Value System
Attention is only half of what you need.
"What gets measured gets improved" has a shadow: what gets measured gets gamed.
What if society measured things that actually mattered and gamed for the good?
The scoreboard shapes the game. Change the scoreboard, change what people optimize for. The question is whether we're measuring what we actually value, or whether we're only valuing what's easy to measure.
The Value Capture Problem
Philosopher C. Thi Nguyen identifies a pattern: institutions create metrics, metrics become targets, targets replace the original values they were meant to represent.
| Original Value | Metric Proxy | What Gets Lost |
|---|---|---|
| Learning | GPA | Curiosity, depth, creativity |
| Health | BMI, steps | Vitality, energy, longevity |
| Connection | Followers, likes | Presence, reciprocity, trust |
| Success | Net worth | Purpose, meaning, relationships |
| Taste | Rotten Tomatoes score | Personal judgment, aesthetic development |
| Impact | Views, impressions | Genuine influence, lasting change |
The mechanism: metrics need to be portable (easy to transmit, compare, aggregate). Portability requires stripping context. Context is where meaning lives.
A grade travels easily between institutions. What you actually learned doesn't.
You start measuring something to track a value. Over time, you start valuing the measurement. The metric becomes the goal. The original value disappears.
What Resonance Actually Is
When we say we "resonate" with someone, what's happening?
The word comes from physics: when an external frequency matches a system's natural frequency, maximum energy transfer occurs. A tuning fork struck near another of the same frequency will cause the second to vibrate. No contact required.
Between humans, resonance is loop coupling:
| What Aligns | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Mental models | You're not constantly translating |
| Predictions | You can anticipate each other accurately |
| Value hierarchies | You care about similar things in similar proportions |
| Nervous systems | Breathing, heart rate, micro-expressions synchronize |
| Energy flow | You leave with more energy than you came with |
The signature of resonance: The interaction generates energy rather than draining it.
Non-resonant interaction requires constant translation, repair, re-explanation. Signal-to-noise is poor. You're doing work.
Resonant interaction builds. Ideas compound. Something emerges that neither person could create alone. Time distorts—hours feel like minutes. You want to return.
YOUR LOOP THEIR LOOP
INTENTION ─────────────────→ received as intended
↑ ↓
AWARENESS ←────────────────── their response lands
↓ ↑
IMPACT ────────────────────→ creates value for both
↓ ↓
MEASURE ←──────────────────── confirms alignment
↓ ↓
REFLECT ←─────────────────→ shared understanding deepens
Resonance is when two feedback loops can couple without destructive interference. Your output enhances their loop. Their output enhances yours. The loops interlock and amplify rather than cancel.
This is the mechanism behind good company compounds.
The Current Scoreboard
What society currently measures:
| Domain | What's Measured | What's Missed |
|---|---|---|
| Economy | GDP, employment, inflation | Meaning, purpose, wellbeing |
| Social | Followers, engagement, reach | Depth, reciprocity, trust |
| Education | Grades, credentials, rankings | Capability, agency, wisdom |
| Health | Cost, procedures, outcomes | Vitality, prevention, quality of life |
| Business | Revenue, growth, market cap | Culture, sustainability, stakeholder value |
These metrics aren't useless. They're portable. They scale. They enable coordination across large institutions. But they systematically miss what can't be easily counted.
The result: we've built a civilization optimized for measurable proxies while the things that actually matter—connection, meaning, trust, purpose—go untracked and therefore unimproved.
A Different Scoreboard
What if we measured the inputs to resonance rather than the outputs of popularity?
