this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2026
58 points (95.3% liked)

Showerthoughts

42849 readers
514 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:

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.

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

Evolution doesn't make mistakes because evolution just is. Like entropy, it’s just a kind of pattern/behavior that can emerge from complex systems.

Sometimes evolution leads animals to have traits that become unfavorable enough to prevent traits from being passed on; thats not a mistake, its literally the driving principle of evolution.

As for self awareness, theres lots of gray area in that term. However, social structures have emerged numerous times across the tree of life. Those structures require at least some self awareness. Very successful animals seem to have more self awareness than others because when you interact with beings like you it’s useful to know they are beings like you.

Point is that if knowing what other members of your species might be doing is useful to you or your species survival—which it typically is for tool weilding species—social awareness and self awareness will eventually be selected.

You aren’t self aware because evolution thought “I should make something self aware.” You’re self aware because thinking meant your ancestors could reproduce more. They invented language because naming things made thinking easier and allowed group thinking which allowed them to reproduce more. And eventually they named something “self awareness.”