Every argument clarity score on this site is built from rows on this page. Each
question and answer was assessed with names hidden, the host's own answers included, on
four things from 1 to 5:
directness (does it answer the question asked), coherence (do the ideas follow),
precision (concrete details and clear references), compression (says a lot per word). The weighted
mix (30/30/25/15) is the exchange score. A person's published score averages their exchange
scores on raw tape only, at least 8 of them, shrunk toward the cohort mean.
Full method →
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 5 5.00
Q Um, I don't know, like I would imagine you want to do a little bit more planning than that, but then you see that the way that this thing has been built and there's like only the only way to open it is from the outside. Are you starting to question your decision to go on that when you see that stuff? Like, what is going through your mind then?
A Um, no. There were so many reasons to believe in the safety of this sub. First of all, he told us it had been designed in collaboration with NASA, Boeing, and the University of Washington. We should talk about that at some point. Secondly, it had made 20 uneventful dives to the Titanic depths and back. Without a blink. Thirdly, probably the most famous, one of the most famous living Titanic explorers in the world, P.H. Nargele was on board as an Ocean Gate employee. He had been looking over the design, construction, and testing of the Titan submersible, um, and fully approved. And this guy has been on every Titan submersible, every Titanic submersible There ever was. He was on the mirror from Russia. He was on the Nautil from France. Um, so he's, he's seen them all, and he approved the design and went down on it every trip.
AI assessment note: “Um, no. There were so many reasons to believe in the safety of this sub.”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 5 5.00
Q Um, I'm going to get back into what, what happened with this ill-fated voyage, but just to go back quickly to your story. So was it like a pretty smooth ride and then you just come up on the Titanic and you take a look for, you know, 30 minutes or so, or?
A Well, remember, I, I never saw the Titanic. Our, our guy was aborted, but I, of course, I interviewed all the people who did make it down. Right. Um, apparently it's really cool going down, and I've, I've seen the videos. What they can do is turn those subs, external lights off, and you see these bioluminescent, it's like bioluminescent snow, and they're flying up past the porthole. Um, they, they're, they're, you know, little microplankton and micro shrimp, but they, they have their own glow. It's very cool. It's very peaceful. They play music all the way down. They, they, what do you want to hear? I want to hear Eric Clapton. Um, everybody has a sandwich and a bottle of water. Uh, it gets colder and colder and colder. Um, when you are at the bottom, the water is 29 degrees. And if you think about it, that's below freezing. And that's because salt water freezes at a lower temperature than regular water. Uh, so they tell you to wear layers and bring ski socks and bring a winter jacket. Um, and then the, the subs, external floodlights have a range of about 12 feet. So usually you're just seeing empty sand, an empty sandy plane in front of you. And then when you do find the Titanic, I mean, you can hear on the GoPro, they just lose their minds. They're like, dude, dude, there, there, there. It just kind of like emerges out of the blackness This immense prow hall. Um, you gotta re…
AI assessment note: “Well, remember, I, I never saw the Titanic. Our, our guy was aborted”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 5 5.00
Q David, I mean, you were like a couple months away. Like if you had been there a few months later, you'd be dead. How do you feel about that?
A Uh, it's, it's worse than that. Um, after our aborted dive, um, they made two more that week. Um, the one that got lost and then the one that was successful. And then we, we came back to shore and they brought in the last group of the, of the summer and they made it down once. And so if you think about it, the only thing that separated the CBS crew and the fatal dive was three dives. I was, it's, it was like, it's like Russian roulette. So, um, it's honestly been a lot to process. Um, this has been a, a really rough week. You know, there's, there's anger, there's little survivor's guilt, there's unbelievable gratitude, you know, at the luck and, um, Uh, yeah, I'll, I'll be thinking about it for a long time.
AI assessment note: “there's anger, there's little survivor's guilt, there's unbelievable gratitude”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q Maybe you knew in some way. So one of the things I've wondered about this the whole way through is, is this Sub, like, was this sub something that was pushing forward exploration, or was it simply a very expensive Disney ride for people who wanted to go see the Titanic?
A Well, this is something else that not a single news report has mentioned. It was a combination science expedition and extreme adventure tourism opportunity. So what I mean by that is there's five seats on the sub. There's always a pilot. There's three paying passengers, and then there's a scientist. On board every dive, there is a scientist. He is there to show you what you're looking at. This is, there's a marine biologist, there's an undersea archaeologist, um, and if you think about it, Stockton Rush could have sold that seat to another passenger. He could have made another quarter of a million dollars per dive, but he didn't. He, in effect, The passengers are subsidizing science, and there was a long interview I did with two of these scientists, and I mean, they are doing publishable, actual research. One of the things they were doing that no one else can do is longitudinal studies of the wreck, and what that means is over time. So this outfit goes down five times a summer, and this was its third summer, So for the first time in history, these scientists can observe the Titanic Over time. Um, not just the deterioration of the hull, but also what's growing on it. On our dive, they were doing eDNA, which is this really cool technology where they grab water from around the sub, from around the wreck, and then they bring it back to the surface and analyze the DNA. They can tell…
AI assessment note: “It was a combination science expedition and extreme adventure tourism opportunity.”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q both, you know, you are a journalist telling the story, but you're also someone who's experienced this and in some part subject. And even though In your report they complained about, but I'm curious what your perspective is having been so deep inside the story and then seeing the way that the story has been told nationally, like, can you reflect on that for a minute? What's that been like?
A It's, it's been like nothing I can possibly describe. You and I both know how social media works. We both know how misinformation propagates, but this thing was nuts. I, I was on one show at 1.1 TV show, and I'm waiting to go on, and they are, they're reporting on the, on the disaster, and they put up a graphic. This is a national network. Uh, it's a, it's a schematic of how you sit in the sub. And it shows the five people sitting like a conga line, like with my feet on either side of your butt, and your feet on either side of the next person's butt, all facing forward, and I'm like, what? That is the, and then on the side are four bullet points, all four of which are wrong. The first one says, only one person can stand up at a time. What? That, that doesn't make any sense for, like, multiple reasons. No one can stand up, and if they could, why would it only be one person? It's a cylinder! Anyway, um, yeah, it's been really distressing, and, you know, the, the hate that I've had to endure, much of it was based on misinformation. Um, on the fourth of our five days above the wreck, uh, there was this dive, as I mentioned, they, they could not find the Titanic, And they spent four hours tooling around in the dark and then had to come up. Um, and so everyone's like, why didn't you report that? You lying sack of shit. I did. Would you look at the video? Would you listen to the podca…
AI assessment note: “It's, it's been like nothing I can possibly describe... yeah, it's been really distressing”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q about that rock, um, stories of Everest, even in New Zealand, there was this white Island that has this volcano. That was another big story where lots of tourists got caught in this volcano. There's Everest, of course, and now we're starting to see even more space tourism. Uh, what is it about humanity's desire or the condition of people that makes them want to go explore despite the dangers?
A I mean, I think that's it. I think you just said it is, is there's a romance to it. There's an achievement factor when you do something dangerous and survive. I mean, you've, you've outsmarted death, you know, on the, on the followup story on Sunday morning, I said, you know, is this, is this going to be the end of adventure tourism? Are they going to shut all these things down? No, I don't think so. Because like, you can't, Stop people from having that itch. For some people, and I think Stockton Rush is one of them, you know, cheating danger, cheating death, gives meaning to life. And I, I'm not really one of them. I've never been skydiving or, uh, you know, visiting a volcano, but, um, but I certainly know people who are like that and they are driven. They are driven to these extremes. After the six.
AI assessment note: “There's an achievement factor when you do something dangerous and survive.”
