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You Want to Hate AI Slop But You Absolutely Love It
Don’t worry, it loves you back
A man reaches for an apple. He doesn’t know why. The scientist watching him does. The word “apple” was flashed to his right hemisphere, the part of his brain that can’t speak. His left hemisphere, the one that does the talking, has no access to this information. But when asked why he picked up the apple, he does not say, “I don’t know.” He doesn’t seem confused either. Instead, he answers with confidence: I was hungry.
This is the split-brain phenomenon, a window into the brain’s machinery: If your corpus callosum is severed (you shouldn’t check by yourself), the hemispheres will encounter communication hurdles. But the brain knows every trick. When confronted with an action it cannot explain, it doesn’t freeze in bewilderment. It invents and improvises. It doesn’t lie maliciously, but out of necessity, for it abhors a gap in its narrative. “I picked up the apple because I was hungry.” Why else?
Imagine another scene. A group of people sits in a room, reading poetry. The lines move them. Some pieces are beautiful, others forgettable, a few strikingly brilliant. They choose their favorites, justifying their selections with observations about depth, rhythm, originality, flow, and beauty. Then comes the reveal: the poems they liked better were not written by…
