this post was submitted on 30 Jul 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:

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. 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
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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.

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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Just to make it clear: I do not believe this and I am convinced good old human greed is what's really driving the ai and data-center insanity. Also, LLMs are not and will never become AGI.

Having said that: if an artificial super-intelligence were to emerge, building more data-centers could well be one of it's primary goals. Since it wouln't be concerned with consequences for the environment or humanity, it could pursue this at any cost, with only speed and scale in mind. Convincing financial markets and business elites of the necessity of such a buildout would be the ideal way of achieving results. In this scenario, fighting this buildout by any means would be the only sensible response and of utmost importance.

It's a somewhat funny, somewhat depressing thought for me and I literally had it in the shower. Surely I can't be the first to come up with this, but I also can't remember having read it before.

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[–] daannii@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Two forms of time perception.

But my point was memory is impaired in all forms except the one only measuring tracking estimates. Because you won't have any higher brain function with a cortex removed so they can't evaluate autobiographical memory because it won't exist.

And making short time estimates is done by the brain stem.

Even with no cortex. Likely because circadian rhythm is somewhat controlled from brain stem.

No cortex makes one essentially brain dead in many ways. No language. No sensory processing. No vision hearing or touch perception. No internal thoughts. Nothing. (Look up "default mode network, and why internal thoughts won't exist without a cortex).

Brain stem mostly regulates things like heart beat and breathing.

[–] impairedimperator@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I understand your point, and I consider it irrelevant. One of those fun side effects of having me define consciousness twice, and never contesting either definition directly....only indirectly implying that consciousness requires a human brain.

[–] daannii@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

Okay but my point was you would say someone has consciousness when they are without any higher brain function and lacking a cortex.

And, someone with their higher cortex but a damaged cerebellum, who is no longer able to track time, would not be conscious, by your definition.

I mean if that's your definition then you are welcome to it.

I don't know of any theories of consciousness that consider the tracking of time to be what counts. 🤷. Because of the two examples I give.

[–] impairedimperator@lemmy.zip 1 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Yep.

Like I said at the beginning. My first definition of consciousness is "a word meaningless enough to mean what you want, while still sounding like a serious person having a serious conversation".

Here is a list of your mistakes:

  1. you never provided a competing definition of consciousness, meaning I set the terms of the debate.
  2. you seem to have realized (1), and instead of correcting it you started answering arguments you invented on my behalf, instead of responding to the arguments I made.
  3. you are now trying to fix (1), but in a roundabout way involving (2), which makes you look unserious.
  4. you ignored my first definition, in which I made it pretty clear I didn't take you very seriously at all to begin with. Still don't, much like I don't take anyone seriously when they discuss consciousness.

On the other hand, you don't seem stupid. Try joining a debate club at the local college, learn some fundamentals of rhetoric, and things will go much better for you in the future.

Edit: theories of consciousness are just as BS as theories of teapots orbiting Uranus, as they are unfalsifiable without arbitrary constraints.

Edit2: also, I should point out that having defined consciousness as 'awareness of the passage of time' after mentioning stimulus-response, I was pretty clearly setting up an argument that literally everything is conscious. That's why you should not have let me define the terms, and brought your own definition that I would have had to argue against.