Stupidly wrong.^[tee hee hee]
this post was submitted on 26 Feb 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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- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
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But also not every idea is worth listening to. Sometimes they are a waste of time, and people who have argued in bad faith in the past don't deserve the benefit of the doubt.
It's pretty normal.
Maybe there's a way to present the strange idea as gently and sweetly as possible, to avoid triggering their rejection reflex.
There is but you gotta think on your feet as it were and even then you don't always succeed. When I was last hospitalized I knew my silicone laces were psych safe but I didn't bother trying to explain it to the employee; I just asked if they could take them out. They poked at them for a few seconds before realizing and I got to wear my own shoes for the rest of my stay. You gotta give people juuust enough info to sneak the realization in there and it's a suuuper hard (and moving) target to hit.
Gentle as lambs and subtle as serpents, as they say.
I like your theory.
I was a pretty big believer in inception approach. If they think it is their idea they will be on board.
Now I think people only want to learn/believe things they see from their own personal bubble of "trusted source(s)". Anything else can't be correct or I'd have heard about it already.
Yeah "it came from me or my people" means that it is harmless and everything else is Satan. There's probably a psychological breakdown of that somewhere.
(Flip that assumption and you have the plot for half of all horror movies)
It's the MAGA slogan: Don't bother me with facts, my mind is made up.
Made up as in nonexistent, yes?
It's 99% of Lemmy and everybody else too. It's how people are.
Yep, whole lot of people echo what they read in they're social media echo chambers. Feelings and opinions thrown around like they are facts.
Granted this problem has always existed but I believe the overuse of the internet and social media has made it worse.
Prime example, bunch my friends who would definitely be Democrat voters (just bring it up as they are very much not maga supporters), despite me bringing up research showing the very clear negative side effects that Facebook had on people even 10+ years ago... Every last one of them ignored it and each one thought they were the exception.
So, loosely speaking, social media has created a plague of mass insanity.
Whilst this statement has some merit, its problem is that you’re setting up a precursor to a straw-man argument. This is because who defines “challenging ideas”. This allows anyone to come up with a supposed challenging idea, then call anyone who doesn’t engage in it “an intellectual nepobaby”.
For example, should I engage in the “challenging idea” that the world is run by lizard people?
What about the “challenging idea” that throwing bricks in peoples faces will fix their teeth?
You just don't want to engage the challenging idea of defining "challenging ideas."
For example, should I engage in the “challenging idea” that the world is run by lizard people?
As a counterpoint, you likely have. You're aware of the position, aware of the proposed evidence, and determined the evidence falls short of proof, which means you've engaged with their thinking before rejecting it.
Confirmation bias is an incredibly stubborn human trait (and a near universal one at that). The particular issue this post is engaging with is called attitude polarization: two groups of people diverging more and more in their opinions despite being presented with the same evidence.
Why are humans like this? I think it’s a survival trait that people conform to the opinions of their in-group and are reluctant to let go of opinions that are most central to their world-view. They’ve already invested a lot in both their in-group and their world-view, so rejecting all that is more costly to them than rejecting the truth about some particular fact (that they may not even care about that much).
When you consider that beliefs and openly held opinions have different costs and different benefits depending on which group you belong to, it becomes a lot less obvious that abandoning a position is the right move.
It’s a good counterpoint. In my first example I definitely have thought about it previously.
In my second example it’s clearly stupid so I’m not going to engage with it. I haven’t thought about it previously (I have now !), but I don’t think that makes me an intellectual nepobaby.
But by your own admittance, you did think about it once the question was posed, so no, you're not an intellectual nepobaby.
We have all had past experiences with how hard brick-adjacent substances affect teeth, so it's not discarding it as a knee-jerk reaction. If you went to a dental college, and the professor made the claim before you knew better, I'd assume you'd be interested in finding out how he came to that conclusion, correct?
Yes, you assume correctly. I would be interested in finding out how they came to that conclusion!
I think in a different thread, the question of whether the other person was presenting something in good faith came up. I think my original statement was more geared towards dealing with those types of things. I don’t need to engage with everyone if they’re not willing to engage back.
Yeah, I agree that the attempt to engage is the most important aspect. What actually constitutes "engagement" is up to semantic debate.
I do think that new arguments should be evaluated, even if it's presented in bad faith. I feel that the bad faith nature of the argument is a factor that counts poorly in my evaluation, but it's good to have a solid understanding of the nuance in your stance, even when it comes to the ridiculous.
This is the same "good faith" argument that cultists, religious recruiters, libertarians, and racists use.
You don't have to engage with morally abhorrent arguments out of loyalty to some platonic ideal of intellectualism. You're allowed to tell people to fuck off.
You tell them to fuck off because you engaged with it and found it completely meritless/abhorrent, not because you're above engaging with it. If they present new evidence for lizard people, you should skeptically examine the evidence and tell them to fuck off when it doesn't hold up.
You don't have to engage with them and waste your time debating them, but you absolutely should be open to challenge your own positions.
