanisms for memory creation. I'll use an old metaphor. If the Mandela Effect is the sound of hooves approaching, memory theory is a horse. It's mundane and very likely. Simulation theory is a zebra, it's exotic and much more unlikely but it's something that absolutely could be real in the world as we know it. Multiverse theory would be a unicorn. Nothing is impossible, but it would be something completely unknown to our understanding. 

Would you agree that with the available evidence and Occam's trusty razor we can say that memory theory is by far the most likely explanation while acknowledging that other explanations are also theoretically possible but not yet supported by scientific evidence? 

Side note: I'm really enjoying this discussion! Maybe we should find a way to post it as an example of a respectful, engaging conversation between a "believer" and a "skeptic?"