Why does this harmless emoji make ChatGPT lose its mind?
By Amir Bohlooli
Published 5 hours ago
<< EDITOR ADDED DATE 2025-11-15>>
- Amir is the Segment Lead for Productivity and Creative at MUO. He’s a PharmD student who’s interested in clinical outcomes and Pharmacoeconomics. He loves looking at
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Despite all that, the emoji never existed. This is the Mandela effect. A shared false memory. The term came from researcher Fiona Broome, who clearly remembered Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s — only to realize Mandela became president and died in 2013. She could even recall the funeral coverage. When she found many others with the same false memory, the term “Mandela effect” was born.
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I wonder how much of “history” is nothing more than a “shared false memory”. And, if written “history” is a false memory, then what is oral “history” passed down through generations?
So it sounds like that JoHari window quadrant IV (i.e., what we both can’t see) is suddenly HUGE!
Now with “AI”, whatever that is, with its “hallucinations” and fake video creations, make even more “evidence” unreliable. The legal system has proven that “eyewitness” testimony is very fallible. And, even forensic “evidence” has to be suspect.
What can we “know” or “believe”?
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Why does the Mandela Effect happen?
Arlin Cuncic, a psychologist and author based in Canada, said the Mandela Effect is ‘unreliable and not infallible’.
She points to a memory error called confabulation – where the brain fills in gaps that are missing in your memories to make more sense of them.
Another factor is the information we subsequently learn can change our memory of the original event.
‘This includes event subtle information and helps to explain why eyewitness testimony can be unreliable,’ she said in a piece for Verywell Mind.
Also, the role of the internet in ‘influencing the memories of the masses should not be underestimated’.
‘It’s probably no coincidence that consideration of the Mandela effect has grown in this digital age,’ Cuncic said.
Another theory for the basis for the Mandela effect relates to the idea that rather than one timeline of events, alternate realities or universes may be taking place and mixing with our timeline.
This far-fetched idea continues to gain traction among online Mandela effect communities but is closer to the realm of science fiction.
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