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 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q So, how did this evolve, and what is your current set, like, what is in your garage?
A Well, my garage at home is mostly full of my, uh, my personal stuff, so I have a bunch of motorcycles, I have a bunch of cars, I have a lot of personal projects. Uh, I don't really have a lot of Anduril or weapons-related projects at home, because I've got a way better workshop and a way better lab here at Anduril HQ. It wouldn't make, wouldn't make sense for me to go home and And do that stuff. If I'm gonna work on those things, I'll just, I'll just stay late at work. Um, but that, that, that, that, that's been an evolution, you know, compared to the days, you know, in the very beginning of Anderil, uh, you know, I, I, I, even before Anderil, you know, I was building jet engines at my house, uh, in my empty swimming pool. So, uh, it's, it's, it's come a long way. Now I have a better place to test everything.
AI assessment note: “my garage at home is mostly full of my, uh, my personal stuff”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q This is more of a personal question, but what's it like being a father? How has this changed your perspective of the world?
A I don't think it has changed it all that much yet. I know, I think it will happen over time. Um, you know, I, I, me and my wife are, um, me and my wife are very traditional. She's raising the kid. I'm working for the dough. Um, and a lot of the usual things people say, like, ah, you know, the kid, you know, really made me appreciate, you know, long-term perspective versus short-term. I like to think I'm already a pretty long-term thinker. I'm doing things like Andrel because I care about the long-term future of our country. I feel like, ah, I want our country to be better. I want to leave a better place for my kids. I actually cared about that even before I had kids, so I was already pretty amped up on a lot of the things that I think people say change over time, and then also, he's just so little right now. You know, he, he, uh, his only words he can say are, are truck and car, um, which are pretty good words to start with.
AI assessment note: “I don't think it has changed it all that much yet.”
Answered raw tape
D 4 · C 5 · P 3 · Cm 4 4.05
Q And what do you think this costs you compared to what the government would cost them?
A Um, I think that we're, in general, much more efficient than the government. We've done a pretty good job. You know, and we like to think of our, of our approach as being a defense product company, not a defense contractor. That is, we're not getting paid to engage in contracted work, where they say, go and do, you know, this many hours of work to build exactly this thing. Instead, we're investing our own money in building what we think the right products are, and then we sell them to the government. So we want to be going to the government Generally, with a product rather than a PowerPoint, or at least a prototype instead of a presentation, and that's gone really, really well for us. It leads to way better incentive structures. We make more money when we move faster rather than more money when we move more slowly. We make more money when things work the first time rather than more money when it takes 10 tries, and you can imagine which of those leads to better outcomes.
AI assessment note: “I think that we're, in general, much more efficient than the government.”
Answered raw tape
D 4 · C 4 · P 3 · Cm 3 3.60
Q So you don't think UIPs use optical camouflage?
A Um, I think that to the, you know, look, there's a lot that we don't understand about these vehicles, and what they are, where, or when they come from, ah, But it is likely that whatever they are doing is, uh, a side effect or an artifact of what's going on. So like, like, like I've, I've talked about this with the people. They're like, well, you know, how come, how come, uh, you know, how come like sometimes they're invisible in certain spectrums? And my point is, well, like what if they are not interacting with reality itself in a way you would expect? Like some of these things that you see them and they don't have any radar signature either. I don't know if that means they're cloaking themselves actively, Or if it means that just, they do not exist even in the way that we think about physical matter. I, you know, I don't know if it's an active countermeasure so much as the nature of the thing itself. But of course there's so much that we don't know. My current working theory is that they come from the past. So. Interesting.
AI assessment note: “I don't know if it's an active countermeasure so much as the nature”
Answered raw tape
D 4 · C 4 · P 3 · Cm 3 3.60
Q So you don't think UIPs use optical camouflage?
A To the, there's a lot of that we don't understand about these vehicles and what they are, where, or when they come from, but it is likely that whatever they are doing is a side effect or an artifact of what's going on. So like, like, like I've, I've talked about this with the people that like, well, you know, how come, how come, uh, you know, how come like sometimes they're invisible in certain spectrums? And my point is, well, like, what if they are not interacting with reality itself in a way you would expect, like some of these things. You see them and they don't have any radar signature either. I don't know if that means they're cloaking themselves actively, or if it means that just, they do not exist even in the way that we think about physical matter. I don't know if it's an active countermeasure so much as the nature of the thing itself, but of course there's so much that we don't know. My current working theory is that they come from the past.
AI assessment note: “I don't know if it's an active countermeasure so much as the nature”
Answered raw tape
D 3 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 3 3.55
Q Recently, Anderil got some heat in the press about testing. Can you just go through the history of testing and why failure is part of it?
A Yeah. Uh, I mean, it was, there was a handful of stories. Reuters and Wall Street Journal were both basically trying to write the same story. So you may not know this. I was a journalism major before I started Oculus, my first company, and of course before Anderil. And so I care about this on two levels. One is the kind of, uh, uh, distraught Tech founder who is upset when the press either doesn't understand or willfully misrepresents what his company is doing, and separately, you know, the single tear that I shed for the state of journalism in America. Remember, I wanted to be a journalist at one point, so people have said Palmer hates journalism. He doesn't want, you know, a free press. It's kind of nonsensical if you look at me and you look at my career where I used to be the online editor of one of the largest college papers in the country. It just, the, the, it doesn't, the insult doesn't quite connect. In this case, they were making a huge deal out of the fact that we had had two aircraft that failed to release during a test, so they failed to detach from another aircraft. Also, they were making a huge deal out of a fire that we started during a test, and to be clear, this is a very, very small fire. It was about 0.00002% of a weapons test range specifically designed to have fires on it. And the real, you know, they said satellite imagery reveals the extent of the damage.…
AI assessment note: “Anduril has started hundreds of fires during our test procedures over the course of years.”
