this post was submitted on 23 May 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
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If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
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A tiny change could mean a big change but it doesn't mean that change must be unlimited. For example a double pendulum is a classic chaotic system. There is no solution but that doesn't mean the pendulum can move greater than the length of its segments. It's still a bound system.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
More importantly, in the real world, if you push a double pendulum, it won't flail endlessly. It will eventually converge to the single state of rest.
what does any of that have to do with anything I said? By the way, that wikepedia page doesn't contain the word "closed" anywhere in it. just saying
A double pendulum is bound by definition! It is a fixed point, a line with a 2 axis joint, and another line. That's the definition.
Just because a system is chaotic doesn't mean it can move in unlimited ways. A chaotic pendulum cannot move outside it's predefined limits of its geometry despite being chaotic.
The real world imposes far more constraints. A double pendulum starts out in a known state. It gets pushed. It moves chaotically for a minute, then returns to its original rest state.
In the context of Hitler's parents, you shove the dad, he moves chaotically for a second, then goes back to walking. No long term change has happened.
I completely agree with what this comment says. It's still irrelevant though. Where did I say it has to be unbounded? You are countering an argument I did not make. Whether the result is divergent or not is irrelevant. The point is that "not having a closed form solution" is not the meaning of chaos, which was your original wrong statement.
No closed form solution is one property. It's not wrong, only incomplete. But if a system of equations had a closed form solution, it wouldn't be called chaotic. For example any exponential equation like x^y is extremely sensitive to initial conditions yet it isn't chaotic.
oh really?