119. Julian Peterson: Human Creativity, Artificial Intelligence & The Essay App

My guest today is the founder of essay app , a tool that allows you to go through and develop your understanding , iterate through , edit your ideas and come up with new innovative Concepts . This is a tool that I believe is really important , as we're talking about AI and what its role is going to be .

I think it's gonna become more and more important that we think critically and understand issues deeply , and that's exactly what this app does . My guest today is Julian Peterson . Julian Peterson , what a pleasure it is to be with you today . Would you mind introducing yourself for people who may not have heard of you before ?

I Found an app called assay app , which is a writing platform to help us people strategically organize their thoughts and iterate on their ideas , without the help of AI at the moment , and in an effort to help people improve their own thoughts and and get their Get the ability to communicate themselves to a to a higher level .

So that's pretty much what I'm up to .

That was kind of I'll give you the the bare bones idea , but it was basically we were building an indexing platform that was trying to organize a high quality educational material from the internet and give kind of each Category of information , a classroom like setting where the , the educational resources that existed could be Consumed and then people could have

conversations about them . So that was kind of the the basic idea and we were trying to tag like the whole internet with , with categories and doing all sorts of stuff like that . But a few things went wrong with that idea .

It was , first of all , was very complicated , obviously , and second of all , google introduced a really similar feature not long after we started development , where they were tagging YouTube videos by category and and starting to index things in a similar way , and we just kind of felt like we were starting competing area where we couldn't compete very effectively , and

so we decided to think a little smaller and more . Niche and my dad had this writing guide that was very popular At the time . I looked on his website , which was this is probably 2018 , I guess , or maybe 2019 , and and at the time I was responsible for Building his website and and keeping it up to date and stuff .

And so I looked at the document which we had made a freely available on his website and it had been downloaded 150,000 times Without having been advertised at all or or or linked to . So this is just people kind of Finding it on their own and like in a sub-menu in the , in the navigation bar . So so we thought , wow , that's , you know , pretty high number .

This probably means that there's information in here that that people are interested in and and the idea that there's kind of a way of a structured way of writing that's we could perhaps simplify and turn into a piece of software , and so that was kind of where we got the idea to narrow it down , and then we started building that in 2019 and we're trying to

figure out exactly how to build it because there were . It's the way the writing guide is kind of framed . It's kind of a I don't know 10 part document where it kind of walks people through the act of choosing a topic that's meaningful for , meaningful for them to , to discover and write about all the way down to like fine edits . And so it's .

It's kind of a step-by-step process there . But , and you know , there was a really obvious way of Building that was kind of in a step-by-step way . So you know , we'd get people to do each kind of part of the essay guide one at a time , and that was how we first Started thinking about it .

But but then I wanted to make it into a more versatile tool that wasn't Purely defined by the process outlined in that guide and rather informed by it and able to kind of impart the wisdom that was Contained in that guide but also kind of appeal to a broader set of writing styles and a broader set of people .

And so we ended up building basically a word processor and Attempted to build the guide into the word processor so that people could very easily follow that guide and kind of follow the Philosophy that was outlined in it . But it wasn't as rigid as a sort of a step-by-step process .

So so that was kind of where the idea came about , to turn it into what it , what it currently is and what it's also in the process of becoming .

And I think you're in such a unique circumstance because you're able to build upon your father's legacy , things that he's learned Over many years of his life . I'm just curious what does building upon this legacy mean to you ? Oh , it's .

The things that was very motivating for him about being a university professor was was teaching a small subset of people , admittedly , and how to write if they were interested in in really kind of solidifying that process and Also improving their ability to think through that , through that writing process , and so I'd share the interest in writing and the interest in

clear thinking and and so it was a really it was a very meaningful place for me to be able to step in and attempt to iterate on his ideas and kind of make them available to a larger audience and make them more accessible and hopefully even approve upon them in some ways . So , yeah , definitely a meaningful part .

I was given writing guides throughout my university life , but to transition to take the words and turn them into an interface that people are actually able to utilize and have a connection with , where it actually helps you apply the principle that you're given , is a real challenge . What was that like ?

