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: 1

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We like music because our brains crave pattern recognition. (self.showerthoughts)

submitted 1 month ago by Yondoza to c/[email protected]

40 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Music is just layered simple patterns and our brains LOVE IT.

Sound is pressure waves, musical notes are a specific pattern of pressure waves. Melodies are repeated musical notes. Songs are repeated melodies following standard structure.

Our brains love trying to decode and parse all these overlapping patterns.

Maybe not really a shower thought and more wild speculation.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I think this is getting it backwards. Here I’ll go (warning, evopsych style speculation follows):

Our brains are great pattern recognizers because it makes us better at learning music (and other structured forms such as poetry). Music is older than all the civilizations on earth. We learn music because it’s an incredibly powerful aid to memorization. Memorization and oral recitation is the oldest form of cultural transmission we have.

Culture is the secret of our success as a species. It’s the original problem solver that gave us so many tools and techniques to survive on every continent on the planet (except Antarctica of course). Culture is the reason we learned to prepare so many foods which would have been poisonous otherwise (such as cassava).

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

Imo it's very unlikely that we grew to like music that already existed rather than growing to like audio patterns and then noticing we can make music.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Almost nothing in evolution happened sequentially. We almost certainly didn’t start creating music before our brains were equipped for it. Instead these things would’ve evolved in tandem. Each one driving the other, in a virtuous cycle.

[–] Yondoza 2 points 1 month ago

This is a cool take! I don't think I agree though. I assume we developed pattern recognition before music/language. Many animals have the ability to note attributes about plants and animals even without the ability to communicate complex ideas (ie language or oral tradition). I assume that type of pattern recognition was a good blueprint for functions like music and language, but my guess is it started from a general pattern recognition, then was retuned for music and language.

Again, pure speculation, but there is some logic behind it!