A serious discussion of woo-woo, for a change.
Since turning 68, I spent a little thing this weekend reviewing some of the oddities of my life.
Sure, the precognitive dreams are there. It’s a topic we’ve gone over before, though.
But the one we haven’t reviewed is the strange case of a high school classmate of mine who we’ll call Bill, although that’s not his real name. One reason I am so much looking forward to my 50th class reunion this year is…wait! You need a ton of background to really grok this odd little tale.
You will need specifics about a number of odd phenomena because you, too, may encounter them in the world.
One of these is called a “false memory” and Wikipedia puts it this way:
“False memory is the psychological phenomenon in which a person recalls a memory that did not actually occur. False memory is often considered in legal cases regarding childhood sexual abuse.
This phenomenon was initially investigated by psychological pioneers Pierre Janet and Sigmund Freud.
Freud wrote The Aetiology of Hysteria, where he discussed repressed memories of childhood sexual trauma in their relation to hysteria.
Elizabeth Loftus has, since her debuting research project in 1974, been a lead researcher in memory recovery and false memories. False memory syndrome recognizes false memory as a prevalent part of one’s life in which it affects the person’s mentality and day-to-day life.
False memory syndrome differs from false memory in that the syndrome is heavily influential in the orientation of a person’s life, while false memory can occur without this significant effect.
The syndrome takes effect because the person believes the influential memory to be true.
However, its research is controversial and the syndrome is excluded from identification as a mental disorder and, therefore, is also excluded from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
False memory is an important part of psychological research because of the ties it has to a large number of mental disorders, such as PTSD.”
Enter the “Mandela Effect.”
The phenom gets its name from the life of Nelson Mandela. A civil rights activist in South Africa in the days of apartheid, Mandela was imprisoned. He did a stretch of 27 years in all before being released from prison by F.W. de Klerk in 1990 who was at the time president of South Africa.
Now here’s the point that matters: LOTS and LOTS of people – including me – remember Mandela as having died in prison around 1987-1988 or so.
NO!
Not so proclaims Wikipedia; instead he lived until 2013.
If you poll your friends, you are likely to find more than a few who remember the “false death” of Mandela, consequently the term “Mandela effect.”
This has some very interesting implications for quantum physics, as much as psychology. Because there is some evidence that the world “splits and goes off in several directions at once.” After doing so, it will “rejoin itself” periodically.
If you think of Life as moving along a timeline, these “breaks” as spelled out in the MWI might look something like this as frames on a motion picture:
The Wikipedia on this is
“The quantum-mechanical “Schrödinger’s cat” theorem according to the many-worlds interpretation. In this interpretation, every event is a branch point; the cat is both alive and dead, even before the box is opened, but the “alive” and “dead” cats are in different branches of the universe, both of which are equally real, but which do not interact with each other.”
The M.W.I. – many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics – can explain a huge number of vexing (but nevertheless REAL) problems of the modern world.
For one, it may explain the mechanism of Prayer. For just as Schrödinger’s cat had about equal future potential to be alive or dead, it is the Observer State that seems to matter. And as Lynn McTaggart has outline in the fine book The Field, what an Observer expects has a very lalrge amount to do with the eventual outcome along these time breaks in the M.W.I.
This gets us to the core of this morning’s conundrum: How do we know the clinical difference between “false memories” of the sort involved in childhood sexual abuse repression versus the more widely reported “Mandela Effects” that seem to afflict the whole population?
So bizarre is the Mandela Effect that Buzz Feed’s Christopher Hudspeth put a list of examples today back in 2010 that you can read over here and test yourself on.
I regret to inform you that more thank HALF of the examples cited run contrary to my personal memory. Which up until this weekend, I thought was pretty good.
That leaves us with a very large cauldron of borderland science to sort through, not the least of which is the Philadelphia Experiment and the related (so some alleged) Montauk Experiments of the 1980’s.
