I’ve been struggling lately.

ChatGPT sometimes just won’t give me the good stuff.

It’s like it wakes up on the wrong foot and on those days, decides it just wants to play with my patience.

I know, crazy times we live in when we have arguments with robots.

Anyway…

I think I’ve stumbled on the secret to understand when AI or fake gurus lie to us.

It’s about the energy it takes to simulate what you don’t really know.

See, what ChatGPT does is simply predict what it thinks you might want to hear – and while that can be very helpful and powerful when you know what you want in return and how to ask for it – a lot of times can just give you crap.

ChatGPT doesn’t “know” anything. It’s just filled with data that you can pull out.

But the real knowledge needs to come from you.

A tell tale sign?

Metaphors and analogies.

As soon as I start seeing ChatGPT returning sentences stuffed with metaphors that don’t really tell me anything specific or meaningful, I know it’s going the wrong way.

Take this example, where I asked it to write the first person diary for my client’s prospect:

In an attempt to fill in the gaps in what it doesn’t know about the audience, ChatGPT just stuffed the whole thing full of analogies. Not useful.

It’s the same with gurus.

The less someone knows, the more flowery or cliche’ their language will be.

Here’s how David J. Lieberman describes it in his book Mindreader (highly recommended short read):

“Manufacturing emotion takes lot of mental energy, so the person uses borrowed phrases. For example, ask any trauma victim about what happened, and you will not get a Nietzschean quote such as “To live is to suffer; to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering” or a cliché such as “That’s the way the cookie crumbles.”

Instead a true expert and operator, will go into the nitty gritty details, almost to the point of boring the heck out of you.

Sometimes they violate a critical rule, that of matching their audience’s awareness. But that’s a good sign. They know their stuff.

Being an expert doesn’t mean you’re also a good teacher.

But, it’s persuasive.

How many times when speaking with an expert and hearing a term you didn’t know, did you doubt his expertise? None, I bet.

So, anytime AI or someone tries to fool you with metaphors and flowery words, remember, they are either liars or at best entertainers.

They’re simply not putting in the effort and energy required to have an opinion.

P.S. My goal for the Youtube channel is to fight this “fake guru” battle. Screw trendy topics and make money fast fads. I want to talk about the hard, detailed, deep work and the learning that make a copywriter good at what he does. If you’re passionate about it, keep an eye out for a new video this week.

Quote and reflection of the day:

“Leaders understand that a good system involves doing something on a regular basis to improve your odds of good outcomes, even if you don’t know exactly what the outcome will be.”

• Scott Adams, Loserthink

Perseverance is often the most important skill you truly need to practice to get where you want to go. When you realize that, getting started is easier because you’re playing the long game.