The Exchanges

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 →

Hamish McKenzie no published score: no usable exchanges on raw tape, and a fair score needs 8+ record → ← everyone

Every exchange below was scored with names hidden, four dimensions each from 1 to 5. An exchange's score is 0.30·directness + 0.30·coherence + 0.25·precision + 0.15·compression. The published score averages the raw tape exchange scores and shrinks small samples toward the cohort mean, so five great answers can't beat twenty good ones. Produced feed rows count only toward coarse estimates, never toward a full score.

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Answered produced feed D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85

Q Around 2012, , you started working for, for the tech blog, Pando Daily, and one of the things you start to cover is Tesla and SpaceX, and I guess, like, this kind of catches the eye of an editor at Faber and Faber, and they said, hey, do you want to write a book about Elon Musk?

A Yeah, this is 2012, 20 13, where people in Silicon Valley sort of knew about this guy Elon Musk, but he hadn't become an outside phenomenon yet. The Model S had come out in one car of the year in 2012, and they also created this thing called the supercharger, which would allow you to charge up your electric car for free, and fast, and it could be powered by sunlight. And I was saying, why aren't more people hyped about this guy who's managed to land these rockets, or sorry, was making these successful launches, and was on the way to figuring out how to land them, and had created these amazing electric cars that were winning best car of the year award, and could run on nothing but clean energy. And so I wrote a bit about those things, and this editor in the UK, Julian Luce is his name, he's like, do you think there's a way to do a good book about this guy, and do you think you could get him to cooperate? And I was kind of working out of my spare bedroom in boxer shorts in Baltimore, and I thought, yeah, let me, let me see if I can do that, and so I got in touch with Elon through his mother's website. She's a nutritionist, had listed her email address there, and it led to a conversation with Elon, who I actually knew already had liked one of the pieces I'd written, because his PR person had told me he liked that piece, and so I thought, oh, maybe I have a shot of getting his atte…

AI assessment note: “this editor in the UK, Julian Luce is his name, he's like”

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