In the past week I’ve been reading everything I can on the Montauk Experiments because they used an out-of-date SAGE radar system to tinker with human perception.
This gets us to a several other facts I’ve been meaning to mention one of these days, but other topics seem to have been more pressing at the time.
The Montauk Experiment allegedly proved that human perception could be manipulated to a large degree by modulating certain frequencies on a carrier wave operating in the 425 to 450 MHz range.
As a strange coincidence, I recently acqiuired (you’ll love this) a 10-watt tunable RF amplifier for my anti-gravity experiments and it goes up to 500 MHz…now why would I need one of those….
The further point is that such modulations can be superimposed on other frequencies as well including (you’ll love this…) WiFi routers and cell phones.
And what are those effects?
There are stories about how huge monsters from one of the test subject’s brains were loosed on the Montauk installation. Other tales involve a Hyper Space linkup between the Philadelphia Experiment ship (U.S.S. Eldridge) while “stuck” in hyperspace and dimensional travelers from the Montauk base.
All this gets us to the area of “time travel” and next door to that we find the province of OOPART. That’s short for Out Of Place ARTifacts.
“Critics argue that most purported OOPArts which are not hoaxes are the result of mistaken interpretation, wishful thinking, or a mistaken belief that a particular culture couldn’t have created an artifact or technology due to a lack of knowledge or materials. In some cases, the uncertainty results from inaccurate descriptions. For example: the Wolfsegg Iron was said to be a perfect cube, but in fact it is not; the Klerksdorp spheres were said to be perfect spheres, but they are not; and the Iron pillar of Delhi was said to be “rust proof”, but it has some rust near its base.”
Uh…yeah…but it’s how old?
Even so, there are enough OOPArt trinkets around that fuel even skeptics like me to at least reconsider the question. I mean what ARE modern shoes doing being found in seams of coal tens of thousands of years old, anyway?
By now you may be asking “What does this have to do with your 50th Class Reunion?”
Simple enough: Bill – a friend of mine from high school – reportedly died in Vietnam, so I distinctly (and sadly) remember from Reunion 25.
(Wait for it…)
BUT NOW HE SEEMS VERY MUCH ALIVE.
And it gets better:
Seems the spelling of Bill’s last name has changed slightly, too. A one letter change, but did you see the Chic-fil-A in the Buzz Feed note?
Talk about a weird way to begin age 68: How could I have attended a 25th class reunion where Bill’s death was recalled – yet now he is alive and will be on hand for this summer’s gathering?
It’s quite perplexing. No, even more than that, it’s just plain damn strange.
I’m open to new ideas on this, but that’s where the data points…down a rabbit hole.
Maybe I am supposed to share this with you – the idea that the MWI does provide for low-level anomalies like this in history.
Or maybe it’s an artifact of getting old?
Whatever it is, the Curious George I read about as a boy always had a tail.
I’m certain of it.
Around the Ranch: Cats
Oh, boy. Zeus the Cat (ZtC) has a new playmate. Haven’t determined the sex of the new black and white kitty who is hanging around, but I suspect she’s a girl.
She stands outside the house and yowls for hours on end for Zeus to come out. After a while, Zeus gets sick of the noise and runs her down and hisses at her. She slinks off only to be back an hour later yowling…
They seem to get along in what for humans would be a seriously dysfunctional relationship.
No we don’t want another cat.
But it is odd how a new cat arrives as a kind of birthday present from universe.
Or, maybe it’s not…anymore I’m not too certain of anything.
Write when you get rich,
George, careful about another cat, they’re exponential, you know! The last time I went to the store, I spent more on cat supplies than people supplies, and I knew I had crossed over: I’ve become a Cat Lady…Thanks also for reminding me about my stack of TMEN; had a nice Sunday afternoon on the deck browsing my Jan-Feb issues from the 80’s, and found a cold frame idea I want to try. 1984 Amtrak ad offering coast-to-coast roundtrip, for only $299, was a definite feeling of being in another reality!