But yeah , actually turning a writing guide into software , well , it's something that isn't done very often .

There's only a few apps out there that offer kind of structured writing environments that try to kind of not force you but help you write a specific way , and so that's been a big challenge , because people come in without a lot of knowledge and or perhaps a lot of knowledge in either way , there's a unique set of challenges , right , like for someone who has

who's been writing for a long time . We wanted to offer a set of tools that allowed them to keep their good habits but also perhaps make them quicker or perhaps introduce some other good habits into their style .

And then we also wanted to appeal to beginner writers who didn't have good habits , didn't have good editing habits , didn't understand how to structure sections , structure paragraphs , iterate on sentences , that sort of kind of basic editing skills , and we wanted to give them an environment that basically forced them to develop these good writing habits .

So , very challenging .

I'd say that the design of the app is always something that we're spending a ton of time trying to get right and reimagine , and so that's which's also been the most exciting part of it , because it's very fun to try to turn very abstract ideas into an actual toolset that people can use , and part of the reason why I find it that it's a very fun project for

everyone who's working on it . There's a lot of complex problems to solve there .

To a certain extent , we haven't actually built some of the tools that I imagine it could be really useful for , for music or poetry or that sort of more strictly creative writing , but certainly one of the tools that is really good for it , that I've used personally for writing lyrics , is our rewrite tool , which allows you to see all your sentences broken down

and listed vertically and then you can click one and then create iterations of it and see them in the context of the greater work . And for writing lyrics or writing poetry , it's really really useful because you can play with different rhymes and different ideas without losing , without losing anything that you've done in the past .

And so I've used that for lyrics and it's very good . And so , yeah , I would say that my perspective for writing more creatively , let's say , or with poetry or music , has definitely come in handy when I'm thinking about our users and what they might be doing , because I do have experience writing essays , writing music .

It's so different when it comes to well , where are you right ? Even that I would say it doesn't explicitly enter my mind when I think of what our users are doing , but certainly I'm sure there's implicit things that are happening while I'm thinking about the interface that my experience as a developer lends well to .

And it's actually shocking to me that you can go for such a long period of time through your educational journey and never wonder why you're putting your pen to paper or writing something down , that when you're given an assignment you're just checking the box , and there's such an error in that , once you understand the value of writing , there's such an error in

looking to somebody else to tell you your essay is good , your article is good , it's bad , it needs these improvements . To wait for somebody else to cross something out to say that you are able to do that and the gift that you can have in your own life is to problem solve yourself and become kind of the person who steers the direction and goes .

I don't like what I did there . I could have done this better and I think it's unfortunate that we don't do that . Can you help us identify this problem early on of people not understanding why they write ?

Sure , that can work sometimes , but you need to be very motivated to truly make an impact in your own thinking while you're writing .

You need to be motivated to solve the problem , and so it's really important that you have chosen that problem right , or at least that it's speaking to you in some meaningful way , and so that's kind of step one in terms of understanding writing as a internal exercise , right , as an exercise of self-improvement and self-understanding and that sort of thing .

So I would say people often start off on the wrong foot entirely and then even further on . Yeah , you're always graded by teachers , sometimes teachers that aren't thinking about the ideas . They're usually thinking about grammar , they're thinking about structure , which are obviously important things .

But in terms of motivating someone to want to write , which is kind of like motivating someone to want to think or to want to understand things in great detail , it's much more important to get the basics right , which is , explore something that's worth exploring and make sure that , by the time you're finished with the project , your understanding is much deeper than

it was at the beginning .

I was watching the tutorial video and in some of the writing , if you pause it and read it , it says you're going to have a problem writing . You're going to try and put 10,000 things on the front end , like do the dishes , clean your house , take the dog for a walk , do all these things before you want to sit down , because thinking is hard .

It's not an easy thing and we like to think that we're always thinking all the time , but often we're just kind of going with the flow of the day and checking boxes and getting things done . We're not actually critically reflecting on what our positions are , whether or not the evidence supports it . Reading articles going is the methodology correct ?

