This Dec 5 is the 10th anniversary (周年紀念日) of the death of Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa. He overthrew (推翻) the racial segregation system (種族隔離制度) in the nation and set people of color there free. You may know about his achievements. But do you know about the Mandela Effect? 

12月5日是前南非總統(tǒng)納爾遜·曼德拉逝世十周年紀念日。他推翻了該國的種族隔離制度，解放了有色人種。你可能知道他的成就，但你了解曼德拉效應(yīng)嗎？

The Mandela Effect describes a situation where many people have the same false memory. The name of the theory (理論) dates back to 2010 when many people on the internet falsely remembered that Nelson Mandela died in the 1980s in prison (監(jiān)獄). But Mandela was actually freed in 1990 and passed away in 2013. US researcher Fiona Broome then created the term Mandela Effect based on (根據(jù)) this situation.

曼德拉效應(yīng)描述了一種記憶集體錯亂的情況。這個理論的名字可以追溯到2010年，當(dāng)時很多網(wǎng)民錯誤地記得納爾遜·曼德拉在20世紀80年代死在了監(jiān)獄中。但實際上曼德拉在1990年獲釋，并于2013年去世。后來美國研究員菲奧娜·布魯姆根據(jù)這種情況創(chuàng)造了“曼德拉效應(yīng)”一詞。

There are many other examples of the Mandela Effect. In 2022 in China, there was a heated discussion online about the sentence by Mencius: “Thus when Heaven is about to confer a great office on any man ... ” (“故天將降大任于斯/是人也”). Most people remembered it was “si (斯)”, while others insisted (堅稱) it was “shi (是)”. Later, People’s Education Press (人民教育出版社) ended the discussion by saying that all its textbooks say shi. What do you remember it as?

曼德拉效應(yīng)還有很多其他的例子。2022年，中國的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)上掀起了對孟子這句話的熱烈討論：“故天將降大任于斯/是人也”。大多數(shù)人記得是“斯”，而其他人堅稱是“是”。后來，人民教育出版社給出了結(jié)論：所有的教科書上都是“是”，結(jié)束了這場討論。你還記得它是什么嗎？

Psychologists (心理學(xué)家) have looked into the reasons for the Mandela Effect. For example, your mind may try to fill in missing gaps (空白) in your memory to make more sense of it, which is called confabulation (虛構(gòu)癥). However, this is not lying, but rather remembering details that never happened. 

心理學(xué)家調(diào)查了曼德拉效應(yīng)產(chǎn)生的原因。比如，你的大腦可能會試圖填補你記憶中缺失的空白使其更好理解，這被稱為虛構(gòu)癥。然而，這并不是說謊，而是記住從未發(fā)生過的細節(jié)。

The internet may be another reason for the Mandela Effect, as the news we read can be false from the beginning. In 2018, a study of over 100,000 news stories showed that false news can spread faster and reach more people than the truth. As a powerful way to spread information, the internet might be the main reason for false information to enter (進入) our minds these days.

互聯(lián)網(wǎng)可能是曼德拉效應(yīng)產(chǎn)生的另一個原因，因為我們所看到的新聞可能從一開始就是錯的。2018年，一項對于10萬多條新聞報道的研究表明，假新聞比真新聞的傳播速度更快、傳播范圍更廣。作為一種強大的信息傳播方式，互聯(lián)網(wǎng)可能是當(dāng)今虛假信息進入人們大腦的主要原因。