this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
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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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Does it matter? History only matters if actions in the now are justified by interpretations of the past.
Thanks to the internet, we have instant access to the experience of billions of people. All human experience is already there and doesn't have to be approximated by history.
That's a very uneducated take, and shows that you don't understand how access to information can be changed, and modeled to elicit certain outcomes.
Unbiased, well cited repositories of information are essential.
I agree, for the way our societies are structured.
My point is that we could organize us in a way that history could provide additional depth but that the essential decisions could be made as well without the knowlege of history.
That "could" is doing a lot of work for that premise. We are currently structured as an amalgam of disparate chains of systems interacting with each other in loosely defined ways.
If you want to take the ability of sovereign entities to self determine, then sure we "could" organize in this other way.
But we don't have a god emperor of earth, so we will need to rely on this loose consensus instead of a dictated one.
Why does it have to be dictated? People can freely organize in a democratic way.
The problem is that people may join just because it is better, without fully supporting the respect towards others that is needed in such a system.
Things don't happen that way. "Can, may, could" means that there will be pockets of people that don't subscribe to the ideology and undermine it.
That's the challenge. I still believe that it is possible.
Alright, thanks for confirming my opinion.
You are welcome.
What's your opinion if you don't mind me asking?
I was arguing that history is not needed when we have access to all experiences so we can ignore history if it is tainted.
You say that relying on wrong history is dangerous and in the original comment, you say that well cited information is essential.
There is no real contradiction but you have shown how access to information can be changed, or framed, and modeled to elicit certain outcomes.
Define "tainted", "wrong"(your word I never used that word) and how the context of history is not required to detect such things.
Define what we know in a way that doesn't have a historical basis.
How does science know if something is true, with experiments.
You apparently have no idea
Enlighten me. Science can always be recreated. Which knowledge is needed from history that cannot be created in a scientific way?
Science was created for a time when knowledge was insecure because it was tainted with superstition.
Nah. Define your axioms like I said. If you won't, you can't.
As you noted, I rephrased your words. We are not talking about my axioms. It doesn't make sense to define tainted if that is not what you mean.
Still, your point seems to be that definition of words require history. You can have that form of history. The context is just that history is rewritten and I argue that that can be compensated with science.
Can? How? Go read any intro book on epistemology. You are talking out of your ass and it's disrespectful to everyone that actually takes knowledge and human progress seriously.
You are not wrong that I should read a book on epistemology. But why do you ask me how science can create knowledge? If you have read those books yourself, you should know.
You are wrong on the point that essential decisions can be made without history. You don't know the first thing about what knowledge actually is, and I asked you that because I didn't think you could answer and it confirmed for me that you are uneducated.
You didn't do the barest minimum of work on this, your opinion is uneducated and you are being disrespectful.
You may be right. Then please explain to me how history is needed for science.
And yet, despite having instant access to the Internet you write this utter bullshit. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
The past doesn't tell you what to do, especially not when your recordings of history are wrong. If you cannot trust your history, how are you going to make decisions?
The problem is:
So many of those voices are idiots.
So if you can get enough idiots to say something, it kind of becomes the truth.
So we need software that enhances the voices of those who we want to hear.
Good luck with that, Ai is funded to do the opposite.
Also, what we want to hear isn't always what we should hear.
Maga is hearing 100% what they want to hear, there is a large section of the country who want nothing more than to hate loudly and proudly.