The World Values What It Can See [Raw Session]

00:00 — Value, attention, and trust

Hey, welcome back to Slow Builds.

This video connects the last couple of videos I’ve done around where value is being placed.

The first video is really around what does the world value right now. Attention seems to be what gets the most value, rather than the old-school essentials. Reels, ads, attention, the platforms, social media — that’s what seems to be getting all of the value being placed, because as long as it has the eyeballs, it seems that’s what people put their money into.

And then the second one was about bottlenecks, but using AI as the main example, because right now, along with having everyone’s attention, it’s also the biggest hype and people are following.

As AI grows, its value shifts because we’re seeing the beginning of AI. So between the chips, the memory, the infrastructure, the energy, the companies creating it, the money is moving through the cycles until it finally lands where I believe either the bottlenecks are removed and then it finally lands where it’s going to live and evolve, or the bottlenecks are just going to keep moving and the value is going to chase it.

So this video is less about investing directly.

It’s going to be more about the attention and trust part of it, and how what gets our attention starts to feel more real.

How visible results can feel more valuable than invisible protection.

And the main thoughts in this video are the world does not just value what matters. It values what it can see. What people see with their own eyes, what they can measure, click, what they can post, what they can share, turn into a story that goes on their board.

02:01 — Why do we trust what we can see?

And the main question really comes down to, I keep coming back to it, is why do people trust what they can see more than what protects them quietly?

And this applies to health, medicine, food and fitness, money, infrastructure, social media, and attention overall.

And the uncomfortable part about it is sometimes something can be important but invisible.

Something can be shallow but very, very visible.

It can be visible and not real.

Like you hear fake news all the time, but the term is thrown around most times, to be honest, when they say fake news, they’re probably talking about the real news or the real opinions, or just opinions in general.

Not opinions, but even policies and law and actual facts can be considered and skewed as fake news.

What gets the attention and the clicks is considered real news, I guess, because it’s brought to you from a person you like, or has a lot of followers, or you relate to them.

So that’s where attention starts to feel like value in the real world.

Maybe the issue is not only trust in medicine.

Maybe the issue is trust in invisible value.

03:26 — Medicine as the strongest example

And I bring it back to medicine because, to me, it has a very strong example in this.

Because it used to be one of the obvious safe areas.

People always need doctors, hospitals.

They shouldn’t, but drugs are required for a lot of things.

Vaccines, treatments, and preventative medicine is the biggest, hardest one, I think, in this whole scenario.

And all those felt tied to real human need.

But now medicine feels strange because trust is fractured.

And there’s a lot of distrust around vaccines, obviously.

And that was showing up when we went through the whole COVID thing.

Public health in general.

People complain about the wait lines, the waiting rooms, the support, who gets seen first, doctors, experts, institutions.

There’s a lot of distrust around that.

And a lot of it gets amplified through these platforms.

Not necessarily because the platforms planned it, but because fear, anger, and distrust keep people engaged.

Social platforms reward outrage, suspicion, personal stories, emotional certainty, simple explanations, before-and-after narratives.

The same systems that make money from attention also shape what people believe.

That becomes a real problem when belief affects health decisions.

A very big issue.

05:09 — People are not really anti-medicine

And people really aren’t anti-medicine, because most people know that medicine is made to help.

And this is the contradiction.

A lot of people are not actually against it.

They are against certain types, certain kinds.

They distrust vaccines.

They distrust preventative medicine, public health systems, anything that feels institutional, anything that makes you trust before visible proof.

But they may accept peptides, weight loss drugs like Ozempic, supplements, hormones, skin treatments, hair treatments, energy, any kind of fitness product, things just randomly recommended online.

So the issue is not simply people don’t trust medicine.

The issue is people trust medicine differently depending on what it promises.

And not just what it promises, but who promised it.

If it promised visible changes, people understand it faster.

If it promises invisible prevention, people doubt it very quickly.

A vaccine that prevents something you never seen becomes suspicious.

A weight loss drug that changes what you see in the mirror becomes desirable.

06:28 — Invisible protection is hard to value

So, like invisible protection, it’s hard to put a value on it.

Preventative medicine is hard to appreciate because success looks like nothing.

Vaccines work, you don’t get sick.

Nothing dramatic happens.

There’s no visible transformation.

In some cases you still do get sick, but you don’t die. You don’t get the ultimate sickness. Your body can fight it off. So you might still get the sniffles, but you’re not stuck in a hospital bed.

So there’s a big difference.

And public health works.

The disaster does not happen.

The outbreak is smaller.

Preventative health works.

The problem does not get worse.

The disease is caught early.

The risk goes way down.

But people do not always value nothing happened.

Nothing happening feels like maybe it wasn’t necessary to begin with.

Maybe the threat was over exaggerated.

Maybe it really wasn’t there.

Maybe I never needed this to begin with and they just made it up.

Something to put in me.

Something to track me.

And that’s where the stories begin.

And this is the problem with invisible value.

It protects you quietly, but because it’s quiet, it’s very easy to dismiss.

It’s very easy to distrust.

It’s just not always because it’s unseen, it’s unbelieved basically.

You can’t put hype around invisible.

