this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2026
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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
Rules
- 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
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
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.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
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I tend to think that people use AI (and yeah, search engines too) the way children use their parents:
"Mom, why is the sky blue?" "Mom, where is China?" "Mom, can you help me with this school project?" (The mother ends up doing everything).
The thing is, unlike a parent, AI is unable to tell users that it doesn't know everything and that users should do things on their own. Because that would reduce the number of users.
Mom, why is China?
Mom, where is the sky?
China, Mom is the sky
The world would be a better place if most parents did that ibstead of confidently spewing bigotry, misogyny, and other terrible opinions. I only knew of a few that were able to say 'I don't know' as a kid, and the ratio is about the same with adults.
Blame the Dunning-Kruger effect. The people I have seen most likely to acknowledge their lack of knowledge in a certain area have been those who are very wise and well-versed in at least one field, such as science, History (like my mom), art, etc.
Mediocre people are mostly convinced that they know everything.
AI has a lot more surface knowledge about a lot more things than my parents ever did. I think one of the more insidious things about AI though, is that will a human you can generally tell when they are out of their depth. They grasp for words. Their speech cadence is more hesitant. Their hesitation is palpable. (I think palpable might be considered slop these days, but fuck haters it's how I write — emdashes and all.)
AI never gives you that hint. It's like an autistic encyclopedia. "You want to know about the sun? I read just the book. Turns out there's a god who pulls it across the sky every day." And then it proceeds to gaslight you when you ask probing questions.
(It has gotten better about this due to the advanced meta prompting behind the scenes and other improvements, but the guardrails are leaky.)
Maybe AI should be more like a parent and simply say "I don't know. Go read a book, find out, and let me know".
Pretty sure my mom did know the answer but I learned more by reading a book and telling her what I learned.
Me too! Nothing helped me think for myself more than my mother yelling at me, "I don't know! The encyclopedia is right there! Go read it and let me cook, for God's sake!"