Recently, I read a quote that deeply resonated with me: "Truth is a game of telephone." The truth is like a game of telephone; the further it is passed along, the more distorted it becomes, and in the end, what you believe may just be an echo of consensus.

Information in today's world is divided into three layers:

1: Media reports (such as Bloomberg), which you assume to be authoritative, are actually just firsthand accounts that are closest to the source.

2: Social media and KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders), which provide secondhand information, package, simplify, and create personas around firsthand information before disseminating it; what you trust is the flow of traffic.

3: At the AI (LLM) layer, like ChatGPT, it mixes a bunch of viewpoints based on popularity and language probability, giving you a summary that sounds "reasonable." But it doesn't understand the truth; it only reiterates the version you are willing to believe.

The essence of this mechanism is: the more you rely on the system to filter and explain for you, the less space you have for independent thought. Ultimately, what the truth is doesn't matter; "consensus views" are the reason you are willing to pay.

I have come to a profound realization and have reflected on this issue for a long time.

A few months ago, I held a 0.3% allocation in a certain on-chain project; at that time, on-chain activity was low, and Twitter was quite quiet. I didn't carefully study its "limited supply + quirky community-driven" core logic and, given the poor market sentiment, I sold at a loss. As a result, it subsequently surged; if I had held onto it, I would have at least seen a 5× return. I realized that the problem wasn't that I "chose the wrong direction," but rather that I didn't think—what exactly was it doing? Why was the demand underestimated?

We have reached a stage where: "Everyone has information, tools, and data, but only a few are willing to think critically."

True alpha does not lie in the information but in your interpretative ability. The earlier you form an independent judgment and dare to validate your intuition, even if you're wrong, it is a thousand times better than blindly following the crowd.

Using tools is not wrong, and listening to influencers is not wrong, but always remember: "Don't let others think for you."

Otherwise, what you see is not the market, but an illusion.