The Highlander December 2017 Vol IX Issue III
Carlmont High School — Belmont, California
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Our Memories are Not as we REmember
Photo Illustration by Jordan Hanlon
Time is degrading how one remembers the past Sean Vanderaa Staff Writer
Nelson Mandela died in prison. But he didn’t. He died in 2013, long after being freed. Darth Vader said, “Luke, I am your father.” But he didn’t. He actually said, “No, I am your father.” All of these misconceptions have a common basis. They are all a part of what has become known as the Mandela Effect. “The ‘Mandela Effect’ is what happens when someone has a clear, personal memory of something that never happened in this reality,” states the Mandela Effect website, run by Fiona Broome, who believes that other dimensions are leaking into our own and altering our recollection of the past, giving people memories of things that actually never took place. Her theory originated in 2010 after she
discovered at a convention that she and many others shared the same memory that Nelson Mandela, the president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, had died in prison, when in actuality he had died in 2013, 23 years after getting out of prison. This occurrence led her to discover other streams of memories that were in fact wrong. Another example of the Mandela Effect is the misspelling of a popular kids book in the 1990s and early 2000s. It’s title is The Berenstain Bears but many recall the name being The Berenstein Bears with an e rather than an a. “I’ve experienced the really popular [false memories] like when I saw that the cover of the Berenstain Bears wasn’t the Berenstein Bears, I was completely shocked” Julia Walsh, a senior, said. As well, the television series Sex and the City is often recalled as actually being named Sex in the City, and yet at no point was the show ever titled that.
All of these instances can be classified as “false memories,” but the way that they come about is different from what Broome is claiming. Although the theory that false memories come about due to other dimensions leaking into our own, it is far from the truth. According to Elizabeth Loftus, a cognitive psychologist and human memory expert, our memory is prone to change and is often full of false memories. “We can’t reliably distinguish true memories from false memories. We need independent corroboration,” Loftus said in her Ted Talk, How reliable is your memory? These false memories are easily changed, because simple interactions can alter our minds to perceive something as true that isn’t. “We get misinformation not only if we’re questioned in a leading way, but if we talk to other witnesses who might consciously or inadvertently feed us some erroneous information, or if we see media coverage
about some event we might have experienced, all of these provide the opportunity for this kind of contamination of our memory,” Loftus said. These false memories can lead to many problems in one’s day to day life, but the main problem is with eye-witnesses whose convictions lead to the false-imprisonment of hundreds.
Continued on P. 16 See more about how time affects us throughout our lives - Where you are is when you are Page 11 - Experiences change value of time Page 15 -Time ticks; fear heightens Page 18
In This Issue
Bay Area’s Influence on Sports Bay area teams are trailblazers in every sport Page 3
Gun Control in America Americans believe gun control
restrictions have room for improvement Page 9
Introverts Vs. Extroverts Your personality type
defines what makes you happy Page 16
Sports Campus News Time in Cultures Lifestyle Features Opinion Holiday Talk Back
2-3 4-5 8-9 10-11 12-13 14-16 17-19 20