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Thread: I would like some help with properly debunking a very annoying "Mandela Effect"

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    Default I would like some help with properly debunking a very annoying "Mandela Effect"

    I am sure a lot of you have heard of this phenomenon, possibly from that "Berenstain Bears" video by Angry Video Game Nerd.
    Anyway, I am a skeptic when it comes to this "alternate dimension" talk (I am not saying that such a thing cannot happen, I am just not going to fully accept it until I see some serious scientific evidence of that) and I have been able to find rational explanations for almost everything;
    for example, those classics "Berenstain Bears", "Magic mirror on the wall", "Sex And The City" etc can be easily explained by faulty memories from lots of people (also, the phrase "Mirror mirror on the wall" did exist in the books - it was changed into "Magic mirror on the wall" in the Disney movie).
    However, there is one particular "Mandela Effect" that drives me crazy, and it would be a great relief to have it completely debunked once and for all.

    I am talking about that scene from the Bond movie "Moonraker" - there is a girl in that movie called Dolly, and for some reason thousands of people seem to recall her having dental braces.
    Well, guess what?
    They were never there:

    https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zb8enmbmkpM/hqdefault.jpg

    http://casinotheme.com.au/wp-content...7756301915.png

    Okay, so my first conclusion was that maybe a lot of people just think of Jaws' steel teeth, and the way the camera switches between Jaws and Dolly smiling at each other in that scene can probably easily cause false memories of Dolly also having some sort of "steel teeth" (in other words, braces).
    The problem, however, is that even BBC and other sites seem to mention those darn braces (try searching for "braces"):

    http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-29160096

    There are other sites that mention "braces" as well, and it's pretty easy to find links to them on various Bond forums.
    There even exists a commercial with Richard Kiel where he has some flirty encounter with a female cashier who turns out to have braces, although this could of course be pure coincidence:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BhLAWP7jGA

    So, what do you make out of all this?
    The most rational explanation that I can think of is that some people from the BBC have the same false memories as many other people, and that it's those sites that get the most attention.
    I don't know, I find this particular Mandela Effect quite bizarre and I would love to have it completely debunked, since it seems to confuse a lot of people.
    Last edited by Peter1986; 10-21-2016 at 09:19 AM.

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    "The Mandela Effect" is such an insane, ludicrous idea that it's literally impossible to debunk, as the whole idea behind the "Effect" relies on unfalsifiable appeals to personal experience, absent of evidence, which are in turn combined with appeals to popularity, in many cases.

    The explanation is that the human memory is faulty and people really like to think they're part of something super special.

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    Quote Originally Posted by DMKA View Post
    "The Mandela Effect" is such an insane, ludicrous idea that it's literally impossible to debunk, as the whole idea behind the "Effect" relies on unfalsifiable appeals to personal experience, absent of evidence, which are in turn combined with appeals to popularity, in many cases.

    The explanation is that the human memory is faulty and people really like to think they're part of something super special.
    Yes I know that, and that's why I am clearly a ME skeptic.
    Also, when I said "debunk" I simply meant "show that a ME example is heavily exaggerated and has a much more natural explanation".

    Anyway, like I said, I could easily find rational explanations for almost all the ME theories, and some of them even turned out to have a grain of truth in them since they were based on several sources that had been mixed up (for example, the television series "Sex And The City" and the perfume "Sex In The City", which is a totally understandable mix-up).
    And so far the only ME that I still find slightly annoying is the "Dolly's braces" scene in Moonraker, and most debunkers seem to not wanna touch that one - every time I mention it on YouTube it's like they pretend to not notice it and focus on the rest of my post instead.
    Because like I said, BBC themselves claim that she had braces, and thousands of people (including myself) have strong memories of her actually having braces, so that one is a bit irritating.
    But the best explanation that I can think of is that either BBC and several other sites have the same false memories (probably caused by Jaws' steel teeth which were shown several times in that same scene) and made a mistake in their descriptions - or they are aware of the ME phenomenon and are just being funny.
    Last edited by Peter1986; 10-23-2016 at 02:00 PM.