What do I like about this study ? What are the problems with it ? How do I elaborate on this issue ?

And again , the scientific method is hard for people to say that it's an easy thing to do , to take something you want to believe in , to take a position that you might prefer and actually go through and understand how it's wrong , is not something people look forward to .

We want to reinforce our understandings and so this whole idea of developing this seems so unique because it puts some of those issues at the front of mind . It gives people the grace to understand this isn't always going to be easy , that you're not always going to want to sit down and write , and I think that you put a lot of grace into the concept .

So people , when they're taking these early steps , it's not as intimidating when you're maybe switching over from a Microsoft Word over to the SA app .

That's hard in so far as it takes a long time and it's an iterative process and you need to spend a lot of time doing those things . But the most meaningful part of it needs to be the way that you start . The way that you start the questions that you're asking and the way that you explore those through the active writing .

And yeah , with SA we've really tried to , especially with the rewrite tool , hammer home in the process , built into the software that's iterating on your ideas and looking at every detail of the writing and investigating it and making sure that it's supporting the overall question and analysis properly .

We've really tried to build that into the software and make it front of mind for people and I think that that's pretty unique in the way in a writing environment that's offered because , well , a lot of the word processors I guess that we're competing against they're so broad in what they're trying to do .

Right , like Microsoft Word or Google Docs or even some of the smaller ones , they're all offering a pretty broad interface for whatever kind of writing . But what we're really trying to offer interface for serious writing , like writing that is investigative or that has been edited to the finest detail . So that's really that .

I guess target user base that we're trying to appeal to is people who are really trying to take their ideas seriously .

to do that . But yeah , I mean , there's a couple of things . One , it has to be something that you are somewhat familiar with , so there's a level of interest , but that you don't know the answer to . So certainly it has to be outside of your comfort zone , and so you want to choose something that is a legitimate problem for you .

It's like an area of your life or an area of reality that you know you don't understand properly , or perhaps it doesn't make sense to you , or perhaps there's a political issue about it at the moment and it's contentious in the society , and you want to pick something like that , where there's a real problem to be answered and you're not 100% sure what the answer

is . That's a great place to start , and that's really all there is to it , and you want to make sure that it's an answerable question , right ? So there needs to be resources out there that you could read or that you could watch or listen to or whatever it is that will greater inform your ability to answer that question , and then you're really all set .

You should maybe avoid having a position already developed and if you do have one , that you're prepared to challenge that preconception , and I think sometimes professors do a good job of reminding you to have , like , one paragraph that supports the position and then one position that , like , acknowledges the flaws in the position , and that that's how you should go into

it . Don't go into it with a final understanding and be prepared to engage in the research process . When you're thinking about this , how much research do you think people should be giving approximately before they start putting words to paper ?

You can always read more , I guess , is the answer , but you have to read enough that you feel prepared to offer something of value , to contribute to the answer in that question .

And so normally , depending on the length of the text , that would be five or six articles and maybe a couple of books , and ideally , like you said , some things that perhaps contradict each other or offer a variety of opinions so that you can come to your own conclusion , right ?

Because obviously , if you read a whole bunch of things that say the same thing , then you won't be drawing any conclusions , you'll just be spouting someone else's conclusions .

This is a tool that helps you think and I think of again thinking as something that's hard work when you're actually doing it properly , and it takes time to research to understand something . But this could be an email to your boss requesting a raise , and how are you going to frame that properly ? And then trying to understand why something irks you so much ?

Or you hear something and you go , because , personally for me , land acknowledgments are not something I support , and so I think about why do I get so frustrated when I hear them ? Why does my blood start to boil ?

And going through the process to understand where I'm coming from and figure out what's going on , and a lot of those things are going to be somewhat unconscious and you have to pull them into the conscious mind and then start to write about it so you understand more deeply what your position is and why .

first of all , and second of all , you're likely to say things that maybe aren't as well thought through as they need to be . If you do , come , you know , find yourself in a position where you need to defend your position or attack someone else's position or , you know , have a conversation of some kind .

