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.
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Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q Um, so like when you look back on that phase, is it just like, um, Cringe, and I don't want to ever think about, like, I hope my, I forget about that. Is it like, no, that was actually really useful for me in these ways? Is it just funny now? Like, what's your reaction now?
A It's a really good question. I w I would say it's probably like one third cringe, one third. I think it was actually really important and informative in a lot of ways. And then one third just kind of funny and just like, can you believe that happened? Uh, I actually, when I moved out here to LA, um, I met up with Neil for the first time and we spent a day together and we spent like half the day just kind of being like, can you believe that happened? Right. Can you believe we actually did that? I, I look back though, especially now that a little bit more time has gone by, I really do think there, there was kind of an underrated factor. And I think this is very relevant because this is starting to happen again with Gen Z with I think the pickup artist industry is underrated as a cultural or social phenomenon, particularly for young men trying to find identity or find themselves in like a very confusing world with a lot of information. Uh, because it's, when I look back at that time, like, yeah, like we, In the industry are the coaches. We used to joke with each other. It was like, yeah, we all came for the women, but we stayed for the, for the other dudes. It's most of the guys who really got into that. It wasn't about the girls. It was, they needed to feel accepted and, and, and validated by other men. And, and just, I guess, I don't know their masculinity, right? There was like…
AI assessment note: “I would say it's probably like one third cringe, one third. I think it was”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q That's so true. So you're doing this, this, uh, series. What's like the craziest or most interesting challenge? I guess you can't give it away too much, but like what, what concepts are like, Ooh, I can't wait to see how that's going to turn out. Or like, I really want to try something like this.
A A lot of the, the social stuff is like the most Interesting. Cause it's, you can do a lot of fear based stuff. I mean, you can take somebody up in a plane and throw them out, you know, make them skydive or whatever. And that's exciting. But like, I don't know, it, it doesn't feel like there's as much depth as like the social stuff. So, uh, we have a challenge in another video where I printed out flat earth flyers saying like, you know, do you, do you know the truth about the planet? You know, it's a picture of a flat earth. And I made her Go into a public place and hand them out to people.
AI assessment note: “we have a challenge in another video where I printed out flat earth flyers”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q And so how did you think about those first 10, 15 seconds? I don't know how long we went, but like, what are you trying to achieve in those 1:15 seconds of this video?
A So with YouTube content, there's always this question of like, what's the hook? Like what's going to get people to buy in? What's going to get people to stick around? And one of the challenges that we face with this format is that all of the, all the stuff that we're having people do, it's, it's, it's super abstract. Like social, social anxiety is super abstract. Like how do you show social anxiety? It's like not very obvious how you show that visually, uh, or like low self-esteem. How do you show that visually? So We were thinking about like, okay, what are like kind of like hooks or gimmicks that we can like implement into the format that can get people bought in? Right. And the first and most obvious in this, in the current Mr. Beast meta is fucking money, right? It's like everybody on YouTube is doing it. It seems to be working for a lot of people. So kind of the obvious starting point is like, okay, well, what are we Jedi, right?
AI assessment note: “what's the hook? Like what's going to get people to buy in?”
Answered raw tape
D 4 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 3 4.15
Q we were like, Hey, there was respect. And, uh, Just, we like to learn from people like that. Like, how do you do this? How do you do this character thing? Um, have you learned anything in the process of like doing these videos of like, because it's new, it's not writing, it's not books. You now have like casting and characters and stuff that you probably haven't done before.
A Like, first of all, I'm learning a million things. One of the reasons I wanted to do this too, I should specify is like, You know, I came out of this period, the post subtle art period of my career. I did three books back to back to back. I did a movie, like a bunch of traditional media success. Like everything was wildly successful, very busy, lots of money. I moved to LA. I took, took a few months off and I was just like, man, I miss like the grindy grassroots internet stuff. Right. And, but what I also realized is like, I miss being bad at something. Like I miss I miss just like throwing shit at a wall and being like, did that work? Like, no. All right, let's try this. You know, like in, in, in traditional media, I don't, you don't really have the flexibility to do that. Like you're, you're being, If a studio or a large publisher is bringing you in, it's because, like, they know you can make a hit, and you need to make a fucking hit. And so I, I miss the internet days of, like, alright, let's try 10 things and just know that, like, six are gonna fail. And, uh, like, that's just exciting to me. And so, part of this project was, like, I want to learn. I want to get back on a learning curve and like experience that again. And so, yeah, I've been learning a million things about video production and about, um, storytelling, visual storytelling in particular. Like one of the big l…
AI assessment note: “one of the big lessons from this video is that I still very much just write like a book writer”
Partly raw tape
D 3 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 3 3.55
Q All right. Walk me through that. Well, a lot was happening there. What was, how do you think about this? Obviously some Mr. Beast inspiration here.
A He was very inspirational. So let me zoom out for a second, uh, more broadly, and then I can kind of come back to this video specifically. So early in my career, I did a lot of coaching first with the pickup stuff and then just kind of like life advice in general. I stopped coaching For a lot of reasons, but one of them is I was consistent. I was very frustrated by it, which was that I feel like the incent, like the way the incentives are structured within coaching industries, uh, in the personal development world are counterproductive, right? So it's like, if you're paying me a bunch, like, let's say, I don't know, you have like self-esteem issues and you're paying me a bunch of money to like help you out. It's first of all, my incentive isn't to fix your self-esteem issues. Like my, my incentive is to make it feel like I'm fixing your self-esteem issues, even though they're still there.
AI assessment note: “let me zoom out for a second, uh, more broadly, and then I can kind of come back”
Partly raw tape
D 3 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 3 3.55
Q It's kind of like, you know, like, are they a dick? Are they awesome? There's like that version of it, but to me, I'm sort of like, What was this? What was something you saw them do or like something you witnessed that was like, just not how the common person would have approached a given situation?
A So the quick answer to the, the one everybody always asks, which is like, what's he like in person? He is exactly like the Fresh Prince. Like that is, I spent the, I remember spending one day with him and then I went back to the hotel and, and called my wife and I was like, he did not act on that show. Like they literally just put him in a room. And then put actors around him. Right. Like that is, that is his personality. Will, Will is like, there are a few dimensions that I think he is like at the extreme end of the bell curve. The, the most obvious one that's not going to surprise anybody is just this charisma. Like he, Is by far the most naturally charismatic, I mean, it can literally just be like me and him sitting in a kitchen at midnight talking about cartoon, like he's so charismatic, just like built into him, and so it's not hard, you spend a little bit of time with him, and it's not hard to see and understand like, oh, ok, I see why this guy is so famous. His mind is, is very Almost delusionally positive. Like he kind of has this, like, you know, we all have a little bit of a, the psychologist, Dan Gilbert calls it a psychological immune system, which is like when bad things happen, we kind of like rationalize or explain them in a way that, you know, makes us feel better or helps us his psychological immune system. Like it's just, Negativity just bounces right off him.…
AI assessment note: “So the quick answer to the, the one everybody always asks, which is like, what's he like in person?”