08:04 — Visible results feel more real

Visible results feel more real.

Social media is built for visible proof.

People understand before-and-after photos, weight loss, muscle gain, skin changes, energy change, transformational stories.

Those things are easy to show, sell, click, share, and believe.

Even if people do not fully understand the drug, supplement, or treatment, they understand the visible results.

The visual result becomes the proof.

The story becomes the evidence.

The influencer becomes the expert.

The comment section becomes the confirmation.

That is dangerous because visible does not always mean safe, and invisible does not always mean fake.

We seem to trust the thing that performs well in the feed more than the thing that works extremely well quietly in the background.

It’s a tough battle, and that’s for sure.

It’s not easy to sell something that you can’t see.

It’s not easy to get people to click on it or read the story.

You’re trying to make them believe what was avoided without really letting them experience what they avoided.

09:27 — Attention changes what feels true

So attention changes what feels true.

But this is bigger than just medicine.

Attention changes what people think is true.

If you see something enough times, it starts to feel real.

If enough people repeat it, it starts to feel very confirmed.

If it makes you emotional, it sticks harder.

If it matches your existing fear or frustration, it feels even more true to you.

And social media is not neutral.

The feed shapes what we notice, what we fear, desire, trust, and what we think other people believe.

That means attention is not just an economic asset.

It is a belief-shaping force.

This connects back to the first video.

Attention has value because it changes behaviour.

But it also changes judgement.

It can make bad decisions feel rational.

It can make distrust feel like wisdom.

It can make risky choices feel like independence.

It can make them feel not risky.

It can make them feel like you’re the only one not doing it.

And that leads to the group mentality, the peer pressure, the finding commonality amongst others and feeling belonged.

And you don’t want to be left out.

There’s a lot of that that happens in social media, even though it’s online and it’s not in person, it still has that fear of being left out mentality.

10:59 — Personal freedom vs shaped choices

So personal freedom versus shaped choices.

People often frame this as, I’m doing my own research. I don’t trust the system. I make my own choice.

And sometimes that’s fair.

Institutions can be wrong.

Companies can be greedy.

Governments make mistakes.

And doctors are not perfect.

Pharma companies are definitely not. They’re greedy.

They’re evil empires in a way.

But in the end, a lot of the things they put out do have good intentions.

But they do also have to follow the trends in order to make profit.

So they do end up doing Ozempic.

They end up putting out the products that are following the attention value.

Which is sad because it takes money away from the preventive and the life-saving and the disease-preventing medicine.

Because if there’s no money in that, then you put less effort into it, less research.

So we can’t pretend that the system is pure.

But on the other side, people may think they’re choosing freely when the feed, what they’re watching, the stories they read, the comments section they’re deep diving into, helped shape their choice first.

If an algorithm shows you fear all day, distrust may feel like your own conclusion.

If it shows you transformations all day, the product may feel obvious.

If it shows you people like you saying the same thing, it feels like common sense.

So nobody has to force you.

They just shape what you see.

Then you feel like you chose it yourself.

Maybe the modern version of control is not someone telling you what to believe.

Maybe it is shaping what gets your attention until the belief feels like your own.

12:47 — Why this feels like a values problem

Why this feels like a value problem — and it comes back to that because what do we value?

What gets rewarded?

What gets trusted or ignored?

The world seems to reward visibility, measurement, emotion, transformation, clicks, before-and-afters, things that become content.

But the world often undervalues prevention, stability, maintenance, quiet health, and boring infrastructure and long-term trust.

Things that protect us without showing up.

This is why the value system feels backwards to me.

The things that keep us safe often do not perform well online.

The things that perform well online often are not the things to keep us safe.

It’s backwards.

It really feels that way.

And if you bring this back to investment and society, it affects markets.

Money follows that attention.

Products get attention attached.

They create demand.

Companies that control attention attract value.

Trends can become markets quickly.

Distrust can become a market also.

Fear sells.

Health anxiety sells.

Beauty, longevity, weight loss — all that sells.

The body becomes the market.

The feed controls the desire.

Then the market sells the solution.

This is not always bad.

Some products help.

Some drugs are real.

Some treatments are useful.

Some institutions deserve scrutiny.

But the system is still built around attention.

Attention does not always point toward what is true or healthy.

14:30 — Final reflection

I’m not saying trust everything, trust every doctor, trust every company.

And I’m not saying never question the institutions.

That would be naive.

I am saying we should notice how much of our trust is shaped by visibility.

What we see.

We trust what we can see.

We trust what gets repeated.

We trust what feels personal.

We trust what makes a good story.

But some of the most important things do not work that way.

Prevention is quiet.

Stability is quiet.

Health is quiet until it breaks.

Infrastructure is quiet until it fails.

Good decisions are often boring.

The world is not always valuable, right?

It values what can be shown.

So final thoughts would be, maybe the world values what it can see.

Maybe that is why attention is so valuable.

And maybe that is why invisible protection is so hard to defend.

Because when something works quietly, it does not feel like it’s working.

It just feels like nothing happened.

And in a world built around attention, nothing happening is a hard thing to sell.

Thanks for watching.

Hope you like it.

Bye.