It's best to be , you know , as well prepared as you possibly can be , especially for topics where they elicit an emotional response .

It can be the thing in a healthy , flourishing society that gives you a clear voice on why you deserve the raise , why this new amendment to some law is an issue , why this bylaw doesn't work , why things in your apartment building should be modified .

It gives you the tools to clearly articulate yourself and sometimes we slack on that side of our life when we're frustrated or annoyed . That's when we just react , send the email and don't think it through . And it's such an error because I think you develop self-respect when you send off something . That's a high quality email .

When you write to somebody or articulate yourself clearly , you can almost rest back on that and go , even if the person doesn't agree with me , even if the person misunderstands or doesn't take me correctly on what I was trying to say . I said it to the best of my ability and there's a sense of pride in that and that's really all you can do .

And it's like a rule of sale sales , that is , you have to sell yourself . You've got to make sure that the person who's buying you or buying your time knows exactly what they're getting and why they should pay , what they should give , and make it as easy as they can as you can to make them accept your proposal .

And so it's the same with raises or arguing a position and debate the more information that you give that's solid and in your direction , the more likely it is that the person is going to be forced to agree with you .

Maybe you're a savant and you have this deep understanding of something , but if you can't say it , if people can't understand what you're talking about , if it's all jargon and it's not clear , then it's not of use to people , it's never going to be read or understood or valued , and so that seems like the bedrock of the app , and it's something that almost , as

you kind of described , most processors completely ignore this piece of the puzzle . They basically say we're going to fix your grammar , we're going to modify the words on how you did it , we're going to change your sentence a little bit here , recommend a change , but we're not even going to touch the most important part , which is the ideas within the document .

Can you just talk about how that drives out the rest ?

How do you actually improve upon the ideas within a paper or within a piece of work ? And there's a variety of ways of doing that . Obviously , reading is the big initial one .

But once you have your draft , once you've written something , how do you actually make sure that the piece has value in every little part of it , so you don't have any unnecessary sentences , you don't have any filler ?

Everything is attempting to contribute to the final piece , and we found that it's a lot easier to do that the smaller the piece that you're looking at is , and so if you break it down into sentences , then you can look at it as if it's its own thing . It's like does this idea hold merit on its own ?

And you can look at your sentence and say , well , it does in some ways , but maybe I could change it like this . It's a playful tool . So one of the things about editing in a regular word processor is you make an edit and then it's there , it's in the context of the work already .

You can undo it , sure , and then you can go back and forth between things . But kind of written into the philosophy of the rewrite tool is that you should play with every single idea that you're presenting in your piece of work , and so you should have created variations of anything . You should look at them in context , you can just keep them for later .

But it's really important , even at the level of the sentence , to have that freedom to try to express your idea in many , many different ways without the pressure of saying , ok , well , I'm definitely improving it here . You might create five iterations , and four of them are terrible . But by creating those five iterations you ended up with the right one .

And then also , it's way easier to compare things than to remember whether it's an improved sentence or not . And so that's the other .

I guess cool feature of this tool is that you can see all your variations laid out vertically and you can actually look at them and say well , you know , if I'm looking at all five of these at the same time , it's really obvious that this is the strongest one and that has two pieces of value .

One , it makes it easier to improve piece of writing , but two , you get really good at editing . Because editing , you know , being a good editor is well , it's at least half of being a good writer .

It's probably more like 80 or 90% of being a good writer , but it's a lot of it , and that's a really , really great way of becoming a good editor is getting better and better at recognizing the good sentence in the list of five or 10 good sentences . And why ? Why is it better ?

Right , and so the tool really allows you to easily practice that at the same time as iterating your ideas and making them better .

You can't do that with Google Docs , unless you're just breaking up all of everything into some long list . It doesn't come across as clearly .

So I'm also wondering about why we get so stuck on the I would say , the garnishings and it's not that they're not important , it's not that grammar is an important , or style or the ability to use , like strong , words that are kind of stylish , but why do we get so stuck on that and why do we so avoid this deep thinking , this challenging part that really

does differentiate the wheat from the chaff and show you as a strong thinker ?

