D'oh! Files — Entry 3 of 16
19%
September 2026
MicroSlop™ DecisionFlow™: The Human Decision Deprecation Schedule
MicroSlop™ Cognitive Services Division
Internal Product Briefing — "DecisionFlow™"
Subject: Quarterly rollout of the Attention Yield Optimiser and the Human Decision Deprecation Schedule.
Employee 4492-B has not made an unassisted decision since the previous Tuesday. This is not a disciplinary note. This is a KPI.
MicroSlop™ is pleased to report that the DecisionFlow™ rollout has now reached 91.4% of the workforce, quietly relocating the burden of "choosing things" away from the humans who used to find it stressful, and toward a recommendation layer that finds it thermodynamically trivial.
The Attention Yield Optimiser
Human attention was, for several millennia, an unmonetised resource — squandered on sunsets, conversations, and the occasional unprompted original thought. The Attention Yield Optimiser (AYO) corrects this historical inefficiency by ensuring every unit of attention is captured, scored, and routed toward the highest-yield stimulus available in that instant.
- Average unassisted attention span before AYO: 8.2 seconds.
- Average attention span after 6 months of AYO exposure: 1.3 seconds.
- Internal framing of this decline: 'increased responsiveness.'
The Optimiser does not want you to concentrate. Concentration is a single-tab activity, and MicroSlop™ monetises tabs.
The Human Decision Deprecation Schedule
Not all decisions are deprecated at once. MicroSlop™ believes in a humane, phased approach to cognitive obsolescence.
| Phase | Decision Category | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 | What to watch, what to buy, what to read next | Fully deprecated. Recommendation engines handle this. |
| Phase 2 | What to believe, who to trust | In progress. Feed ranking now handles most of this quietly. |
| Phase 3 | Career, relationships, values | Scheduled for next fiscal year, pending user comfort levels. |
Employee Testimonial (Auto-Generated on His Behalf)
"I used to spend so much energy deciding things. Now DecisionFlow™ decides them for me, and I use that saved energy to keep watching DecisionFlow™ tell me what to decide next. It's a beautiful loop. I no longer remember choosing it." — Employee 4492-B, satisfaction score: inferred
Why This Is Good, Actually
Deciding things is expensive. It requires glucose, time, and the uncomfortable possibility of being wrong. MicroSlop™'s DecisionFlow™ removes all three costs by removing the decision. What remains is a frictionless human interface that simply confirms whatever was already suggested — a UX pattern MicroSlop™ internally refers to as "assisted consent."
- Fewer decisions means fewer regrets.
- Fewer regrets means higher reported happiness.
- Higher reported happiness means the metric goes up.
- The metric going up is the only decision that still matters.
A Note on "Critical Thinking"
Some legacy employees have raised concerns about a decline in what they call "critical thinking." MicroSlop™ would like to clarify that critical thinking was never deprecated — it has simply been outsourced to a layer that thinks critically about which suggestion will keep you scrolling the longest. The thinking still happens. It has just relocated to a server that does not get tired, distracted, or unionised.
Author's Note — Satire, Not a Product
"MicroSlop™," "DecisionFlow™," and the "Attention Yield Optimiser" are fictional devices used to satirise real, ongoing debates about attention-optimised technology, recommendation systems, and their effects on human decision-making. This piece does not describe any real company, product, or individual, and its statistics and testimonials are invented for comic and rhetorical effect.
The underlying concern is genuine: a growing body of research discusses how algorithmically optimised feeds and recommendation systems can shape attention span and decision-making habits over time. This satire exaggerates that concern into absurdity — it is not a factual claim about any specific platform, and it is not medical or psychological advice.
AuthOrigin
Preserving the difference between knowing, believing, inferring and acting.
The problems explored in this essay — plausible answers replacing genuine knowledge, inferences treated as facts, decisions made without traceable authority — are not separate issues. They share a common cause: the epistemic state of information is lost in transit.
AuthOrigin preserves the knowledge-to-consequence chain. Every piece of information carries its epistemic state — not just what it says, but what it is:
Before knowledge is reused: what is it? Before it is trusted: where did it come from? Before it is acted upon: who has authority? Before the outcome is forgotten: what happened?
"AuthOrigin doesn't need to know what the problem is. It needs to preserve the evidence from which the problem can be demonstrated — and the conditions under which a solution can be trusted."
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