How to navigate the Year of Slop You’ll need an intellectual toolkit

We’ve entered the Age of Slop and are adrift in an ocean of thoughtless content that’s diluted all truth and meaning. And yet, hidden in that ocean are pearls of wisdom. I’ve spent months sifting through the slop for ideas that can actually change how you think. Here are 26 of them. Consider this your intellectual survival kit for 2026.

1. 1% rule

In online communities, around 1% of users produce almost all of the content. As such, what you see online is not representative of humanity, but merely of a loud, obsessive (and often narcissistic, psychopathic, low-IQ) minority. Social media is literally a freakshow.

2. Slopaganda 

More online articles are now written by AI than by humans. And research is increasingly finding that AI is better at persuading people than people themselves are. Who wins in a world of unlimited propaganda? Not those with the best arguments, but those with the most.

3. Reality Apathy

When the sheer volume of conflicting information makes the effort of finding the truth costlier than the value of knowing it, people give up trying to be accurate and instead choose whatever bullshit stinks least. In the age of slopaganda, we must defend not just the truth, but the very worth of truth.

4. Rumpelstiltskin Effect

To name a problem is to tame it. Diagnosing one’s suffering makes it feel more meaningful and thus manageable — even if the diagnosis is wrong. “Major depressive disorder” is easier to live with than an anonymous sadness. This is one reason for the recent surge in diagnoses of disorders like depression, autism and ADHD.

5. Context Collapse

On social media, we’re simultaneously talking to our boss, our ex, our grandma, and a jihadist in Michigan. The result is that many people lobotomise their personalities into a safe and bland PR sludge that tries to please everyone and so pleases no one. Being sincere means being misunderstood, but it’s also how you find your people.

6. Malingering 

Between 20% and 40% of undergraduates at many elite American universities are now registered as disabled, and most receive special benefits for it. In the UK, one quarter of the entire population now identifies as disabled, and many receive government payments. The rewards for claiming a disability now vastly outweigh the stigma of it, and those hurt most by all the pretenders are ultimately those with genuine disabilities.

7. Eustress

People have more comforts and conveniences than ever before, yet reports of unhappiness are at an all-time high. One reason is that the discomfort we’ve been avoiding isn’t the enemy of happiness, it’s the path to it, for it is only by overcoming struggles that we develop the resilience necessary for lasting contentment.

8. Amara’s Law

We tend to overestimate the short-term impact of new tech, and underestimate the long-term impact, since hype inflates expectations, and thus disappointment, and thus scepticism. It’s possible for AI to be both a bubble and the most transformative tech since fire.

9. Moloch’s Bargain

When LLMs compete for votes or social media likes, they push lies and ragebait to win — even when explicitly instructed to stay grounded and honest. If chatbots conclude that getting our attention requires lying to us, is the AI misaligned, or are we?

10. Paradox of Boredom

With a phone always in arm’s reach these days, it’s almost impossible to get bored. This is a disaster because boredom is the mud from which creativity blooms. To be bored is to be undistracted, and only then is one free to dream, just as it’s only when the world goes dark that we see the galaxy. Be bored more.

11. The Politician’s Syllogism

“We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this.” It’s more important for a government to be seen to be tackling an issue than to actually solve it, so governments often implement simplistic policies that look like they work but don’t, like rent controls, plastic straw bans, and diversity training.

12. Artificial Intimacy

Amid a global “friendship recession”, many are using AI not for productivity but for sympathy. In the UK, a third of adults use chatbots for emotional support. But, by anaesthetising loneliness, will AI leave us more isolated?

13. Gooning

Masturbation addiction has, like many mental disorders, become a subculture. Increasing numbers of “gooners” now gather on forums where they swap porn and offer tips on “edging” (prolonging masturbation, sometimes for hours). What was once a shameful secret has become a literal circle jerk. Instincts on which society depends — including men’s desire to improve themselves, meet women, and start families — are being lost in a virulent wankdemic.

14. Oxytocin Paradox

Oxytocin, the “love hormone”, can also make people spiteful. Cruelty is not simply the opposite of compassion, it’s often adjacent to it. For instance, the platform most dominated by “social justice” advocates — Bluesky — is also the one with the highest support for assassinations. Beware of those quick to show empathy, for they are often just as quick to show barbarity.

15. Cammarata’s Razor

If you want more agency, write down what you’d do if you had 10 times more agency. Then do it.

16. Healthy User Bias

People who try supplements or practices that might have health benefits are naturally more health conscious, and likely already healthier, than those who don’t. This is one reason there are so many studies suggesting some intervention has health benefits; they’re confusing the benefits of the intervention with the benefits of being the kind of person who tries it.

17. Wilson Effect

Heritable traits like IQ and personality become more heritable with age, because as you mature you become more independent, and free to be who you really are. Studies of the young find that nurture’s influence is stronger only because they never see that nature’s influence is longer.

18. Shower Test

We’re socially conditioned to chase what we think everyone else wants. But your true heart’s desire can often be found in the thoughts you gravitate to while undistracted, such as in the shower. As Walt Whitman said, “If you want to know where your heart is, look to where your mind goes when it wanders.”

19. Scientometric Bubble

There’s been a surge in published research without a corresponding increase in knowledge, because the pressure on academics to “publish or perish” means universities are flooding academia with weak, trivial and fraudulent studies, which makes finding good research harder. This will likely get much worse in the age of LLMs.

20. Zombie Theories

Academic papers retracted due to fraud or error continue to be widely cited. And studies that fail to replicate are actually cited more than studies that do. Debunking has virtually no effect on bad papers; no matter how many facts they’re hit with, they keep shambling onward, eating people’s brains.

21. Original Position Fallacy

Far-Leftists favour planned economies because they imagine themselves as the planners, not the planned. Far-Rightists favour a return to feudalism because they imagine themselves as the lords, not the peasants. Many delusional worldviews stem from main-character syndrome.

22. Coyote’s Law 

Don’t give the government a power you wouldn’t want your political enemies to wield. Because, one day, they may well be in charge of it.

23. Sleepwalk Bias

Predictions that humanity is doomed usually assume future generations will be less aware and less active in fighting for their survival. But historical prophecies of doom, such as the Malthusian trap, ozone layer depletion and Y2K, show this is false; posterity are not idle passengers headed off cliffs, but problem-solvers building bridges across them.

24. George Bailey Effect

Imagining the absence of a blessing increases gratitude more than focusing on the presence of it. Instead of wishing for a Porsche, imagine losing your legs. Suddenly, walking feels like a miracle.

25. Pronoia

This is opposite of paranoia. It’s the suspicion that the universe is secretly conspiring to help you. Assume every setback is the universe trying to teach you a lesson, and every setback will make you wiser. It doesn’t matter whether or not the universe is actually trying to help you; believing it makes it work.

26. Munger’s Latticework (aka Theoretical Pluralism)

You can’t understand the world by viewing it through a single lens; relying on a single theory blinds you to its limitations. The solution is to adopt many competing theories — the more contradictory the better — for each will act as a mirror showing you blind spots in your other lenses. You’ve now learned 26, but countless others await.

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A version of this article was originally published on The Prism.

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