The Mandela Effect

[elevenism]

I am tired of people being so dismissive of actual high strangeness because "science."

Science is as faulty as religion.
The science i learned in school in the nineties is mostly obsolete. We just discovered another fucking planet in the solar system. We don't know shit. The arrogance takes me aback, and it is quite similar to the arrogance of religious zealots.

Isn't it pretty fucking strange that there are 7 billion living, breathing, talking primates dominating this planet who eat, drink, sleep, shit, and fuck? Isn't it strange that these sentient sacks of matter have consciousness, produce art, have deep religious beliefs, hopes and dreams and aspirations, have insanely complex social structures, and have engineered a network with which to communicate with one another that also contains all the information in the world?
Isn't it strange that anything exists at all?

As Dave Chapelle said, the worst thing you can call someone is crazy. It's dismissive.

SO-there is this Ayn-Randian objective box into which all knowledge must neatly fit.
If anyone believes, or even ponders, anything that doesn't fit into this agreed-upon box, they are labeled a "wacky conspiracy theorist" (even when the subject at hand doesn't involve any conspiracy. Look up the word conspiracy. Hundreds of millions of "conspiracies" are committed every day) and dismissed.
This is called "contempt prior to investigation."
Everyone knows everything and speaks from an intellectual high ground on which they have already solved all the mysteries of the universe, and frankly, it maddens me.

[botley]

I am tired of people being so dismissive of actual high strangeness because "science."

I don't dismiss the so-called Mandela Effect (actually a better description would be 'sticky memories', because they get stuck in the brain's 'truthiness detector' despite overwhelming evidence that they're wrong); however, I disbelieve that this phenomenon constitutes evidence of parallel realities. The human memory system is incredibly fallible, particularly when the brain is presented with confusing information (how could Berenstain even be a real surname, when the one I remember is clearly more plausible? how could a political prisoner become the democratically elected president of his nation after spending DECADES in jail? how could the thing I SWEAR TO GOD I HEARD ONE WAY actually turn out to be a different way — after hearing an almost infinite number of other things in the intervening years). But there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio. Seeing is believing (or rather, observation is evidence), but memory cannot be trusted. Institutional safeguards at all levels of society exist to prevent this fact from fucking up the everyday operations of our lives. If you relied on your memory, quite quickly you'd be fucked over by its failings. This has been demonstrated ad nauseum.

Science is as faulty as religion.
The science i learned in school in the nineties is mostly obsolete. We just discovered another fucking planet in the solar system. We don't know shit. The arrogance takes me aback, and it is quite similar to the arrogance of religious zealots.

True, we as individuals don't have a reliable view of reality (see above), but the good news is that science actually takes this into account and can revise its conclusions to better reflect improved data that conflicts with older explanatory models. That very same conflicting data, when shown to contradict your personalized theory of how things happened in your memory, in my view, causes the strangeness of sticky memories. Pluto was totally a planet and now it's not considered to be one anymore, but these fucking scientists are saying there's ANOTHER planet out even further?? What the fuck, scientists??!? (From what I've heard, the 'new' planet has not yet been observed, it's only theoretical at this point.) This is potentially upsetting, to be sure, but it's not evidence that science is broken — this is actually evidence that it's doing its job.

SO-there is this Ayn-Randian objective box into which all knowledge must neatly fit.
If anyone believes, or even ponders, anything that doesn't fit into this agreed-upon box, they are labeled a "wacky conspiracy theorist" (even when the subject at hand doesn't involve any conspiracy. Look up the word conspiracy. Hundreds of millions of "conspiracies" are committed every day) and dismissed.
This is called "contempt prior to investigation."
Everyone knows everything and speaks from an intellectual high ground on which they have already solved all the mysteries of the universe, and frankly, it maddens me.

I'm not speaking about anything that's unavailable to anyone with the ability and will to investigate. You can come to whatever conclusion about the mysteries you want. I'd like to judge people only by the quality of their ideas, and sometimes more particularly their ability to make them useful. Parallel realities on those counts doesn't cut the mustard for me, no matter who's saying it.

[allegro]

The human memory system is incredibly fallible

And amazing that if even WORKS, especially if you take some neurology classes; you walk away going, "holy shit, that's incredible!"

Memory is also highly subject to the power of suggestion, e.g. the Mandela Affect.

Or why sometimes what we think we remember is what we dreamed. Some of our memories are not real.

[elevenism]

Parallel realities on those counts doesn't cut the mustard for me, no matter who's saying it.

I am a big Michio Kaku fan.

Also, @botley , as far as the paranormal stuff goes, most of it for me is for fun.
SOME of it crosses the line, but usually it's more of a "what if."

edit: Furthermore, i don't believe that i have said anything in this thread regarding parallel realities.
I said high strangeness.
@allegro , at least half of my favorite memories aren't real.