this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
18 points (80.0% liked)

Showerthoughts

40491 readers
1097 users here now

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.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

In trying to figure out how to warn our descendants about nuclear waste, even through a possible societal collapse, one of the more fun ideas is using cats that show a visible difference in the presence of nuclear radiation along with nursery rhymes/mythology that tell you to get the fuck out of dodge after your cat turns blue.

Similarly, our mythology about the fae lines up alright with current generative AI: it will tell you what you want to hear, but can’t be trusted; it looks like a person, but might have too many fingers or its eyes are made of stone; something’s just off.

To be clear: I don’t actually believe humans destroyed a previous society with “AI” at a similar sophistication level and coded cultural warnings against it into us, but it’s fun to think about.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Iconoclast@feddit.uk 7 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

You couldn't really warn future civilizations about the dangers of a true Artificial General Intelligence - because there probably wouldn't be any future civilizations.

And even that assumes the problem magically solves itself once humans disappear, which it wouldn't. A real AGI would be perfectly capable of continuing to exist without us around.

[–] idiomaddict@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago

Oh yeah, that’s why I put “AI” in scare quotes and mentioned our current AI. This is just about the technology assisted masturbation that uses astonishing resources