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this post was submitted on 30 Jul 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
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- 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
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Okay but my point was you would say someone has consciousness when they are without any higher brain function and lacking a cortex.
And, someone with their higher cortex but a damaged cerebellum, who is no longer able to track time, would not be conscious, by your definition.
I mean if that's your definition then you are welcome to it.
I don't know of any theories of consciousness that consider the tracking of time to be what counts. 🤷. Because of the two examples I give.
Yep.
Like I said at the beginning. My first definition of consciousness is "a word meaningless enough to mean what you want, while still sounding like a serious person having a serious conversation".
Here is a list of your mistakes:
On the other hand, you don't seem stupid. Try joining a debate club at the local college, learn some fundamentals of rhetoric, and things will go much better for you in the future.
Edit: theories of consciousness are just as BS as theories of teapots orbiting Uranus, as they are unfalsifiable without arbitrary constraints.
Edit2: also, I should point out that having defined consciousness as 'awareness of the passage of time' after mentioning stimulus-response, I was pretty clearly setting up an argument that literally everything is conscious. That's why you should not have let me define the terms, and brought your own definition that I would have had to argue against.
There are definitions that actually fit with modern neuroscience and can be evaluated.
Your choice to choose a definition that doesn't align with modern knowledge is not evidence that it's undefinable.
The two most popular ones are a sense of self as separate from the environment.
Another is the ability to be able to predict the environment and plan or adjust plans accordingly.
Another is sensory binding to experience a unified perception.
All of these can be evaluated objectively and investigated for mechanisms. They all have a ton of research on them.
Your definition was something you came up with on the fly to see what I would say. And that's fine.
But I explained why this definition is flawed.
Even so. It can also be objectively measured and has been extensively researched as to its mechanisms.
So even if that was what consciousness is, we do have theories and research , at present, to explain how it works.