When you don’t know a single thing about cooking, the magic machine sounds like a great idea.
The machine is almost magical. You put in whatever you have around the house in whatever quantities. On the other side of the machine, you end up getting a gourmet meal. Something that might even rival a Michelin starred restaurant.
The meal certainly looks like it. Smells like it. And even tastes like it.
You start telling all of your friends to start using the magic machine to make all their meals too. All over the planet, people start going crazy about the magic machine.
You start to see engineers whose sole work becomes in figuring out how to optimize using slop. Billions of dollars get spent to make more magic machine that do things slightly differently (but still the same).
Billions get spent to give this magic machine away for free in every person’s kitchen so that they can eat gourmet meals.
You notice after many weeks though, that there is something off though with what you’re eating. You’re spending more time in the toilet. For others, they’re not able to go the toilet frequently enough. They feel clogged up.
You feel a shortness of breath as all the rich food you’re eating starts to clog up your arteries. What’s more, even the best gourmet stuff that comes out of the magic machine starts tasting the same.
You visit a friend’s home for dinner. You get served something that looks different, but tastes exactly the same as what you had last night.
Soon, everything starts tasting the same. You visit a restaurant hoping for something different. The restaurant promises you professionally trained chefs who are going to make something truly delightful and unique.
The dish comes out…and it turns out this restaurant is also just using the magic machine.
The machine is everywhere. Everything looks gourmet, but it all tastes the same. It all feels the same. And it all clogs up our arteries even more.
Until you realize that the magic machine never truly delivered a real hearty meal. Just the illusion of one that almost felt the same.
It was slop all along.
And instead of spending billions in building magic machines, we would have been better served in just learning how to cook properly ourselves.