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:
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.
Whilst this statement has some merit, its problem is that you’re setting up a precursor to a straw-man argument. This is because who defines “challenging ideas”. This allows anyone to come up with a supposed challenging idea, then call anyone who doesn’t engage in it “an intellectual nepobaby”.
For example, should I engage in the “challenging idea” that the world is run by lizard people?
What about the “challenging idea” that throwing bricks in peoples faces will fix their teeth?
This is the same "good faith" argument that cultists, religious recruiters, libertarians, and racists use.
You don't have to engage with morally abhorrent arguments out of loyalty to some platonic ideal of intellectualism. You're allowed to tell people to fuck off.
You tell them to fuck off because you engaged with it and found it completely meritless/abhorrent, not because you're above engaging with it. If they present new evidence for lizard people, you should skeptically examine the evidence and tell them to fuck off when it doesn't hold up.
You don't have to engage with them and waste your time debating them, but you absolutely should be open to challenge your own positions.
I get what you’re saying, but you’re kind of setting up a strawman yourself here here. Not every idea deserves endless debate, sure, it’s about the habit of dismissing things as "stupid" without even considering them. Sure, lizard people and bricks fixing teeth are absurd. But those examples are extreme on purpose, and they don’t really address the core of people rejecting ideas out of hand just because they’re unfamiliar or uncomfortable. If an idea is actually bad, it will fall apart under scrutiny. But if the default response is just "that’s dumb," we’re not thinking critically, we’re just avoiding the work, and worse, we are participating in a culture where it's okay to do so. Which is exactly what leads to people getting (and abusing) terrible ideas.
Remedy to stupidity isn't LESS critical thinking.
But those examples are extreme on purpose
Yes they were! And you’re right, we need to allow ourselves to be challenged, to consider ideas outside of our comfort zone, but we also need to able to reject ideas that are not being posited in good faith.
This is the joy of debate, to question statements and receive nuanced answers in reply.
How do you determine what's not in good faith?
I would imagine this would tie to values, but do those become the unquestionable object, then?
That’s a great question and I’m not sure I have a definitive answer. For lack of better description, it would be the vibe I got from them:
How do you determine what’s not in good faith?
I personally always assume good faith. I can't read people's minds. On the Internet, I can't even see facial expressions or hear how they're saying it. It's like that Key and Peele text message sketch.
Oh my gosh, thank you for responding this way 😭
I feel like on Lemmy it's really difficult to ever post anything but total agreement without it immediately becoming an argument. Glad we found common ground!
You just don't want to engage the challenging idea of defining "challenging ideas."
For example, should I engage in the “challenging idea” that the world is run by lizard people?
As a counterpoint, you likely have. You're aware of the position, aware of the proposed evidence, and determined the evidence falls short of proof, which means you've engaged with their thinking before rejecting it.
Confirmation bias is an incredibly stubborn human trait (and a near universal one at that). The particular issue this post is engaging with is called attitude polarization: two groups of people diverging more and more in their opinions despite being presented with the same evidence.
Why are humans like this? I think it’s a survival trait that people conform to the opinions of their in-group and are reluctant to let go of opinions that are most central to their world-view. They’ve already invested a lot in both their in-group and their world-view, so rejecting all that is more costly to them than rejecting the truth about some particular fact (that they may not even care about that much).
When you consider that beliefs and openly held opinions have different costs and different benefits depending on which group you belong to, it becomes a lot less obvious that abandoning a position is the right move.
It’s a good counterpoint. In my first example I definitely have thought about it previously.
In my second example it’s clearly stupid so I’m not going to engage with it. I haven’t thought about it previously (I have now !), but I don’t think that makes me an intellectual nepobaby.
What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
If someone brings evidence, ban them for reasons of wrongspeak.
That's like 95% of humanity
Yep. It's especially cringe when people ignore centuries of philosophical discussion. Often smugly.
Great example is when people refer to Richard Dawkins' books as proof that there is no god. Nothing like a Reddit atheist to make me embarrassed to not believe in god.
I've never witnessed an atheist making such an argument. Usually it's the theists getting hung up on him because they are used to appealing to authority figures and project.
I unironically think the braindead atheism online greatly contributed to the rise of Christian nationalism we've been seeing in the past decade...
There are also many definitions of god, and Dawkins engages with all of them. Dawkins is much more strongly opposed do theism, than deism for example. He engages with philosophical ideas about god.
Dawkins argues that we don’t need god to explain the universe, life, or anything else. He further goes on to argue that religious belief in god trains people to be irrational fanatics, which damages society, progress, science. In the end Dawkins says, there’s no proof for the existence of god, and that we would all be better off without religion. However IIRC Dawkins recognizes that religious belief can have positive psychological effects.
The new atheists have become their own subculture with its own values. The online new atheist scene also attracts people who love to argue, provoke, and pick fights. Contrarians and skeptics are not the same, but can overlap.
There‘s also a pipeline that goes like this: new atheism > anti religion > anti islam > white nationalism
The issue here is that the left has abandoned its opposition to religion, especially regarding Islam, in the name of anti-racism and intersectional identity politics. So these people are rejected by the left and driven to the right.
