this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2026
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Bathtub Thoughts

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This community is inspired by this post on !showerthoughts@lemmy.world:

We really need a community where you can just post about anything that you’re really passionate about, which you’re currently researching/thinking about, sothat others can learn something about it as well and maybe discuss about it.

This showerthoughts community is a bit like it because you can just post whatever comes to your mind, but i’d like it to be more in-depth and with higher quality. Something like showerthoughts, but bathtubthoughts, i.e. when you’re soaking in a hot bathtub and thinking about stuff for 20 minutes or sth, and then post that. You know what i mean?

Related communities:

!showerthoughts@lemmy.world

!todayilearned@lemmy.ml

!youshouldknow@lemmy.world

!infodump@lemmy.autism.place

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Ask the Genie to Make All the Terrible People Happy (piefed.zip)
submitted 3 weeks ago by SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip to c/bathtubthoughts@discuss.tchncs.de
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Inspired by a Utilitarian question in another post, it occurred to me that if you found a magic lamp, and the genie offered you a wish, and you wanted to better humanity, your best move is to wish for happiness and contentment for all of the people you hate the most.

It's fear, anger, or outrage that drives discontent, and motivates people to try to change the world around them. If you wish for happiness and contentment for the people you like, e.g. the ones fighting for human rights, for peace, for justice, then that deprives them of their best motivation, and they'll stop fighting.

But if you wish contentment on the evil people—you know who they are—they will also stop striving to change the world, to tear down society, and to arrogate it all for themselves. Like that famous quote, if you wish to grant Musk and Bezos feeling of "enough," they would no longer need to hoard a pile of gold beyond the imaging of the greediest dragon.

I dunno. They don't deserve it, buy the outcome would make the world better for everybody. Could you do it?

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[–] Curious_Canid@piefed.ca 1 points 3 weeks ago

I do think that most of the evil in the world is caused by fear, which results in unhappiness and anger. Making the evil people happy would probably "fix" a lot of them. The main problem would be the people who would have been fine if they'd been happy initially, but are now too steeped in hatred to change. Well, them plus the genuine sociopaths.