retrospec | (no subject)

John R. Lunise
2/8 near Recolle
On the subject of horses, allow me to ask you a question: When you were a child, what was the name of the bear family who taught valuable life lessons in easily digestible books?
Chances are, you answered 'the Berenstein Bears'. And, as it happens, that is incorrect; it is the Berenstain Bears.
How can everyone misremember this? How can something so patently true turn out to be terribly false? Some people will tell you it is the 'Mandela effect', named after a shockingly large number of people believed Nelson Mandela died in prison... but simple mass misremembering is a fairly boring answer, isn't it?
Consider instead a possibility physics allows us: that infinite universes exist, that every possibility spawns a diverging universe. Consider then that these different universes must be ruled by mathematics and science, that were were able to observe them, some concrete, tangible difference must exist to distinguish them.
Consider also that the laws of physics as we know them are, in some cases, simply and utterly inoperable. The quantum scale, for example. Or a naked singularity. It is, therefore, conceivable that through some quirk of physics, some awesome miracle... we have merged or shifted into a world in which horses never existed, and chocobos always did.
Impossible, you say, and perhaps rightly so... but I have no better explanation.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

John R. Lunise Their life lessons were less prosocial and more how to get away with larceny by virtue of ursine nature.

Yukiko Amagi Yes. But those are still lessons. From bears.

Yukiko Amagi Anyway. Horses. You think they're real, right?

John R. Lunise I remember them with a clarity and persistence that I find it very difficult to write off as a mere quirk of my brain.

Yukiko Amagi Me too. Definitely. So you think that we really may have jumped to a different dimension?

John R. Lunise It is entirely possible, but such things could and perhaps do happen all the time, merely affecting smaller or unknowable things.

Yukiko Amagi I guess so. Is this going to be covered in class?

John R. Lunise I expect not, since a lesson on why some of us have completely different memories is more than likely to get me hauled on the carpet for accountability rather than awards.

Yukiko Amagi True enough. That's a relief.

John R. Lunise I ought to be disappointed, since this sort of thing is far more my style than friction coefficients.

Yukiko Amagi Well, understanding the basics is really important too. And I definitely appreciate that you're taking the time to do that rather than studying these phenomenon.

John R. Lunise Please don't think it noble of me, as I took the position that was available. Positions for high-level theoretical physicists are few and far between even within academia, and there are numerous people seeking those positions who are better suited to them than I.