this post was submitted on 27 Sep 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:

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

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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Take that (not) Einstein!

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[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Anyone else kind of hate this "definition"? I've been hearing that shit my entire life, and I just can't help but roll my eyes every time.

[–] Hugin@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

It's terrible, wrong, and out of context. Einstein was talking about quantum mechanics not mental health. He really didn't like that at the quantum level results are random but follow a very spefic probability curve.

He thought quantum mechanics would be able to achive classical physics like results. Where the only uncertainty was because of measurement error.

quantum uncertainty is the most experimentaly proven theory in physics. So even in the context Einstein made the statement he was wrong.

[–] bunchberry@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Putting aside the fact that you cannot "experimentally prove" anything as proof is for mathematics, claiming you can experimentally demonstrate fundamental uncertainty is, to put it bluntly, incoherent. Uncertainty is a negative, it is a statement that there is no underlying cause for something. You cannot empirically demonstrate the absence of an unknown cause.

If you believe in fundamental uncertainty, it would be appropriate to argue in favor of this using something like the principle of parsimony, pointing out the fact that we have no evidence for an underlying cause so we shouldn't believe in one. Claiming that you have "proven" there is no underlying cause is backwards logic. It is like saying you have proven there is no god as opposed to simply saying you lack belief in one. Whatever "proof" you come up with to rule out a particular god, someone could change the definition of that god to get around your "proof."

Einstein, of course, was fully aware of such arguments and acknowledged such a possibility that there may be no cause, but he put forwards his own arguments as to why it leads to logical absurdities to treat the randomness of quantum mechanics as fundamental; it's not merely a problem of randomness, but he showed with a thought experiment involving atomic decay that it forces you to have to reject the very existence of a perspective-independent reality.

There is no academic consensus on how to address Einstein's arguments, and so to claim he's been "proven wrong" is quite a wild claim to make.

"[W]hat is proved by impossibility proofs is lack of imagination." (John Bell)

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago

There's a subtile difference in meaning between "proven" and "prove", even though they have the same root.

"Proven" can mean that there's proof for something, but it can also mean "established", "tested", "reliable" or "trustworthy".

You know, as in "time-proven" or "battle-proven".

And quantum mechanics totally fits that description. Sure, there's no mathematical proof for anything outside of maths, but quantum mechanics has proven itself many times over.

(Btw., outside of maths, the word "proof" also means something different than in maths. The word "proof" is also much older than its usage in maths. "Proof" in the context of maths is just as much domain lingo as "daemon" is in the context of Linux. It has its own distinct meaning in the context of mathematics and doesn't mean the same thing outside of that domain.

Same as you don't need an exorcist to get your Linux daemons in line.)

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Einstein wasn't talking about anything at all, since it's a misattribution. Einstein never said that. Someone just stuck Einstein's name in front of their own stupid garbage quote to make it sound smarter.

[–] GeneralVincent@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

"Einstein wasn't talking about anything at all, since it's a misattribution. Einstein never said that. Someone just stuck Einstein's name in front of their own stupid garbage quote to make it sound smarter." - Einstein, 2025

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

"That's exactly how to do that!" - Gandalf