this post was submitted on 01 Mar 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
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.
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Okay, I'll bite. I need to add to my block list anyway.
Y'all have heard of the Nazi Bar problem, right? Paradox of intolerance? Which turns out not to be a paradox after all? You should def look that one up rather than waiting for me to type it all out.
Bullshit genetic or reductio ad hitlerum fallacy. Carried to its logical conclusion, anything tainted by Nazis (eg, the universe) is a Nazi bar. Have you considered finding yourself another universe to inhabit, since this one is irredeemably tainted? While we may argue the universe is far too vast to be a "Nazi bar", so is the internet or any "platform".
Worse, censoring ideas gives them covert power. It doesn't discredit them or strip them of power like challenging them in a public forum could. It's also a disservice to better ideas
Censorship is incompetent advocacy: it mistakes suppressing the expression of bad ideas for effective advocacy that directly discredits bad ideas, develops intellectual growth, and steers toward better ideas.
The bogus social media version subverting the original message or the real one?
text alternative
The True Paradox of Tolerance
By philosopher Karl Popper[^popper-source]
You think you know the Popper Paradox thanks to this? (👉 comic from pictoline.com)
Karl Popper: I never said that!
Popper argued that society via its institutions should have a right to prohibit those who are intolerant.
Karl Popper: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance.
For Popper, on what grounds may society suppress the intolerant? When they "are not prepared to meet on the level of rational argument" "they forbid their followers to listen to rational argument … & teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols". The argument of the intolerably intolerant is force & violence.
We misconstrue this paradox at our peril … to the extent that one group could declare another group 'intolerant' just to prohibit their ideas, speech & other freedoms.
Grave sign: "The Intolerant" RIP
Underneath it lies a pile of symbols for Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Black power. A leg labeled tolerance kicks the Gay Pride symbol into the pile.
Muchas gracias a @lokijustice y asivaespana.com Karl Popper opposed censorship/argued for free inquiry & open discourse.
Censorship (or willfully blinding ourselves to information) plays no part in suppressing authoritarianism.
Only cowards fear words. Words are not the danger. It's the dangerous people whose words we fail to discredit.
[^popper-source]: Source: The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl R. Popper
People like to refer to the paradox of tolerance but always skip out on the inconvenient bit:
""Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
— In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.
We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.""
If you are not able to rationally argue why we shouldn't be bigoted, I don't know what to tell you.
One problem with bigots is they dont care about truth or logic. Its a waste of time to continually argue the same points over and over again with people who refuse to learn or think.
But remember, be sure that your point is logical and truthful, and not parroting talking points in spite of them being repeated all around you.
Being truthful and logical is not always a popular position. Some would say it's not even often the popular position.
You personally don't have to. Always plenty of people out there willing to do it for you.
it's not that people can't, but spaces which have unlimited tolerance for sealions suggesting that it's necessary to argue that are likely to have less interesting discussions than spaces which do not 🙄
Then be clear about the rules. I have 0 problems with people creating communities with very clear rules on what is allowed and what isn't. I wholeheartedly welcome that. What I take issue with is when people claim to have open discussion, or the space is for "rational discourse", or "anarchist" discourse etc. but then ban everything that doesn't very exactly align with the mod ideology.
If most people waving the anarchist flag would admit they're just doing it because it's cool but actually, they just want to be the authoritarians in place of the authoritarians, that would be fine. I'd happily avoid them. Problem is that when they don't admit it, they drag down the whole anarchist ideology because they are misrepresenting it.
i think people not knowing how to actually win an argument against a bigot is exactly the reason there are so many these days
shit's easy. not that they'll admit defeat but getting them babbling irrational nonsense takes very little debating skills. and when they inevitably start throwing ad hominems, then the mods have legitimate grounds to kick them out.
Just to let you know before I block you, I didn't read your "reasonable disagreement" of a wall of text
You mean the direct quote of Popper that you yourself referred to? You didn't read the very piece of text you told me to read?
>"look up paradox of tolerance UwU" >"ok, let's look at what it actually says" >"i didn't read it UwU"
that tracks
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
so I guess you have an intolerance to intolerance?
Lemmy is a Tankie Bar.