Early in the Reticulum—thousands of years ago—it became…
““Early in the Reticulum—thousands of years ago—it became almost useless because it was cluttered with faulty, obsolete, or downright misleading information,” Sammann said. “Crap, you once called it,” I reminded him. “Yes—a technical term. So crap filtering became important. Businesses were built around it. Some of those businesses came up with a clever plan to make more money: they poisoned the well. They began to put crap on the Reticulum deliberately, forcing people to use their products to filter that crap back out. They created syndevs whose sole purpose was to spew crap into the Reticulum. But it had to be good crap.” “What is good crap?” Arsibalt asked in a politely incredulous tone. “Well, bad crap would be an unformatted document consisting of random letters. Good crap would be a beautifully typeset, well-written document that contained a hundred correct, verifiable sentences and one that was subtly false. It’s a lot harder to generate good crap. At first they had to hire humans to churn it out.””
About This Quote
This interpretation was drafted with AI assistance. It is one reading of the quote, not the author's own explanation.
In a data‑rich system, malicious actors can flood it with convincing but false information, forcing users to rely on costly filtering services.
In simple terms: Bad data can be disguised as good, creating profit for those who filter it.
Key Takeaway
Beware of sophisticated misinformation and its economic incentives.
Themes
information integrity
misinformation
filtering
economics
trust
Mood
cautious
analytical
Type
technological
ethical
When to use this quote
- news platforms
- search engines
- social media moderation
- research databases
Key Concepts
signal-to-noise ratio
information warfare
ethical AI
Questions to Reflect On
- How can we design open, trustworthy filters?
- What incentives drive the creation of “good crap”?
A Different Perspective
Filtering can become a monopoly; not all filters are unbiased.