Sometimes people propose the Mandela effect is some sort of dimensional convergence or something- where people from different realities that are almost identical save for tiny details somehow meet.
In the spirit of this meme I ask- what if it is in fact a form of evidence for time travel?
Human memory is suggestive. To remember a thing is in essence to overwrite the memory with a memory of you remembering. It is possible and common through context and suggestion to convince people they remember things which never happened or to lie to oneself so thoroughly as to create false memory.
So what if we take another theory- a theory that says “time” or the universe” has a form of self preservation mechanism for dealing with paradox and we combine this all?
So then- what if when changes occur in the past that are different than our knowledge of things, our minds just adjust to the new information?
So there might then be several ways the mind deals with these shifts, things we didn’t know that change would just be like learning anything else the first time- no problem. Things we knew that changed- a healthy mind has mechanisms to ignore or discard thoughts that would harm its ability to function- so perhaps we see a changed fact and much in the way we discard or adjust other information, our minds sort of just accept it and “forget” things were ever different for the most part.
Those people or changes that we couldn’t “roll with” might cause a persons mind to break or for them to be seen as “delusional” by others who accepted the changes. Some smaller details that don’t pose a real threat to cognition like the name of a peanut butter or a word in a book title might not be caught and changed, leaving some people with snippets of information from before a change, but snippets that themselves and others would chalk up to just a minor oddity or memory lapse.
To be clear- I do not posit this as a serious scientific hypothesis or advocate this as factual- in the spirit of the meme it struck me as a sort of fun idea, something to waste some time on as a little thought exercise daydream or perhaps the stuff a writing prompt for a fun little short story may be based on.
I always just feel bad for the guy that invents time travel but forgot the planet, the solar system, and the galaxy all move and travels back in time but in the same space the planet will be be at the time they traveled from.
Lol, yes. Often overlooked. Even space itself can be said by our understanding to be “moving” or “distorting” and you could easily find yourself floating in vacuum if your method of time travel doesn’t have some way to deal with distance as well.
Another one that rarely if ever gets attention is frame of reference. Every 1 minute a spot we are staying in moves about 16 miles due to earths rotation- about a thousand miles an hour. So we don’t slam into a wall at 1000mph when we jump on the bed and we don’t slam into the back of a plane or bus if we jump because we have the same frame of reference. The chair you sit in and the air around us etc. are all moving in reference to the Earth so even a stationary object isn’t moving less than 1000 mph in general.
So what happens to our frame of reference if we time travel? If that information isn’t somehow preserved- even if you managed to travel through space to maintain your relative position on the planet- if you aren’t moving…
.. the same speed when you arrive the topography of the earth or any solid objects, might slam in to you or you slam in to them. This is not to mention the forces involved and what would be required for the positive or negative acceleration on the human body that might be required to maintain a frame of reference if we couldn’t somehow conveniently preserve that frame. When we start to factor in the many tens or more thousands of miles per hour that planets and galaxies travel outside of rotational speed on their axes- the physics picture gets complicated and extreme. Of course- “time travel” is often just discussed as some form of teleportation using space and time. How that works is a bit important- is an object somehow transported but via means that would seem instantaneous- or does that object somehow not pass through space or time and somehow “materialize” in a second location without any actual transit?
There are so many possibilities and questions, compounded by the fact that we don’t even have a solid understanding of what “time” is or if it even exists. In certain models, time exists as a single point that is infinite effectively. Meaning all events happen simultaneously and cause and effect are just a structuring of cognition of an observer. If this were the case- time travel could be very different than the usual concept- paradox wouldn’t exist since “traveling in time” to meet your grandparents would be occurring at the same time the dinosaurs walked the earth and long after you were dead all at once. The same way that things are happening in Tokyo and things are happening in New York at the same time but you can’t be in two places at once so to attend a parade in one city that occurs at the same time as a parade in the other isn’t how travel between them would work. The idea time travel is instant is convenient to plot for stories- but would it be? It may appear so to…
.. an observer- but to those in frame of reference to the traveler- does time elapse while time traveling? In other words- much the same as time distorts with speed. In theory an example journey to two points that are far away and back might take only a month at super light speeds- but to those at your point of origin decades or more could have passed. In theory then- the time traveler might still experience the passage of time or a seemingly accelerated passage of time while those at their destination or point of origin would see travel as instant.
To put it another way- if you traveled from 2021 to 2245, looked around for 5 minutes, then returned to 2021- to those in 2021 and 2245 your travel could seem instant, but you might arrive years or centuries older or even younger or be dead or decomposed because time might elapse for you as normal while traveling.
Side note not related to time travel in general. I have read a couple books where they take into account, at least in passing, that they must increase or decrease their relative velocity/spin ....etc when entering a new solar system. That way they don't do something fun like slam into a planet. Not something that's ever covered by the big franchises.
In the spirit of this meme I ask- what if it is in fact a form of evidence for time travel?
Human memory is suggestive. To remember a thing is in essence to overwrite the memory with a memory of you remembering. It is possible and common through context and suggestion to convince people they remember things which never happened or to lie to oneself so thoroughly as to create false memory.
So what if we take another theory- a theory that says “time” or the universe” has a form of self preservation mechanism for dealing with paradox and we combine this all?
So then- what if when changes occur in the past that are different than our knowledge of things, our minds just adjust to the new information?
Those people or changes that we couldn’t “roll with” might cause a persons mind to break or for them to be seen as “delusional” by others who accepted the changes. Some smaller details that don’t pose a real threat to cognition like the name of a peanut butter or a word in a book title might not be caught and changed, leaving some people with snippets of information from before a change, but snippets that themselves and others would chalk up to just a minor oddity or memory lapse.
Another one that rarely if ever gets attention is frame of reference. Every 1 minute a spot we are staying in moves about 16 miles due to earths rotation- about a thousand miles an hour. So we don’t slam into a wall at 1000mph when we jump on the bed and we don’t slam into the back of a plane or bus if we jump because we have the same frame of reference. The chair you sit in and the air around us etc. are all moving in reference to the Earth so even a stationary object isn’t moving less than 1000 mph in general.
So what happens to our frame of reference if we time travel? If that information isn’t somehow preserved- even if you managed to travel through space to maintain your relative position on the planet- if you aren’t moving…
To put it another way- if you traveled from 2021 to 2245, looked around for 5 minutes, then returned to 2021- to those in 2021 and 2245 your travel could seem instant, but you might arrive years or centuries older or even younger or be dead or decomposed because time might elapse for you as normal while traveling.