this post was submitted on 04 Jan 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:

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. 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
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS

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When I was a kid, computers expanded your mind and your freedoms, bringing power to the individual. With AI, now it does the thinking for you, takes your job, gives power only to a few billionaires. (lemmus.org)
submitted 1 week ago by realitista@lemmus.org to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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When I was young and starting out with computers, programming, BBS' and later the early internet, technology was something that expanded my mind, helped me to research, learn new skills, and meet people and have interesting conversations. Something decentralized that put power into the hands of the little guy who could start his own business venture with his PC or expand his skillset.

Where we are now with AI, the opposite seems to be happening. We are asking AI to do things for us rather than learning how to do things ourselves. We are losing our research skills. Many people are talking to AI's about their problems instead of other people. And they will take away our jobs and centralize all power into a handful of billionaire sociopaths with robot armies to carry out whatever nefarious deeds they want to do.

I hope we somehow make it through this part of history with some semblance of freedom and autonomy intact, but I'm having a hard time seeing how.

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[–] tomiant@piefed.social 33 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Any good thing will inevitably be corrupted by capitalism, because that is what capitalism does. It is a cancer, and it will consume everything and us all in the process.

I don't know if it was in Strauss' "Accelerando" that humanity told an AI to solve some complex problem at any cost, and the AI promptly turned all the matter in the solar system into a supercomputer capable of solving it.

That's capitalism in a nutshell: "do profit" is the only imperative, and it will destroy everything, just like a cancer is predicated upon "do growth", forever, at any cost, regardless of whether the host organism dies.

[–] sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 week ago

I haven't read Strauss in so long. I need to go back and reread them. His books were always a lot of fun.