In Re the MWI of quantum mechanics, Neal Stephenson’s “Anathem” is a pretty good work of speculative fiction that deals with the issue. Weighing in at 800+ pages, it’s not exactly “light reading” but worth every minute.
I know from detailed experimentation that there are shifts. In one case, it was the color of a friend’s old Chevy. It turned up navy blue, a week after it had been green he said it was always blue, but a poll of 30 mutual acquaintances who were not present that day, was evenly split on whether it was navy blue or light green.
Clue: the ones who knew him through knowing me recalled it being green the week before, while the ones who I knew through him recalled it always being dark blue. Co-creation of our perceived Universes?
But there is another factor in play here. Comedians and late night hosts repeat lines incorrectly in monologues, and there is other bad reporting. I distinctly recall Mandela dying, but it turns out that after Steve Beko died, and nobody could get news of Mandela’s condition, his death was actually reported in print, and apparently that report was repeated, perhaps on BBC radio. So news junkies actually heard the report, and thereafter, the rumor was so strong that the SA government actually had to show proof of life.
There’s a further wrinkle to the Mandela tale in that although the death was officially announced in December 2013, many observers believed that he’d passed several months before and was held artificially alive in stasis until the politically more propitious time in December…
I bought a blue house, but when I moved in it was gray. My husband insisted that it was always gray, but he moved in a month before me. Maybe his perception took over because he was here first? My daughter’s thought it was blue as well, but didn’t notice the change until I mentioned it. Power of suggestion perhaps?
Perhaps for whatever reason (that you didn’t hear) “Bill” couldn’t attend 25th reunion, and a trickster friend of yours spread the rumor at the reunion that he had died. This was memorable and you didn’t have reason until recently to question what you heard back then about his apparent demise.
Hi
I know this sounds crazy but in the 1980s I remember that a tariff was used to save a company called Harley Davidson. 1991 I remember that the name of a Motorcycle company was spelled Harley Davison (no d) then last year it suddenly changed back to Harley Davidson.
Did anyone else notice this?
George, you don’t understand cats yet. They live where THEY want to. If she has chosen your domicile, then too bad what you or Zeus want. I hope he is fixed but it sounds like she isn’t. If you will not abide her, please get her fixed before you banish her.
I’m glad you mentioned this. I’ve had two such incidents in the last couple months.
First, a clergyman who I had asked if he knew about the Clergy response Team, told me of another clergyman who was part of it. A few weeks ago, he denied ever knowing such a program existed. The denial would make sense, if he hadnt previously realized it was “secret.”
But then a fellow employee, who had told me of all the steps she’d taken to make sure the money of a church-related organization couldnt be taken without her knowledge..denied ever being part of the organization, handling money, etc. I remember such detail (and was seeking help to follow in “her” shoes) that it was a disappointment. And left me wondering if I’d lost my mind.
~~~
On the subject of the Mandela effect, I noticed something about the Staples logo “change.” I was re-using an old fax form from 2012, and the logo did indeed have a bent staple letter. So whatever “this” is, it may have started after 2012.
Your thinking around the Mandela Effect is along similar lines to that of Clif High – he correlates the rising incidence of ME cases in specific geographic areas where quantum computers have been pressed into service…
https://halfpasthuman.com/essays/mandelathinking1.html
That does sound more like another male cat staking a territorial claim on Zeus’ turf…
George thanks for publishing jons BS. It helps to be alert for the type of thinking he comes up with.
Thinking of picking up anything to replace the plane? Was thinking of you repairing electronics so Ripped apart the blower speed control (resistor pack) in my 2002 caravan. (Throwaway part-can’t bust it any more than it is-right?). Found a thermal fuse in there-got out my meter-fuse is dead-replaced fuse-re-installed repaired unit back in van-works fine! Thanks George!
I thought the mandela effect was an excuse for folks bad memories, until I took the test in your linked article. I was subject to almost ALL those mistaken beliefs. I think there is a high probability that some things DID actually change. Is that consequential? I’ll leave that for others in a higher pay grade to decide… e.
