r/showerthoughs

To be fair, I did not have this thought in the shower. It occurred to me on a wedding party while having a peaceful piss outside of the location in the garden. It sometimes has something special to just have a piss outside alone in the quiet rather than in a crowded public toilet. This silent minute outside in the cold just by yourself has some special touch to it.

Being slightly drunk and thinking about roughly 50% of the population (woman) almost never having this objectively insignificant, yet quite peaceful experience made me think and appreciate it even more.

Saw smth about a theory where every time you make a decision a very large number (infinite?) amount of parallel universes are made where you chose smth different and I just thought of this when I took a shower today.

Edit: So it appears that some people assumed I believed this theory and I don’t blame them. But I want to make it clear that I don’t believe this theory and I don’t think it makes much sense. It is fun to think about though.

Okay, so I always thought the chicken-and-egg thing was just a stoner question. Then I actually looked at the timeline.

The chicken-or-egg paradox is a physics/definition problem in disguise, and the egg wins by roughly 40,000× unless you cheat with definitions

It is a physics question in disguise. The egg (amniotic egg) came first. It's a 310-million-year-old innovation. Chickens are ~8,000 years old. The egg is 40,000× older.

Amniotic egg: evolved around 310–320 million years ago in the Carboniferous. It’s the egg with amnion, chorion, allantois, yolk sac, sometimes a shell — the thing that let vertebrates reproduce away from water.

Birds: surviving theropod dinosaurs.

Chickens: Gallus gallus domesticus, domesticated from red junglefowl roughly 8,000 years ago — though estimates range from ~3,500 to ~10,000 depending on method.

So:

310,000,000/8,000≈38,750≈40,000

310,000,000/8,000≈38,750≈40,000

The egg isn’t just first. It’s not close. The egg is about 40,000× older than the chicken.

But the real trick is the word “egg.” There are actually three different questions hiding in there:

Did any egg exist before chickens?

Yes. Obviously. By hundreds of millions of years.

Did the first chicken egg come before the first chicken?

If “chicken egg” means “an egg containing a chicken,” then yes. A not-quite-chicken parent laid an egg, and due to mutation/recombination, the offspring inside was what we’d classify as the first chicken. Egg before chicken by one generation.

Did a chicken-laid egg come before the first chicken?

No. If “chicken egg” means “an egg laid by a chicken,” then the chicken had to exist first to lay it. This is the definitional flip that keeps the paradox alive.

Why it feels like physics: “first” requires a sharp event. But “chicken” isn’t a fundamental particle. It’s a fuzzy human label stuck onto a continuous evolutionary lineage. Speciation is population-level and gradual. There’s no single moment where a non-chicken becomes a chicken in some metaphysically clean way. It’s the sorites paradox with feathers.

So the answer is:

If egg = amniotic egg, the egg wins by ~40,000×.

If chicken egg = egg containing a chicken, the egg wins by one generation.

If chicken egg = egg laid by a chicken, the chicken wins by definition.

The universe doesn’t care. We’re the ones drawing the line.

TL;DR: Egg came first. By a lot. Unless you define the question so it can’t lose.

pls send help I am not well hahahaha