Or a really bad sentence or a thesis statement , let's say , versus a decent one .

But so that's the most of the reasons that it takes an editor , or it takes someone who knows how to write , or knows the idea even better than you , to determine whether you've presented it well , right , you need a good reader for that , and that's part of the reason why most of the AI-based tools , let's say , or even the reason why teachers edit in that way

, right , like , is because to identify the ideas , you have to understand the topic and understand , or at least understand , how an argument should be structured , and so , at minimum , you need to have that requirement as a reader .

And so one of the ways we've tried to tackle that and it's imperfect , right , because you know , like a lot of great writing texts , like the Elements of Style or Stephen King's own writing , they say you know you need to write to someone , right , and you need to have a reader in mind , but our app hopefully makes it easier for you to be your own reader ,

right ?

And so it's easier for you to be your own editor if you're given multiple contexts in which to consume your writing , and so that's kind of the idea that we're going off of , which is why we have your main text on the one side and then other variations of your text in the other hand , broken down in different ways , because it's easier when you switch contexts

in that way and switch the way you're looking at the work , to be your own editor and to be your own reader more effectively .

paragraph when it's not just a block of text on your screen , especially when you've written it relatively recently .

You know , one of the things that is suggested to a lot of people at Writers is to give yourself a few days , or even up to like a week or so , between doing the creative production of the work and then you come back to an edit it , because you'll have fresh eyes and you can look at it differently , and that's still something that certainly is a good

recommendation . But one of the ways that we make it easier for people to look at their work with fresh eyes is by splitting it into its sentences and letting you look at the ideas one by one and then try to reframe it by moving them around .

It's a drag and drop tool , and so that's Reorder , and one of the ways we're improving it is right now in the app .

You can only do one sentence at a time and you can only move sentences , and so our next iteration of it you'll be able to select as many as you want and then move them as a block , so you'll be able to kind of construct completely new paragraphs from the writing that you've already done , and you'll also be able to move your headings and outline topics around

very easily in that as well . So that's going to be a big improvement , for that I think .

Well , I mean , you need to introduce the topic right off the bat and give it a little bit of background , and then each paragraph should answer a portion of the question , and so it needs to have direction , and so you need to approach a small amount of the section supporting it with , or of the question , supporting it with research in every paragraph , and then

your conclusion has to bring that together in a meaningful way , and so that's , and you want to make sure that all the paragraphs are connected to each other in a reasonable way , so it tells somewhat of a story , and that every paragraph is supported by either a reference or at least an internal reference , something that you've thought through in a clear way .

I think that if my dad was to I mean , I guess he's already said that he's you know he'd have a very hard time doing it better .

But of course his later books did take some of those ideas and distilled them into more digestible pieces , I guess , and so I think that's perhaps one critique that he would give from his first book , maps of Meaning , himself , is that it is very difficult , and so that's well it's for a particular reader to try to read that and understand it .

And so , yeah , you can only make something as digestible as

it can be . Some ideas are complicated and require a lot of investigation and thought to really understand .

They didn't have a ghost writer , they didn't kind of glance at some articles and then decide to write a book on it . There's effort that went into it and I don't know about you , but I feel like looking at really intelligent people , there's something intimidating about it . There's something uncomfortable about the idea that maybe we don't know as much as them .

We don't understand things the way we think . We do that maybe around certain people you're a very small fish in comparison when you're talking about ideas and understanding things deeply and I think sometimes that intimidates us . But I think we need to be reminded of it .

That idea of being all inspired by somebody's understanding of something can return us to that state of like wow , that's something to look up to , that's something to work towards . Is actually understanding something at that level ?

Yeah , I mean , I think ideally it's inspirational , which is why you read complicated books and why you read books by great authors is hopefully , I mean , partly just because the ideas are thought-provoking or the story is beautiful or whatever it is , but it's also , hopefully , to be inspired to do great things yourself .

So from just I guess in a non philosophical sense , I've learned a lot of technical things while building it and how to manage a team and how to structure a business and those things . So those have been extremely useful things to learn .

