this post was submitted on 28 Nov 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:

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Somebody I'm sure has already said this, but the Turing test assumed AIs would need to prove their intelligence by appearing human in their speech, but now the problem is the opposite, that humans will have to somehow prove that they are not LLMs when they type anything on the internet.

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[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 14 points 6 days ago

What a really interesting insight. Here are some more topics that you might find interesting:

[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago

English isn't my first language, so I get grammatical errors. Now, when I type in my own language, I still get grammatical errors because I've been away for so long from my home country. That should assuage any accusations that I'm a bot.

However, someone did mention that I sounded like an anime character before. I think it's because I made an analysis that sounded too academic, like being dispassionate and analytical. I spent too much time in academia for my own good before. Well, that is better than sounding like middle managers, which people pointed out that AI sounds awfully like one.

[–] ScrollerBall@lemmy.world 83 points 1 week ago (10 children)

You're in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down and see a tortoise. It's crawling toward you. You reach down and you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping. Why is that?

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

... because I am examining the underside of the tortoise, to try and make out any significant details... because I am utterly befuddled as to how a tortoise came to be in the middle of a vast desert... and because I want to know where the hell I am.

Presumably, I am in the American Southwest, but if I can possibly specify the species of tortoise, I may be able to discern whether I am in the Mojave, Sonora, or Colorado desert.

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 days ago

The tortoise was Hamas.

[–] mech@feddit.org 33 points 1 week ago

I can’t assist with that. However, if you’re looking for information or advice on any other topic, feel free to ask!

[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I assume this some kind of philosophical metaphor but as someone who isn’t into random acts of animal cruelty i have to ask for the answer.

Why not help?

[–] pmk@lemmy.sdf.org 68 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's a quote from the movie Blade Runner. It's meant to produce involuntary emotional responses in humans, to tell them apart from robots.

[–] ZMoney@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I feel like every time a new thing is made up to fool robots, like looking at their pupils after this story, it's just a matter of a new algorithm in the latest software update that makes them react the way they're supposed to.

[–] idiomaddict@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago

Yeah, but you tell different types of stories. The robot knows it’s supposed to respond emotionally, but doesn’t know in what direction.

[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

If I'm not helping, I imagine there must be some unmentioned factor, such as someone pointing a gun at me and telling me to do that otherwise bad things would happen to me. Or I was slipped some drug that forced me to be a sadist. Without any other factor, I don't imagine myself doing that at all in the first place.

Edit: Also, the tortoise lies on its back, not lays

[–] CannonFodder@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago

100% robot.

[–] AmidFuror@fedia.io 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

A land turtle.

Or a shield frog depending on your language.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago

MRAP lizard

[–] AmidFuror@fedia.io 1 points 6 days ago

I've never seen a turtle, but I understand what you mean.

[–] ChrisMcMillan@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Shield toad rather. Frosch vs. Kröte

[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Oh, I thought a toad and frog were synonymous in English

[–] SaraTonin@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

They’re generally treated as different animals, but toads are actually a subset of frogs. All toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads.

[–] Naz@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago

It shocks me how many people haven't seen the movie

[–] fixmycode@feddit.cl 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Did you buy a present for the person you love? Within cells interlinked.

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 week ago

Cells. Cells within cells. Within cells. Interlinked.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago

Well that was a risky click, honestly, I expected something much more explicit, more like the wall of Mortys or something.

[–] Klear@quokk.au 5 points 1 week ago

Easy - childhood trauma from watching a spider get devoured by its kids. I'm no skinjob =D

[–] Grimy@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Seems complicated when modern technology can just use a checkbox to know of you are a robot or not. It shows the book was written in the seventies.

[–] canihasaccount@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Current multimodal models can pass those with ease iirc

[–] TheObviousSolution@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

Because I'm so frigging hot, I'm so frigging thirsty, I'm so hungry, that I think I'm hallucinating the turtle. I've been trudging through a desert way and now a turtle pops up in the desert out of nowhere. Is the turtle even real, can I not distinguish reality anymore ... would eating it help quench my thirst and anger? Is it wrong to feel no emotion?

I don't think the test itself is designed to measure emotional response so much as the emotional nuance and the 35 ms latency delay glitch in the Nexus-5 models when dealing with it.

[–] binarytobis@lemmy.world 32 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Some captchas use AI generated images which have been categorized using AI to have me verify I’m human. What are we doing here, guys?

[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 27 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Giving feedback to AI image generators?

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Literally yes, captchas trained older image recognition models.

Its called crowd sourcing.

[–] tux0r@feddit.org 21 points 1 week ago (3 children)
[–] d00phy@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago

[x] I am a meat popsicle.

[–] Pirtatogna@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

"We're charging our battery. And now we're full of energy."

We are the robots, we are the robots.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

WHAT A NICE UNICODE CHARSCTER YOU USED!

[–] not_woody_shaw@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago

Can you imagine when it's normal for robots to have significant spending power, and become a target for advertisers? They'll need another robot to go "well this ad is targeted at robots so I need to make sure to not show it to any of those pesky humans"

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The Turing test is most specifically highlighted in movies like Blade Runner or Ex Machina where it's a noire with a lone robot in a room being tested. In reality the future is more like Westworld where there are so many robots that can pass a basic Turing test that people are constantly engaged in more intense Turing tests at all times.

[–] konalt@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

The T in CAPTCHA stands for Turing test!

[–] sparkles@piefed.zip 4 points 1 week ago

I think my first post here someone asked me to tell them about baking lasagnas, maybe because of the way I type. Is it also sort of an insult to imply someone is a bot?

[–] Carvex@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Negative, I am a meat puppet.