this post was submitted on 04 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:

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
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. 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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When I was young and starting out with computers, programming, BBS' and later the early internet, technology was something that expanded my mind, helped me to research, learn new skills, and meet people and have interesting conversations. Something decentralized that put power into the hands of the little guy who could start his own business venture with his PC or expand his skillset.

Where we are now with AI, the opposite seems to be happening. We are asking AI to do things for us rather than learning how to do things ourselves. We are losing our research skills. Many people are talking to AI's about their problems instead of other people. And they will take away our jobs and centralize all power into a handful of billionaire sociopaths with robot armies to carry out whatever nefarious deeds they want to do.

I hope we somehow make it through this part of history with some semblance of freedom and autonomy intact, but I'm having a hard time seeing how.

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[–] realitista@lemmus.org 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It absolutely can replace hours of research or programming or drawing with a quick prompt. It does this for me often, and as of the latest Gemini pretty much is always right too.

[–] Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

None of that is it doing the thinking for you.

LLMs can be used as a research tool but require a human apply critical thinking to the output to be useful.

[–] realitista@lemmus.org 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

It definitely replaced a lot of thinking with vibe coding. And research also requires thinking. Maybe not super intense thought, but it's thought all the same. Artists would also be pretty annoyed to hear that they are doing a brainless activity.

[–] Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Literally not thinking.

Artists would also be pretty annoyed to hear that they are doing a brainless activity.

I see you lack critical thinking skills so I understand the confusion. Unfortunately, I can't fix stupid.

[–] realitista@lemmus.org 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I can see you're a right cunt who can't admit he's wrong. Can't fix that.

[–] Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 days ago

You failed to prove your assertions.

Ask an LLM it will tell you it's not capable of thinking, it's approximating thinking.