this post was submitted on 08 Oct 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:
- 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
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- 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
- Posts must be original/unique
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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.
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Has nobody considered the angle that slopping is fun? It doesn't make you an artist, nor an author, nor a musician. But it makes a thing at your direction and you can point at it and say "this vaguely resembles the idea in my brain". For some people, that's enough.
(this has been part 4 on my Nuanced Opinions Regarding AI)
It's still theft. Nobody gave permission for their work to be used as training data.
I agree. Sam Altman and his ilk deserve prison for stealing every intellectual property on the internet (among other crimes).
That's why the zeitgeist needs more time to settle on the perception of LLMs. It's a cool toy, but people shouldn't be getting it in their head that it gives them a shortcut to becoming a professional.
You gotta understand what it's good for as a tool and realize it's not going to do your job for you.
The problem is that it's utility is basically correlated with your skill on a given subject because you can't reasonably hope to guide it to what you actually want if you aren't already pretty skilled. Contrarily, the perceived "benefit" or "coolness" it provides you is inversely correlated with your skill but with like 3x the slope of utility.
If you are needing to navigate a pool of text as an expert in a field, it's obscenely useful and the holes/pitfalls are super evident. The less skilled you are as a user the more magical and beneficial it all looks, which is scary.
Edit I said some of that backwards . More skill more actually useful, less skill the more it seems useful and cool but will screw you up.
I've thought this exact thing too, I'm sure many of us have. AI is really you get what you give, literally. If you're educated, well read, know how to write and interact and think critically and have some technical skill, it can be massively useful.
If you don't you just get mental masturbation.
Edit:
It's like, I hate cars. I want them dead, gone, erased.
And I can acknowledge their utility.
In slightly more than a day, I got a working save editor generated by my local AI, a Qwen-Next model. Given a couple more years of AI development, I will be able to have some really old and obscure games remastered.
Wow. That's a phenomenal comment. In my human opinion. Very cogent.
If people got a proper art education they would know drawing is more fun.
to be fair, if the masses were educated we'd be on track to solve a shitton of our problems with that change alone.
As a completely separate thought, different people can find different things fun. And one person can find multiple things fun. I know I'm not indicative of a typical person, but I'd compare making your own art to Factorio, and prompting images from stable diffusion (or similar) to Cookie Clicker. I've put over a thousand hours into Factorio, and I like to think I'm mediocre at it, but that hasn't stopped me from enjoying games like Cookie Clicker (I say "like Cookie Clicker" because the incremental genre has moved on since then but that's besides the point).
I literally havent considered that. Probs should. It was really fun for me for a short while, but I never wanted to share my creations or pass it off as my own.
"Make a tank out of liqorice allsorts but have Big Bird hanging out the top using a stick of liquorice as a cigar" "hahahahaha thats really funny".
It got boring fast though.
That was my perspective as well. Once that immediate novelty wore off I started to look at people still playing with it and wondering what they're seeing that I'm not.
But I guess people like different things. Like I hate reality TV shows, but those are plenty popular.
I HATE LLMs
But it can be fun, a little part of the problem specifically for LLMs they are addicting. Image generation version less so unless it's for porn
But I mean these things are great for shit posts
They're great for shitposts? I thought the point of shitposts was they take no effort. Wouldn't putting an extra service in the loop just complicate it?
LLMs are designed to be addictive.
If you set the settings (that should be on by default) it will be more of a tool than something that foeces you to interact with.
Examples:
Don't let them ask questions if they are not needed. You prompt it not the other way around.
Turn off compliments and ask for more negative feedback.
Make sure it doesn't pretend to be human with feelings and actual personality.
I found these pretty useful rules.
I think that the kinds of people who would find the lying machine addictive would probably also find gambling mechanics in video games addictive. Also regular porn can be addictive to some people as well. I'm not disagreeing with you, just pointing out that these specific issues are not unique to generative ai.
I think AI can be great for this. It can make so many thing accessible to people that could not otherwise. Your example here is good and there are some legitimately fun AI songs.
The key is being able to discriminate something you've done for fun and being a serious artist. The problem becomes when people conflate something they've done as a fun hobby as being worthy of sitting next to human created art.
I've used AI to code lots of things for personal use that I wouldn't have had the time to complete otherwise. The difference is, I use them personally and don't release them as a serious software product.
Sir and or madam, I would like to subscribe to Nuanced Opinions Regarding AI facts.
part 1: https://lemmy.world/post/52423516/26039575
part 2: https://lemmy.world/post/52446320/26057464
part 3: https://lemmy.world/post/52700982/26163401
i don't know how to do lemmy compliant links