this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2026
46 points (97.9% liked)
Showerthoughts
41231 readers
317 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
We usually don't.
As for why we do... The brain is a chunk of biology. You probably can't just hit "shift+delete" on stuff.
Our brains do few things with perfect accuracy.
Scans have shown that dreams basically use the same parts of the brain as doing whatever is happening in the dream for real.
Waking up, especially abruptly, isn't gonna "clear" your RAM so to speak. You're gonna have access to "state" your brain was in during sleep. And even then you have to make an effort for that stuff to end up in long-term memory.
Sometimes I wonder if this nightmare world is the dream and while I'm in this dream, I temporarily am unable to access the memories of the "real me" out there in the "real world"
Oh shit I just accidentally retold Inception
Brb gotta find my totem real quick...
I’ve had inception dreams several times, which does indeed make me question my sanity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbvuM83nhcg
I suggest you look into lucid dreaming, hypnosis and shared dreaming.
the brain is incredibly complex and only 1/15th of what we consider "conscious thought" is truly conscious.
When we sleep, some parts of our brains remain active. historically we think it did this to keep a eye on the external stimuli(senses) so we can react to predators.
but as we have evolved, our bodies and brains changed. we still try to process those sensory inputs, but we we sleep we stop receiving most of them, so our brain begins to fill in the blanks. as we do, our brain begins to recall trauma and pleasure, to try and process them. they are always ever present anyways, shaping how we experience reality. in this shapeless, sensory less space, its the primary drive of effectively internal hallucinations.
as we sleep, we process those emotions by expierencing, emotionally drive hallucinations by our brain.
how do we know this? it's been documented via sensory deprivation experiments. the overlap with drugs such as LSD is uncanny and it led to a much deeper understanding of both psychology and dream studies.
this is also why we now know "phantom limb" disorders are a result of psychological effects, not physical ones. the brain is fully aware of the lack of tissue, our psyche is the one that refuses to accept it does not exist. this is why people born with missing or deformed limbs do not expierence the same.
all this said, dreams prevent us from going insane. without them, rest feels less fulfilling as our brain fails to relax. even a nightmare is better for the overall psyche, then endless silence.
What makes you think I haven't? I'm not talking about why we dream.
"As for why we do" refers to "why do we remember dreams" not why they happen.
Too complex to cite figures like "1/15th".
That's the kind of thing, unlike what parts of the brain are active during sleep, we can't even guess.
Additionaly, there is wide variance between individuals. Some folks can control dreams, making up the story as they go with deliberate decisions. I've had this several times. Also, some medications have significant effects on dreaming. Overall, the various states of consciousness and the functioning of memory are poorly understood.