Remember when Santa Claus was real? He's not, MANDELA AF Effect

originally posted by: DutchMasterChief
a reply to: Krakatoa


So is every memory you have nothing but a potential illusion to you? You trust none of your memories?

It is hardly a binary thing, believe vs don't believe. It is more of a gradient, where the closer the event to the present, the more reliable the memory usually is. As you get further back in time, the probability of an accurate memory gets lower and lower. As I understand it, the reason is there is more tertiary memories around it to cloud an accurate recall.

Human memory is not like electronic memory (which also needs CRC error corrections due to bit-flip from external interference changing the value).

In fact, if you really think about it, all memories are illusions. The past is gone, poof. You cannot go back (yet) and experience an event again in person, or record it. The closest we have is external storage in writing, electronic storage, etc... Verbal transfer of events is also prone to change over time and in each telling. If you ever played the game "telephone" as a child, you will understand how a message told to one person could be completely different when heard coming back to you from a 10th person.

a reply to: verschickter

Although, to add to this, you got a beat up in a potato sack with a wooden stick if you did not behave.
That was Saint Nikolauses helper, "Knecht Ruprecht". They dared the kids with it to behave good.
Or else...