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I get what you’re saying, but you’re kind of setting up a strawman yourself here here. Not every idea deserves endless debate, sure, it’s about the habit of dismissing things as "stupid" without even considering them. Sure, lizard people and bricks fixing teeth are absurd. But those examples are extreme on purpose, and they don’t really address the core of people rejecting ideas out of hand just because they’re unfamiliar or uncomfortable. If an idea is actually bad, it will fall apart under scrutiny. But if the default response is just "that’s dumb," we’re not thinking critically, we’re just avoiding the work, and worse, we are participating in a culture where it's okay to do so. Which is exactly what leads to people getting (and abusing) terrible ideas.
Remedy to stupidity isn't LESS critical thinking.
But those examples are extreme on purpose
Yes they were! And you’re right, we need to allow ourselves to be challenged, to consider ideas outside of our comfort zone, but we also need to able to reject ideas that are not being posited in good faith.
This is the joy of debate, to question statements and receive nuanced answers in reply.
How do you determine what's not in good faith?
I would imagine this would tie to values, but do those become the unquestionable object, then?
That’s a great question and I’m not sure I have a definitive answer. For lack of better description, it would be the vibe I got from them:
- Do I feel like they’re being deliberately argumentative.
- Do I feel like they’re trying to twist my words in an unkind way.
- Are they looking for ways to find offence in what I’ve said.
I assume good faith unless clear evidence indicates otherwise. I try to adopt a more general version of WP:AGF in life.
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It's bad because it MIGHT be used as a low-effort defense?
Almost, the two parts that make it problematic to me are:
- It can be used used as a low-effort defence
- The defence is a personal attack
Ah, actually
The defence CAN BE INTERPRETED AS a personal attack.
That gate has 2 locks.
What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
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Totally. Especially today people hole up in their tiny bubbles and echo chambers. Any challenges to their worldview and beliefs are rejected as woke, cultural Marxist, far left, fascist, racist, bigotry, etc. Being able to endure and process the emotions that come up, when you’re challenged is a skill people across the political spectrum have less and less. Emotions are endlessly validated regardless of facts, to the detriment of society and everyone’s wellbeing at large. The celebration of victimhood is toxic for everyone and keep them disempowered. It’s not just the left. The right has its whole „white genocide“ myth, and endless conspiracy theories about powerful evil elites.
It’s extremely prevalent here on Lemmy/Piefed as well. Actual discussion between opposing viewpoints is rare, and usually cut short by mods.
People should just talk to and more importantly listen to each other.
It’s extremely prevalent here on Lemmy/Piefed as well. Actual discussion between opposing viewpoints is rare, and usually cut short by lemmy.ml and lemmy.world and rarely lemmy.blahaj.zone/dbzero/niche-non-political-communities-that-don't-need-political-discussion-anyway mods.
Fixed that for ya.
That's like 95% of humanity
Yep. It's especially cringe when people ignore centuries of philosophical discussion. Often smugly.
Great example is when people refer to Richard Dawkins' books as proof that there is no god. Nothing like a Reddit atheist to make me embarrassed to not believe in god.
There are also many definitions of god, and Dawkins engages with all of them. Dawkins is much more strongly opposed do theism, than deism for example. He engages with philosophical ideas about god.
Dawkins argues that we don’t need god to explain the universe, life, or anything else. He further goes on to argue that religious belief in god trains people to be irrational fanatics, which damages society, progress, science. In the end Dawkins says, there’s no proof for the existence of god, and that we would all be better off without religion. However IIRC Dawkins recognizes that religious belief can have positive psychological effects.
The new atheists have become their own subculture with its own values. The online new atheist scene also attracts people who love to argue, provoke, and pick fights. Contrarians and skeptics are not the same, but can overlap.
There‘s also a pipeline that goes like this: new atheism > anti religion > anti islam > white nationalism
The issue here is that the left has abandoned its opposition to religion, especially regarding Islam, in the name of anti-racism and intersectional identity politics. So these people are rejected by the left and driven to the right.
I don't think "the left" needs to abandon religion. I have the left in quotes because most of the time we're actually talking about progressives. And you can't be progressive while dictating the beliefs of others. Leftism, however, benefits greatly from being united in belief. Unity is what it's all about. But they don't, because leftists are usually more progressives than anything else. Even when it happens, the hive mind mentality is what makes extreme leftism easy to fall apart and easy to slip into dictatorships at high population levels. And yet, we are approaching a post scarcity, post career having society, which demands socialism to some extent. But with a reliance on globalism. And bad foreign policy in place.
I don't have an ultimate point in this I guess. I don't know the solution, but it's not stamping out religion and it's not the reactionary fascism that America is a part of now.
I've never witnessed an atheist making such an argument. Usually it's the theists getting hung up on him because they are used to appealing to authority figures and project.
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I've found that I generally don't look down on anyone pretty much ever. I don't get it when someone lacks intellectual curiosity, but I never look down on them for it since it's just not everyone's cup of tea. However, when someone has disdain or actively rejects deeper inquiry, hoo boy, I can't help but suddenly feel a pretty aggressive anger as if they not only choose to be stupid, but are trying to socially pressure everyone else to choose to be stupid. That's just not acceptable.
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