And yeah , I mean those are really the things I guess that I have learned and that I'm continuing to learn , and that there's a reason that a lot of people don't build new text editors and word processors . There's a lot of detail in working with text and still making it usable . There's definitely a reason why Microsoft Word is just a single page of text .

There's a reason they built it that way .

But I guess one of the reasons for that , I think , is that they write a weekly essay , and so there's actually not that many people other than students who write weekly essays , and it happens that ministers are that group of people , so that's been pretty funny .

Sorry ministers of like Canada oh no , sorry , I mean like priests or people in religious settings who are writing sermons or whatever . So we have quite a few people all over the world using it in that setting and that's been quite interesting because that was unexpected .

We kind of built it for well , with our primary audience being students , but I think that since we don't have some of the features that make it easy to integrate into institutions , we ended up with a very broad range of writers in doing a lot of different things journalists and priests and people writing emails or creative work or journaling .

So that's been an interesting way to develop it , because we've had to develop it in kind of the way that I wanted to , which was for the interested writer , right For someone who's interested in developing their own ideas , but not necessarily in the context of an institution or not by necessity .

But one of the things it's not useful for is improving your ability as a creative person , right , and so I would say that's the main .

I guess difference between using something like chat , gpt or essay is we put the onus of the creative production on the writer , and we think that's pretty much the most important part is developing those ideas and thinking about them . But in the same way , I mean , if you use those AI tools in a particular way , they can help that process .

It's not that they can't . To use chat GPT well , it's quite good at developing , at writing code , right , that's one of the things that people are using for a lot , and in order to use it to write code , well , you have to understand the code , and so it'll write it for you and it'll improve that .

It'll make the easy parts , I guess , easier , which is the actual syntax and the writing , but in terms of whether it does the thing that it's supposed to do , as a user of chat GPT , you still have to know how it works and how it doesn't . So in that way it's really good for people who already know what they're doing .

For someone who doesn't , for a true beginner in any creative area , you're not going to ask chat GPT to write a screenplay , but if you've never read a good screenplay , the thing that chat GPT creates isn't going to be any good . It's just not .

But maybe you could get it to create something good if you knew the right questions to ask and knew the way to ask it to rewrite certain things , and I feel like you could use it in that way . But you kind of already have to be an expert because it's a response tool , so you have to ask the right questions .

You're not a good writer when you're graduating high school . That is a learned journey and it's tragic , in a way , that people are using it in that way because they don't get to see what their true potential is .

But for people who are willing to use the essay app and put in the effort , you're going to see long-term dividend returns in your life because you're going to be far better off .

You're going to want to hire you , you're going to be more thoughtful , and so I think how many people are true intellectuals , truly can have deep thoughts and nuanced perspectives on issues ?

It's not everybody , and so you're going to put yourself in that minority group of people who are able to , if you don't understand something , research it and understand it and write about it and develop a perspective , and if you do , it's going to be rock solid where you , in moments of pressure , in moments of stress , you're going to be able to back yourself up

. And one thing I often say to professors who are worried about chat GPT taking over is ask them to explain what they wrote about , because you're going to see the truth come out almost immediately .

And what a gift that would be to people who use essay , because they will understand and I think we forget what real intellectual capabilities are when you're able to take some idea about watermelons and apply it to street signs and stuff .

How things connect isn't always clear , and how they work together is through the original process of creativity and bringing nuanced ideas together , and that's something that word processors and typical universities are really skipping out on .

So the way to differentiate yourself is to actually think things through , and I think it's such a gift that there's a product available where people can do this and start to understand things in a deeper way .

I went to University of King's College and in Halifax and they do oral examinations in their foundation year program and it's an extremely effective way to identify whether someone has done the work Right . You just ask them to talk about it .

If you've written about it in detail , then you're not going to have a lot of trouble talking about it right . Those things are deeply connected . So , yeah , the oral exams that we did were extremely intimidating , especially if you hadn't done the work which you know .

