sloptics
/slop.tiks/ - the science of seeing slop
LLM output has two failure modes. The obvious one - emoji headers, numbered lists, "let's dive in" - is culturally detectable. The other passes verification, survives editing, survives expert review, and is structurally indifferent to whether it is true.
This site documents the second failure mode. 49+ named patterns with detection heuristics, built from 321+ session decisions and 1,250+ commits of field observation. Nothing was theorised in advance. Everything was caught in the wild.
the apparatus
sloptics /slop.tiks/ n.
The discipline. From slop + optics (Greek optike, the science of seeing). The systematic study of how LLM-generated language creates the appearance of authenticity, rigour, or insight without the substance. Sloptics is to LLM output what cognitive distortion taxonomy is to human thought: a naming system that converts invisible patterns into detectable ones.
slopticon /slop.ti.kon/ n.
The apparatus. From slop + -opticon (Greek optikon; cf. panopticon). A taxonomy of named patterns, designed to make invisible output characteristics visible through the act of naming. Where the panopticon controls behaviour through visibility, the slopticon liberates perception through it.
slopodar /slop.a.dar/ n., v.
The detection instinct. From slop + radar. The trained attention that fires before conscious analysis - the felt wrongness, the "something is off" that precedes identification. Browse the full taxonomy.
the line
surface slop
Patterns above the visibility threshold. Detectable by untrained readers through cultural exposure. Emoji section headers, "here are 5 key takeaways," confident symmetrical conclusions that resolve all tension. Surface slop is a solved problem. The cultural immune system adapted.
clear slop
Patterns below the visibility threshold. Resistant to casual expert review. Clear slop passes through verification the way clear water passes through a net. Logic that follows from unstated premises. Evidence cited but mischaracterised. Confidence that correlates with fluency rather than accuracy.
the visibility threshold
The line between detectable and undetectable, for a given reader at a given moment. It moves with training - sloptic literacy shifts it down. It degrades with fatigue - cognitive load shifts it up. The threshold is lowest at the end of a long session, when the model's output is warmest and the human's capacity to challenge is at its weakest.
Built from The Pit - an open-source evaluation platform for AI-human collaboration. The taxonomy, the detectors, and the field observations all originate there. oceanheart.ai is where the rest of the story lives.