The kinds of intelligence that show up in interviews

Huh, interesting. Seems to me these are different kinds of smartness, and in a sense it's possible to be *more* smart in interviews than in books, by skills like: - deeply tracking if the person you're talking to understands - generating new metaphors appropriate to the situation

Visakan Veerasamy @visakanv · Oct 17, 2018

very few celebs are as cool as they seem bc their coolness is a team effort – and even when it's not, what we often see is them at their absolute best moments. am recalling a quote from a writer saying "idk why people expect me to be as smart in interviews as I am in my books"

May 17, 2020

And there's a thing where in a podcast interview, you're kind of talking to everybody, but magically you're also kind of talking to only the interviewer! So as long as the interviewer understands, you seem roughly sane & savvy and like you're saying something reasonable.

If someone listening to the interview thinks what you're saying is dumb or confused or whatever, they then have to doubt not just you but also the interviewer, who seemed to think what you were saying made sense. Sort of the opposite of this:

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean · May 17, 2020

There's a thing I read about how certain in person cons/manipulations can work on 2 friends as long as they don't look at each other long enough to mutually recognize that the guy is full of shit. Source? I have a memory of a vid clip illustrating this, maybe near a beach.

Example: a full year before I wrote this tweetstorm (needing to anticipate & respond to many critiques) I easily laid out my thinking on a podcast interview (which was never released 😕) and the person I was talking to was like "yeah, totally, makes sense"

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean · Dec 16, 2019

The term "pre-success failure" from @ScottAdamsSays' book is a gem. His related idea that you should have systems and not have goals is absurd. (have both!) Scott cites Olympic athletes as examples. 🤨 Take 3 guesses what goal an Olympic athlete has... 🥇🥈🥉

Back to different types of smartness: obviously someone is not going to be as *polished* or as *well-cited* in an interview as in a book. But they can be smart in other ways: - fresh & lively - emotionally nuanced - speculative & innovative (at the edge of their thinking)

This perhaps has implications for interviewers—what kinds of questions will most access someone's knowledge & intelligence that's appropriate to an interview context as oppose to a book? @cognazor @JaredJanes @eriktorenberg @collinofzion @IonaItalia

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean · May 11, 2020

I've also been exploring consciously practicing them, particularly treating 🟢 as a skill to hone by conducting explicit interviews with friends & colleagues. The frame helps me be really clear that I'm there to draw out the coherence in their thinking, not to invalidate it.