Isn't it? I mean I haven't read his stuff or otherwise cared that much but I thought that was the point.
I really don't know.
In general I don't quite understand the point of OP. How do you learn without learning?
Good on you for asking! Dawkins doesn’t prove there’s no God; he argues the idea isn’t necessary to explain reality. The burden of proof isn’t on him to disprove an unfalsifiable claim, it’s on those making the claim to provide testable evidence. That’s how critical thinking works.
https://youtu.be/Qf03U04rqGQ?t=301
As for "How do you learn without learning?" you don’t. But a lot of people confuse rote repetition (parroting Dawkins or the Bible) with understanding (grappling with the arguments themselves). One’s memorization; the other’s understanding.
Great example is when people refer to Richard Dawkins' books as proof that there is no god
As was said earlier by someone else, that which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
It's the MAGA slogan: Don't bother me with facts, my mind is made up.
I've found that I generally don't look down on anyone pretty much ever. I don't get it when someone lacks intellectual curiosity, but I never look down on them for it since it's just not everyone's cup of tea. However, when someone has disdain or actively rejects deeper inquiry, hoo boy, I can't help but suddenly feel a pretty aggressive anger as if they not only choose to be stupid, but are trying to socially pressure everyone else to choose to be stupid. That's just not acceptable.
But also not every idea is worth listening to. Sometimes they are a waste of time, and people who have argued in bad faith in the past don't deserve the benefit of the doubt.
It's pretty normal.
Maybe there's a way to present the strange idea as gently and sweetly as possible, to avoid triggering their rejection reflex.
There is but you gotta think on your feet as it were and even then you don't always succeed. When I was last hospitalized I knew my silicone laces were psych safe but I didn't bother trying to explain it to the employee; I just asked if they could take them out. They poked at them for a few seconds before realizing and I got to wear my own shoes for the rest of my stay. You gotta give people juuust enough info to sneak the realization in there and it's a suuuper hard (and moving) target to hit.
I like your theory.
I was a pretty big believer in inception approach. If they think it is their idea they will be on board.
Now I think people only want to learn/believe things they see from their own personal bubble of "trusted source(s)". Anything else can't be correct or I'd have heard about it already.
Totally. Especially today people hole up in their tiny bubbles and echo chambers. Any challenges to their worldview and beliefs are rejected as woke, cultural Marxist, far left, fascist, racist, bigotry, etc. Being able to endure and process the emotions that come up, when you’re challenged is a skill people across the political spectrum have less and less. Emotions are endlessly validated regardless of facts, to the detriment of society and everyone’s wellbeing at large. The celebration of victimhood is toxic for everyone and keep them disempowered. It’s not just the left. The right has its whole „white genocide“ myth, and endless conspiracy theories about powerful evil elites.
It’s extremely prevalent here on Lemmy/Piefed as well. Actual discussion between opposing viewpoints is rare, and usually cut short by mods.
People should just talk to and more importantly listen to each other.
Intellectual nepobabies? I don't know what that means! These words challenge me, and I want no part of that! Nooooope! I will not think about such things! I mean really! What even is "nepobabies"? Did you mean "muppet babies"? Because they stopped making that show a while ago....
Not necessarily. There are discussions in which I dont engage with certain 'challenging ideas' or rather walls of statements that need to be evaluated and put into context. If i know already that this discussion is not important enough for me and the points provided are not promising and novel (for me) enough, aka stupid on first glance, to later invest the time to revisit those ideas, research, evaluate and putting them into context, which no one can do for me, than i may not bother with those points to begin with. Afterall one cant be bothered with all stupid ideas about something that exists. Written forms of auch discussions are there more productive since one can do the research etc. in the moment. Allthough that to takes time.
In short no one has the time to truly interlectually and honestly engage all 'challenging ideas' there are. One must always make a certain preselections, with very shallow engagement.
One might have to smuggle in an '...all [challengin ideas ...]' to make this statement more accurate.
I watched a video of a guy complaining about something similar and it ended with a really good phrase: don't even bother engaging with non-apple rotators
What are non-apple rotators?
People who can't rotate an apple in their head. In the context of the video - people who don't interact with abstract arguments and think you're talking about specific things or people instead
I interact with abstract arguments but can't rotate an apple in my head because of aphantasia. I can easily handle the concept of rotating an apple though.
Funny enough, my ability to estimate how three dimensional objects fit into real space is really good despite not being able to visualize it.
This is crazy to me. I would have gone insane as a child if I couldn't have imagined badass scenarios in my head when I was bored.
I drew a lot and made physical things!
Also read a lot, but had concepts and not images. Like a car in a story might remind me of a car I had interacted with even if I couldn't picture it. Like a sports car feels fast and nimble even if I can't picture the curves. Maybe it is rounded or has sharp angles on that model, but I can't picture the actual curves or angles.
Aha, I gotcha. That's a pretty apt analogy, I like it. Yeah, it's pretty frustrating talking philosophy with someone and they're all like "it's not that deep, bro", when in reality, it's a hotly contested topic in academic philosophy. So I guess it'd be like "bro, it's just a flat, red surface" when you're trying to talk about how the stem is attached to the core in a way.
Lol, the irony of this being so highly upvoted on Lemmy, of all places.