What Could Be Tracked
| Dimension | What It Measures | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| Commitments Kept | Promises fulfilled vs broken | Trust accumulates through reliability |
| Time Invested | Attention given to others | Presence is the scarcest resource |
| Reciprocity | Net giving vs taking over time | Sustainable relationships are balanced |
| Return Rate | Do people come back? | Revealed preference, not stated preference |
| Quality of Exits | How relationships end | Bitterness or gratitude? |
| Energy Delta | More or less energy after interaction? | The signature of resonance |
| Co-Creation | What emerged that neither could make alone? | The compound effect |
Design Principles
The difference between a value system ledger and a social credit score:
| Social Credit | Value Ledger |
|---|---|
| Mandatory | Opt-in |
| Public by default | Private by default |
| Central authority defines "good" | You define your own values |
| One-dimensional score | Multi-dimensional, context-dependent |
| Comparison-enabling | Reflection-enabling |
| Behavior control | Self-knowledge |
The key distinction: The ledger should make reflection easier, not comparison easier.
It's not a leaderboard. It's an instrument panel—like the gauges a pilot reads. Not to compete with other pilots, but to know where you actually are.
The Architecture
PRIVATE CORE SELECTIVE REVEAL
↓ ↓
Your commitments Attestations you choose to share
Your time patterns Verified collaborations
Your reciprocity data Outcomes you're proud of
Your reflection notes Questions you're exploring
This inverts the default. Current platforms make everything visible to harvest attention. A value ledger makes everything private until you consciously choose to share.
The ABCD Stack Applied
How decentralized technology could enable this:
| Layer | Function | Application |
|---|---|---|
| AI | Pattern recognition | Surface your own patterns for reflection |
| Blockchain | Immutable record | Commitments kept, attestations verified |
| Crypto | Aligned incentives | Reward reciprocity, not extraction |
| DePIN | Distributed ownership | No central authority controls the ledger |
The insight: Blockchain was invented to solve trust without central authority. The first application was money. The deeper application is any form of commitment, promise, or relationship that benefits from verification.
Not "how many followers" but "how many promises kept."
The 2027 Connection
This isn't abstract philosophy. It's strategic positioning.
AI will commoditize cognitive contribution. Within ~2 years, most knowledge work can be done by systems that don't need sleep, salary, or motivation. The 2026 predictions track this shift.
What remains human:
- Who you choose to be with
- How you show up for them
- The quality of your loops
A ledger that tracks connection quality becomes the scoreboard for post-AI human value.
The things that can't be automated are the things that require presence, commitment, trust, reciprocity. These are the new scarce resources. Currently, they go unmeasured.
"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."
Good company is both the method AND the measure. Time with good people IS the success metric. The ultimate gauge isn't revenue, followers, or glory metrics—it's who you spend your time with.
The Question-First Version
What if the "ledger" wasn't a score but a question generator?
Based on your patterns, it could surface:
- "You've had 47 interactions with this person over 3 years. When did you last give more than you took?"
- "Your average commitment completion rate is 73%. What's blocking the other 27%?"
- "Three people you used to spend time with have dropped off. Worth reaching out?"
- "Your energy was higher after these five interactions. What do they have in common?"
This is the Tight Five logic applied to connection. Not a number. A prompt. Questions that create movement rather than scores that create comparison.
The Honest Problem
You can't directly quantify resonance. The attempt to do so is a category error—the same mistake that turned learning into GPA.
What you can do:
- Track verifiable inputs (did you show up, did you follow through)
- Create prompts for reflection (not scores, but questions)
- Make invisible patterns visible (where does your time actually go?)
- Enable portable reputation (attestations that travel with you, not locked in platforms)
The resonance itself happens in the coupling of loops. That's the thing that can't be directly measured, only inferred from its effects.
Any metric, once known, becomes a target. The moment you publish "resonance scores," people will optimize for the score instead of the resonance.
The possible path: A private reflection tool with optional attestations. Not a game others can see. A mirror only you look into—unless you choose to share what you see.
Links
- Team Chemistry — Cohesion metrics for teams
- Goodwill — Capital as tokenized trust
- The Loop — The feedback loop that compounds
- Performance — Current measurement frameworks
- Predictions — Tracking the 2027 thesis
- C. Thi Nguyen - Games: Agency as Art — The value capture critique