this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2025
25 points (87.9% liked)
Showerthoughts
38849 readers
915 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:
- 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.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
He sees 2 lights but the authority tells him there are 3 lights.
Through torture the authority convinces him to trust the voice of authority over his own observations.
It's a deep kind of convincing. It is heartfelt and he really does see what he's told to see. A kind of religious conversion. ("The truth of the state is the only truth, do not trust the evidence of your senses")
Or something like that.
But ya, they copied it for TNG. Picard got kidnapped and tortured. I forget the actual episode number.
Bros over here all Cardassian... There were indeed 5 lights.
I think you're suggesting that this is somehow generally true in human behavior, but the examples you give are fictional and a result of torture.
Can you give a real-life example that doesn't involve someone being mentally damaged from torture?
The red scare. The persecution of jews in nazi germany. The persecution of the first dude who suggested that if doctors washed their hands then less people would die of infection. Just say no to drugs. Cigarettes are good for you. And yes, our latest adventures with vaccines.
A good propaganda campaign and our natural urge to conform substitutes for torture in this case.
I heard about a study where they put people in a room and asked them to identify the shortest of four lines. There would secretly be 3 people in the room gaslighting the fourth one by choosing the most obviously wrong answer and often times, it worked
Asch Conformity Line Experiment https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/asch-conformity-experiments
I'll keep that one in mind. Thanks
And/or our natural preference for half-baked logic, conspiracy theory, scapegoating others, being part of the 'in' group, etc, etc.