Tyrone Davis – If I Could Turn Back the Hands of Time

When I screwed up in the newspaper business, I ran corrections. I hated putting out wrong information, stories with typos or missing jumps. You might see them, you might not. But I tried.

The Internet has changed the whole concept of corrections. I’ve already made a few mistakes on this blog that I went back and fixed. I try to get to it before anyone catches it, but I always wonder. How many people saw both versions and are questioning their memories right now?

The Mandela Effect is such an interesting conspiracy theory. People claim to remember Mandela dying in prison instead of going on to become president of South Africa. Evidence for Doctor Who? If a time traveler tweaked the past what would happen to our memories? If you remembered something from another timeline, how could you ever prove it?

Memory is pretty fallible. I remember things wrong sometimes, who was there, who said what. But I don’t remember people attributing that to time travel until relatively recently.

It occurs to me the popularity of that idea – other than the fact it’s a fun theory – might have to do with the character of the Internet. Articles and social media comments disappear, giving people the opportunity to say “I never said that.”

Even on Wikipedia, which has a pretty good reputation for backing up its content, links to websites that no longer exist. Did that article exist and can you prove it? AI complicates things even further. I understand ChatGPT has been caught citing articles that never existed.

Kinda creepy isn’t it? Did I really see the thing or is it a figment of my imagination? Makes me wonder what that’s doing to society, that already disagrees over so many things.

Call me old fashioned, but I do believe reality has a ground floor and truth exists. Figuring out what those things are is another matter. It’s hard enough to do as it is. I’m afraid it’s going to get harder.