this post was submitted on 23 May 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:

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The butterfly effects would add up and and any zygote formed would not be the hitler-as-we-know anymore, since it would be a different combination of sperm and eggs.

Who needs guns when you got a time machine? Don't like your highschool bully, just bump into their parents back in time. Or you know, "bump" ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) into their parents.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I don't believe it would prevent the holocaust though. If it wasn't him, it would have been someone else.

Just like now, if it wasn't Trump, the Heritage Foundation would have found another fuck to carry out their bidding. Fascism is a systemic issue.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I wonder what that other timeline is like where that dumbass kid actually aimed correctly at the rally.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 45 minutes ago

Would have been cool if Nikki Haley were the nominee and there would have been a female president no matter what

[–] [email protected] 11 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

But fuck Hitler's mom just to be safe

[–] [email protected] 16 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Plot twist: Hitler was actually your son and become like that because of a missing fatherly figure

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 hours ago

Then there's a LOT of Hitlers in the making from absent fathers, children of lesbians etc. If missing a fatherly figure is what makes a person a nazi.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

This is how we get the red alert timeline. Killing Hitler only makes a stronger enemy

[–] [email protected] 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

"Heetler.... ees... out of de way."

/cue Hell March

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

REform LINE! Quick MARCH!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago

Unpopular opinion.

Humanity is going to generate tyrants until we vaccinate everyone with a sense of morality and even then, we’re going to have problems with dark empaths starting shit as long as we think child soldiers can be saved.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

The real criticism of this plan is that whether you assassinate Hitler or just prevent his birth, it doesn't solve the societal problems that led to the world wars. Hitler wouldn't have happened, but the Germans would still feel snubbed by the outcome of the Great War

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

What’s even the point man, the world will still find a way to shit on us

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That's not how time works. If you go back in time and kill Hitler Hitler already happened in your timeline so he's going to happen again. You can't change things that already happened in your past.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Time is a one-way linear progression, you can't go back in the first place. Any fictional story where time travel happens necessarily has its own rules, and every one is equally valid

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't think that space time works like that.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's not like we actually know how time travel would work. Because, you know, it's not currently a thing at all.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

I think that it's fairly ~~settled~~ accepted theory that if you perceived it it happened. If you went back to the past and caused it not to happen then it wouldn't have happened and you wouldn't have perceived it. Basically, you can't change what already happened because whatever you did in the past had already happened when you perceived and therefore nothing that you did changed anything.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Not at all. There is many ways to rationalize time, nothing is settled at all. The "settled theory" you talk about would create paradoxes, if time travel is ever made real. And paradoxes don't work well with reality.

There is actually a fairly common way to rationalize time that is the opposite of what you're describing: Time is entirely a construct, there is no past, no future, only the present. Take away all of humanity's memories and the past doesn't exist at all.

There's also an understanding of time that says it only goes forward, making time travelling to the past impossible.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 day ago

If you don't like something that happened to you today and go back to 2000 to change something that change that you made in 2000 had already occurred in 2000 when the thing that you didn't like happened in 2025. What happened in 2025 happened after the change you made in 2000.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Time travel is a settled theory?

😁

That's not what theory means at all

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

So if I leave my phone in 1929, nothing changes? That's absurd.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago (2 children)

If you left your phone in 1929 then you had already done it in the past today. Nothing changed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I feel like just accepting that as the answer is a philosophically lazy answer that simply doesn't pass the logic test because I didn't have a time machine. Now I do. Things change. And even if it doesn't change for us, it changes the course of time for them. Can you imagine the leap in tech if a modern flagship phone was found in the 70s? You wouldn't be able to go so far back that they're incapable of interpreting the tech, like what would a hunter/gatherer glean from a phone? Nothing. But in the 40s? Certainly we could have learned a lot from it by then.

You can't just wave off something that's pure speculation as if you know anything about it. This is as close to some weird time theology I can think of. Like the "gods plan" of time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

It's called an ontological paradox.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

I disagree. If you made a change in 2000 you had already made it when whatever happened in 2025 happened. If you went back and killed Hitler in 1885 that had already happened in 1933 when Hitler was appointed Chancellor. What happened in 1885 didn't change what happened in 1933. Maybe you killed the wrong person. Maybe history got wrong who Hitler was. Maybe Hitler assumed the identity of the dead infant and went on to be appointed Chancellor. The point is that whatever happened in 1935 happened after whatever happened in 1885.

Edit: It's called an ontological paradox.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Many worlds theory gives us an alternative - in one world I left my phone in 1929 and that shaped that world tremendously.

But that didn't happen in my world and it can't, because my world is the world where no one left their phone in 1929.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago

Yes. There are many paths forward from any moment in time but only one path backwards. That means that to get to where you are right now whatever happened in the past has already happened and can't be changed.

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