2025-10-09
2025 is the year of slop. Meta has made an infinite slop machine. So has OpenAI. If this isn’t bad enough, our jobs have been invaded by workslop.
The implication behind all of this is that slop is the fault of the LLMs or their creators.
But for a moment, I want to ask you to consider… is this true?
I don’t dispute that we’re seeing a lot more AI generated slop than we were 2 years ago… but I do wonder what it’s displacing. When I see this AI video of a woman jumping through a glass bridge, I wonder what human content it is replacing in those users feeds. What is the quality of that content? Would it qualify as slop too?
Here is what I believe to be true.
Making something excellent takes care and focus. Sometimes that care and focus is the years you spent prior to the morning you make something excellent and the final thing hops out of you almost fully formed. Sometimes that care and focus is the years you spend refining something until it is excellent.
Most creative work, including mine, isn’t particularly high quality. If you want to be uncharitable, you could call this slop. Internet platforms have made it easier for people to create and display their work. LLMs have made it easier to create. This means that we see a lot more slop.
There will be some Sora posts that will be funny, wonderful, even beautiful. There will be many that are slop.
At the end of it all, slop is a choice. My choice and your choice. “The devil’s oldest strategy is, of course, promising godlike creation without godlike effort.”
2025-05-27
Worth your time
- People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies and China’s superstition boom.
- Using Claude to make weapons of mass destruction.
- Slate Truck is a $20,000 American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, and no touchscreen <- I’m very interested in this one, although I’d go with the SUV.
- And old post of mine about how recycling in Switzerland works.
- SEO for Chatbots. It begins. I guessI shouldn’t look down too much on this.
- Sacred vs. secular values. When people see an issue as a moral imperative, asking them to compromise on it with money offends them and makes a compromise less likely. Instead, the key is to offer respect and a compromise on a similarly important issue.
- The invention and commercialization of stainless steel.
Commercial success demanded blending science and marketing; a steelmaker had to recognize not just the value of a new alloy, but its potential use. Benno Strauss, of the Krupp Works, later spoke about recognizing the potential of his stainless steel in plumbing, cutlery, medical equipment, and mirrors. He, like Brearley—who realized his stainless steel would be useful in spindles, pistons, plungers, and valves—was focused.
Things I learned
One step back, two steps forward
“Research on third-grade retention policies [holding kids back in 3rd grade] has found that students who are retained tend to have better long-term outcomes than those who are not” from this article on the Mississippi Miracle.
Trade laws of nature?
The distance elasticity of trade (the rate at which trade between two cities drops off as they get farther away from each other) seems to be the same today as it was in ancient Assyria.
Musings
The fact that exposure therapy works with phobias (e.g., if you’re afraid of airplanes, the cure is actually getting on a plane and seeing that it works out okay) makes me more sympathetic that the idea that one should act brave in order to become brave.