Sounds like the local lady feline is “achin for some of Zues’ bacon”.
Down at El Rancho de Chaos mom has somewhat of a local rep as a Cat Lady with 2 20+ year old indoor kittys and 3 outdoors leading me to believe that our section of the county may be a target area for unwanted feline abandonment.
I may need to loose some of the local hounds if this persists. Her shopping lists always have more cat food and associated feline support items than it does food for her.
Dr. Muichio Kaku’s blog postulates that time travel is physic-ally possible, although by our current understanding of physics, time travel is not practical due to the tremendous energies required to make it happen. Kaku notes that, to preclude certain potential paradoxes, such as traveling in time to kill one’s own parents before being born (thus not being born to travel in time and kill one’s parents), if time travel is at all possible, it more likely involves travel to parallel universes which, as George notes, split continuously from ours to allow every possible outcome to occur in at least one of countless alternate universe timelines. So one might visit what appears to be our past and kill their parents, but once that happens, an alternate universe splits away from the universe in which one originated. The universe of origin still remains intact, however, a new alternate universe timeline starts precisely where one’s parents are killed. Any changes that happen from that point forward are reflected only in that specific parallel universe and those that later split away fro it, but not in the universe or origin that one traveled from. The story line of the late ’90s TV show ‘Sliders’ followed this general plot, with the twist that once you are in a parallel universe, finding your way back home may not be an easy task in a multiverse composed of countless parallel universes.
Claims are being made in some woowoo/metaphysical circles that timelines are presently merging to usher in a new era of whatever. If so, that would explain supposedly contradictory memories. They’re not really contradictory–they’re merely both being seen as timelines merge.
There may be forces in the universe that we cannot fathom — how else could one explain so many within the Caucasian race being afflicted with a death wish. ;-) I know of no other race that put themselves down at every opportunity presented. Long live cats in whatever denomination!
This is my amazon review:
First there was Michael Talbot, then there was Lynn McTaggart. The new generation has picked up the Mantle of educating the human race to its future possibilities and true nature. As a person who has read about 90% of the hundreds of references in this book, this is a magnificent compendium that can push the human race forward instead of each new generation having to reinvent the wheel.
This book is a magnificent read. Take your time, it took me three months to digest this material and refresh my memory of things I had studied earlier that tend to be forgotten in this age of flooding information. I definitely have scheduled a reread of this magnificent tome in the New Year.
This is the one book that I will gift to my millennial sons, with the message that if you want to understand my life, this book will be a major step.
https://www.amazon.com/Grand-Illusion-Synthesis-Science-Spirituality-Book-ebook/dp/B00AU2JZZO/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1487693446&sr=1-1&keywords=brendan+murphy
There is more information here than most minds can hold. But for those wondering about time travel, gravity, psychicic abilities, etc. the explanations and scientific proof is here.
George, did anyone else at the reunion remember your classmate having died in Vietnam? If so, see if there is a geographical correlation between people who remember he’d died vs. those that didn’t.
I had a BIG Mandela effect last year– I remembered clearly that, about 2010, one of my sisters-in-law was required to wear a headscarf by her public school. Even though her Christian beliefs do not include headscarfs, she was required to wear one, as were all other female teachers, by the school admin because the conservative Muslim parents of children in the school complained that no headcover was immodest. I remember my Mother, brother and sister being there for the discussion, and my wife as well as me. I remember everything about it, and never questioned the memory.
So when I posted it on a discussion forum and was challenged, I asked my relatives about their memories, just to confirm when it happened.
Besides me and my wife NO ONE remembers anything about this. I also remembered an article in the local paper– No article could be located.
Because my wife, and only my wife, remembers it the same as I do, I have begun to wonder if some of these alt memories are implanted. How, why, and by whom, I can’t begin to figure out. But Mandela effects are definitely out there.