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    Isn't your name Peter1985??

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    I think its a cool effect. I saw it in my time of watching creept videos. But honestly I have no idea about the thing. I just find it weird

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    Quote Originally Posted by Galuf View Post
    I think its a cool effect. I saw it in my time of watching creept videos. But honestly I have no idea about the thing. I just find it weird
    I find them fascinating as well.
    Not to the point that I believe in them - because like I said, I am a skeptic - but I think it's exciting to check out any new ME examples that I come across, and see how much that I agree with them.
    Sometimes I do feel that I am slightly unfamiliar with the so-called "changes";
    for example, I don't have any clear memories of the zodiac sign Capricorn being a goat-fish hybrid, but then again I never looked that carefully at the sign - I just saw something that "kinda resembled a goat" and I guess I thought of his tail fin as some sort of extension that was added for dramatic effect and then didn't think about it anymore after that.
    And besides, Capricorn is sometimes illustrated as an ordinary goat, so that just makes that example even more debunked, and there also exist other logotypes that look quite similar (like the Red Bull logo, for example), so there are lots of reasons why all these things could get mixed up.

    As long as it is possible to find a rational explanation for a ME example, I consider that example to be debunked.
    It would take quite an amazing change before I truly start to feel suspicious, like for example if someone suddenly told me that "Argentina is obviously a city in Spain" or if I found out that "the Statue Of Liberty has never held a torch" or some other weird thing like that.
    But it's exactly those kinds of "weird changes" that ME supporters feel that they are experiencing, and I try to understand them - I only start to lose respect for them when I notice that they refuse to accept perfectly natural explanations.
    Last edited by Peter1986; 10-23-2016 at 04:58 PM.

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    Anyway, back on topic:
    can anyone explain why even the BBC (including some official James Bond sites, by the way) describe Dolly as having braces?
    And why do so many people remember Dolly that way?
    I mean, since the Mandela Effect is almost certainly not real there must be an easy explanation, right?
    Or is this particular ME so puzzling that nobody is able to come up with a complete explanation?

    It would be one thing if this was just a matter of people having a shared false memory like this that had been distorted by other memories (which is true for most Mandela Effects) but like I have said several times already, even the BBC seem to confirm that she had braces - you can check their article about Richard Kiel's death and search for "braces" yourselves if you want proof of this.
    There don't even exist any "unaltered versions where she originally used to have braces", because people on YouTube have checked very old VHS tapes and she doesn't have braces there either, and nobody has been able to find any proof of any braces in any version at all - so, what's going on here?
    Did the people at the BBC have false memories of this as well?
    And even if they did, shouldn't they double-check all the facts so that they know what they are talking about?
    This is the only ME theory that I still haven't been able to debunk, and I have even seen skeptics get confused by it - like myself, for example.

    I can only think of two possible "rational" explanations:
    either the administrators on the BBC and all those Bond sites had the same false memory as lots of other people and were too lazy to check all the facts, OR they are just messing with the ME believers and write about non-existing braces on purpose.
    I guess another possible - although pretty far-fetched - explanation is that Dolly's shoulder straps might be called "braces" in some countries and that people started thinking of "dental braces" because Jaws started smiling and showing off his steel teeth.

    I would actually love to have this ME completely debunked onoce and for all, and I guess I will have to settle with the above explanations, since that's all that I can think of.
    Last edited by Peter1986; 10-26-2016 at 03:59 PM.

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    It's an easy explanation. Human memory is far from perfect, and we are all wired the same way, so imperfections that lead us to have false memories can be common among several people. 'The BBC' is not some robotic archive but a bunch of people running a TV station and they are subject to the same influences on memory as the rest of us. In this James Bond case, it is probably both a function of false memories created by Jaws's teeth as well as a difference in US vs. British slang on what 'braces' means. One of our Brits may be able to elaborate on that second part.

    There's no way to completely debunk ME because it is predicated on something that can't be measured: random changes in dimensions for random groups of people. There's no way to prove or disprove this other than the general concept that the physics of it are impossible. But no one believes science when it is inconsistent with their conspiracy theories.

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