this post was submitted on 02 Feb 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:
- 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
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- The entire showerthought must be in the title
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- 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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Again, to understand our observable reality and make predictions.
To what end? What happens when you understand and can make predictions?
You can survive. From knowing that eating alleviates hunger, to knowing what to say to get an idea across, to designing new high tech that improves the quality of lives. It all requires that we model reality in some form.
Does it? Animals seem to do well without modeling reality. Can you show me across the ages that humanity in general experiences that the quality of their lives has clearly improved? And understand the question. I'm not asking you, a modern human to look back to antiquity and say "we have soap now". I'm asking what universal human experiences have fundamentally changed for the better? We still have disease, war, hunger, heart break, suffering. We have average people living the life of fantastic luxury, and yet the desire to fill the void doesn't seem to go anywhere. We have more stuff, we have amazing intellectual frameworks to model reality with but still, most people are very clearly unsatisfied. And the more stuff we have, the more stuff we want. The early humans weren't fretting about getting a new smartphone, they were fretting about where to get their next meal. We fret about the meal AND the smartphone.
I'm not saying tech is bad. I'm not saying building models is bad or wrong. We have so much beauty because of it. But it's wise to know what the end goal is and ask if the methods of getting there are actually effective.
I would say even animals have some modeling of the world around them. Like a cat knows if it pushes something off a counter, it will bang on the floor.
And more academic modeling has certainly improved lives with much less food scarcity throughout the world, and much improved healthcare. Your cellphone may not actually make your life better, but having your cancer detected and treated early certainly can.