In a way , they should be right , like you know you want to , if you truly understand something you know , except for you know people who really suffer from getting higher levels of anxiety in stressful scenarios and then they can't think . But if you really understand something , you should be able to perform under pressure and understand and explain the thing well .

So I think that you know universities that actually want to teach people things and have them prove that they know them will have to inevitably return to doing oral examinations to produce meaningful representations of the people's knowledge .

So , yeah , you just go to SAapp and it's not a mobile app , so you have to go on a laptop or a tablet or a desktop computer to use it .

For now , mostly because it's in its early stages and we understood how to build it properly on a large screen and we still are working on how to put it on smaller and smaller screens and have it be have the same effect or the same offer , the same tools . So so yeah , saapp .

Because it's something that I also don't think we do a good job of ? Certainly , through my law school career , using nice words or aesthetically pleasing words was not the care of anyone . It was to make it as short and concise as possible . So is this something you see ?

So usually the way to make something beautiful if you're an amateur or even a reasonably decent writer is to use the words that you understand best to communicate the ideas that you're trying to convey , and then use other ways of increasing the level of beauty in the text , like making the sentences very in length , appropriately so that it's not boring to read , and

doing that sort of thing . But I would say that the way you listen to music and the way you read there's some parallels . There's music . Certainly you react to it more emotionally .

I guess it's easier to react to emotionally , it's easier to understand as a human being , than writing , because writing is well , normally requires you to ponder in order to decide whether it's beautiful or not , whereas music just hits you . Certainly , with poetry there's more overlap , I would say .

And if you take the poetry out of the music , then it's , it's a very good thing .

I've heard Joe Rogan talk about this whole idea of unique perspectives and trying to step outside the norm and figure out different ways to say things . This is a process that comedians go through fairly regularly and I was just wondering if you have any thoughts on that .

It's a great , I guess , example of how iteration of ideas produces such a great effect . When you watch a comedy special on Netflix , every joke has been iterated upon hundreds of times by those comedians until it hits just right , and so there's definitely a huge parallel and that's a great example of how iterating one of your ideas makes them hit way harder .

Right and that's one of the things that we try to make a parent in essay is that iteration isn't necessarily linear improvement , right , it's actually using creativity and playfulness to produce , right , and to create variation and to experiment , and then you can use you know , and then you can use you know , your discerning eye , to determine whether it's better or

worse , or funnier or less funnier or whatever it is . We're really trying to focus on the distinction between creative production and discernment , because it's really really hard to do both those things at the same time , and usually the more iteration that you can do , you know to a certain point within reason , the better the outcome is going to be .

The other piece that I think of with this is the idea of rewriting , like YouTube titles , like that whole process , and trying to figure out what's going to attract attention or be interesting .

It reminds me because I send out a lot of what I'm going to make the YouTube title out to friends first and I give them four or five different options and see what they're going to be most engaged with . And it sort of reminded me of Quora about that idea of getting upvoted and downvoted on what is actually working .

So that's because , obviously , well , having a good group of editors is is extremely important when you're trying to produce something of quality , and so that's the same thing when we're building our marketing sites or when we put out videos on Instagram and stuff the captions , you like to run them by as many smart people as you can and you know , not just smart

people . You want to . You want to , you want to run it , run by people you know who are interested in the types of things that you're trying to trying to purvey and attract .

So , yeah , yeah , that's something we'd like to do is be able to share a set of rewrites with someone else and get their feedback or get them to select one and have that impact your decision . I think that'd be interesting .

It's going to be a process and each one's going to get better and better , and that's an opportunity for personal growth and development , which I think is so inspiring . Julian , this has been such a pleasure to sit down with you today .

I specifically got this shirt that says cognitive liberty talks about mental processes and having control over it , and I think that's exactly what you're working on with this app .

I think having other things that inspire you and seeing what you like about other people's writing helps you understand how to improve your own . So thank you for building this out and thank you for sharing your journey today .

So I think I'm going to definitely introduce this tool to him .

It's not as perfect as necessarily they wouldn't have dishes in a picture , like you know and I realized , oh , this is his actual place .