David Brooks: evaluation

Transcript context

…Last question. What will you do next? Play for the New York Mets. No, my next book is on motivation. My belief is that we vastly overvalue the power of intelligence. We know a lot about emotions, but we don’t know a lot about what they call conation, which is where our desires come from. To me, what you desire is the most important thing about you. Augustine said, “We’re not primarily thinking creatures. We’re primarily desiring creatures.” What you desire determines what you believe. So, I’d like to know how to ramp up desires, how to be motivational. You wrote the book on talent, and one of the points you make in there that I truly believe in is that intelligence matters. We both agree on that, but stamina really matters. Determination really matters. I won’t say the AI CEO, who was off the record, so I can’t mention his name, but you can guess. [laughter] I said, “When you’re hiring somebody, what do you ask them?” He said, “After the interview, I walk out, and I say, Was that person a force of nature?” They want to know who’s going to run through walls. You have a great question in that book: Are you ambitious? People are not going to lie about that. I ran into an interviewer, and he wanted to test people’s moral character. His question was, “Tell me about a time you told the truth and it hurt you.” So, I used to tell my Yale students, “If you can fake that one, you can get a job. ” I think we’ve amputated the importance of what we stupidly call the non-cognitive skills, which is social skills, which is drive, which is motivation. I’d like to understand them. David Brooks, thank you very much. [applause] “David, have we reached or passed peak broad-based human intellect?”…

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