What is AI slop? When I share something with another person, I almost always sense whether I have truly been understood.
If someone responds too quickly or with too many words, it usually means they are more interested in expressing their opinion than in hearing what I am saying. An excess of words is often a sign of a lack of understanding.
But when someone listens, asks questions, and does not rush to speak, I feel understood — even if they say very little. Sometimes they say nothing at all.
Too many words spoken too quickly trigger our inner sensor for fluff — we tune out. Even if the other person talks sense, it makes little sense to us.
I feel understood when the other person listens to WHY I am saying what I am saying, not to the words themselves. This person is interested in what CAUSED me to open my mouth in the first place.
As Alexander Bibikhin, a Russian philosopher and philologist, says, “true words are born out of silence.” When we listen to someone, we instinctively ask ourselves: “Did this person have a good enough reason to open their mouth?” “What was important enough behind these words that caused this person to speak?”
Words that carry meaning are immediately recognized by our inner “sense sensor.” We simply know when another person’s words arise from a “womb of inner silence,” where they have waited nine long months to be born. And we know that all other words are mostly noise.
In our world, the amount of information is increasing exponentially, yet it makes less and less sense. AI multiplies words at unprecedented speed, but we increasingly filter them out. The Internet is flooded with AI slop that claims our attention yet leaves us with little meaning.
In C.S. Lewis’ Pilgrim’s Regress, a city Claptrap symbolizes a civilization intoxicated with words detached from meaning — language used to elicit reaction rather than embody truth. The city accumulates noise in order to distract people from the silence in which meaning is born.
There are words that don’t speak. They are noise. They are manufactured, not born. How do we recognize them? C.S. Lewis replies:
“What does not satisfy when we find it, was not the thing we were desiring.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress
What kind of words do we desire? Our inner sensor doesn’t lie. We desire words that are born, not fabricated. We desire a few words that nourish — not many words that leave us empty. AI puts out noise-words. They clammer for our attention but leave us famished.
What is the difference between giving birth to words and fabricating them? To bear words, we must pass through waiting and suffering — it is the only way to become a “mother of words.” True words are conceived in deep silence; they are conceived of God. They are born after nine months of waiting, when suddenly we realize that we truly have something to say.
Machines spew out endless words yet leave us yearning for a handful of living ones. The more we allow the Machine to speak for us, the more we starve. The goal of Claptrap is clear: to silence the human being, because only the human being can conceive and give birth to living language.
The muting of the human becomes almost palpable in our time. And yet, the more dissatisfied we become with what Claptrap feeds us, the more clearly we realize what we truly desire. If we find ourselves starving for meaning, it means we need more word-mothers and fewer word-fakers in our lives.
