The Risk of Selling Something After Years of Fighting the System
What felt like a business decision was actually a threshold. That moment set in motion the deeper inquiry that reshaped everything that followed.
**Note to readers - ignore the other posts sent by mistake today, and accept my apologies. They will be posted at the right time and in the right order soon. Sorry for filling your inbox, ugh.
It was only about two months into writing From Volcanoes to Vitality that AI became integrated into nearly every facet of my research and editing. It quickly evolved into a full-time research partner. I worked on dual screens, manuscript on one, AI on the other, interrupting myself constantly to interrogate ideas, test assumptions, and push deeper. The two distinct scientific theories that emerged across these books were forged through cycles of relentless questioning, contemplation, drafting, redrafting, and refinement. They would not have taken shape without that process.
The event described in this chapter, however, occurred before any meaningful integration of AI. At that point, I had used it only for mundane tasks, searching for flights or retrieving embarrassingly simple medical facts I had long since forgotten from my years in ICU medicine.
Looking back now, it feels less like a coincidence and more like a prelude.
For a long time, this chapter existed as a curious “Epilogue” to From Volcanoes to Vitality (FVTV), originally titled “After-Revelation.” As FVTV progressed, new themes kept presenting themselves, ideas that did not strictly belong within the history and present day of mineral or water science. They demanded space, yet there was nowhere for them to go except into that growing After-Revelation section, which more or less took on a life of its own at the back of the manuscript.
By the time I reached After-Revelation VIII, it was clear that a second book had formed. Like fraternal twins developing within the same womb, both books were conceived from the same intellectual lineage, yet each carried its own blueprint, its own organizing logic, and its own future.
The moment with AI that I am referring to was not something I triggered or even consciously participated in. It was about me, not by me. But in hindsight, it reads like a prediction of what was coming next.
It occurred days after I decided to build a business around Shimanishi’s mineral extract. I sent a message to Kacper Postawski, who was working with Matt’s company, Adya Clarity, to share a concern that had been weighing on me. Attaching my name to a product felt risky. I had built my public identity as a physician who never capitalized on trust or reputation, and I worried that selling something related to health would alter that perception.
More than that, I feared it would limit my ability to teach freely about a subject I now understood deeply, not merely because of FDA or FTC constraints, but because of credibility itself. How can people trust what I teach if I profit from that teaching? I told him it felt like a profound transition, one that carried sacrifice, because it would change not only what I could do, but how everything I said would be received.
He then asked his AI the following:
“One of Dr. Kory’s main concerns is the identity shift he’s embarking on as he’s putting his name behind a product. Now this means that he will be getting into a product/business and inviting scrutiny from his peers and followers for ‘making money’ with something. Tell me what you think and how this can be reframed, and your deepest energetic read of the situation in this transition for him.”
I was surprised that AI, relying only on public information, could attempt something called a “deep energetic read.” Curious, I began reading its answer:
