view from the present
an extended meditation on presence (we also have chickens)
a framework for brain stuff (on and off the tubes)
While snowed in over my long Thanksgiving weekend, I started thinking about the stuff online and how it interacts with the stuff in our brains.
As requested by absolutely no one, behold: a framework for sorting the stuff on the Internet (and not on the Internet).
0: Slop
"Slop" is the online stuff that is less than useless. It's spam email, the "one weird trick" ads at the bottom of Web pages, ads stuffed into apps, and so on.
The defining feature of slop is its lack of value, content, or meaning. Even when made by humans (as most slop was before 2022), slop offers zero value to the person beholding it and does not pretend to. Slop is no give, all take.
For a long time, slop was readily identifiable. These days, it's harder. Today's slop is mostly produced by AI, and it's designed to mimic stuff in the next two categories: chatter and information. Success at mimicry doesn't make it not slop. Why should you bother to read/watch/listen to what no one could be bothered to make?
1: Chatter
Social media, comment sections, and "content" of all kinds fall in this category.
Chatter is defined by its lack of informational value (see "information," below). Chatter might be true. It might be false. It might be meaningless. It might be true and false, or true and meaningless, or false and meaningless, or true and false and meaningless. What chatter is NOT is informational.
Yet chatter, unlike slop, has value to humans who produce and encounter it. We're social creatures; we socialize. Chatter is socializing, online. Chatter is the hydrant pissings of members of our species too existentially neurotic to endure silence.
Chatter is great for hijacking your attention, but not much else. Its value as socializing is pretty weak - you'd get more from exchanging pleasantries with your local grocery store cashier, dental hygienist, or pharmacy technician. (I'm not just saying this. There are studies.)
The great breakthrough of LLMs is their ability to mimic chatter. Before LLMs, we had bots, which often failed to mimic chatter effectively. LLMs are much better at faking chatter, turning chatter into slop.
2: Information
Wikipedia, some forums, many independent websites deep-sixed by Google in its quest to promote its own AI slop disguised as information.
Information conveys factual or otherwise usable information to the reader/listener/viewer. I say "otherwise usable" because in some cases, even falsehoods, misinformation, incomplete information, or opinions can be usable. Getting an angry text from Aunt Bev announcing I am an "ungrateful niece" is hardly fact, but it does inform me about the state of Aunt Bev's feelings. Likewise, a Reddit thread comparing the pros and cons of two vehicles or smartphones is full of opinions, but those opinions can provide context and perspective.
Information online is currently a dying breed. LLMs can produce algorithmically-driven strings of words that, when read, appear to constitute information. But it's slop.
3: Knowledge
Not available online.
Knowledge is what happens inside your brain when you ponder information, apply it to a question or situation, and experience results.
Knowledge cannot be shared directly. You can report your knowledge back to to the Internet, but the report itself constitutes information, not knowledge. Your information can only be converted to knowledge again if someone else sees it, ponders, applies, and experiences results.
LLMs cannot produce knowledge. Knowledge requires live interaction with information and an environment. LLMs aren't alive. QED.
4: Wisdom
Not available online.
Wisdom is composted knowledge. Its fruits are perspective and meaning, both of which are deeply and uniquely personal.
Wisdom isn't available online or from LLMs, and it never will be. As the Vulcans say, "Touching grass is the beginning of wisdom, not the end."
LLMs will never produce wisdom for the same reason they'll never produce knowledge: Both require life.
Knowledge and wisdom are not uniquely human, but they are unique to living. My chickens have absorbed the information that my voice saying "hey girls, hey" and the sound of the metal can opening mean that scratch is imminent. They have generated the knowledge that if they rush to the door of the run, they get hand-fed treats. I don't know if chickens develop wisdom, though I'm inclined to say they do; hens too old to lay are the ideal parents/aunties/drill sergeants for cockerels getting a little too big for their britches, for instance.
Online can take us as far as information - sometimes. For everything else, we have to live our own lives.
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