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Arthur Brooks

Professor of the Practice, Harvard Kennedy School · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

academicauthorscientisthostexecutivejournalist@arthurbrooks ↗LinkedIn ↗arthurbrooks.com ↗Wikipedia ↗YouTube ↗Instagram ↗

Arthur Brooks is an academic and social scientist specializing in the science of happiness and human purpose, having previously served as president of the American Enterprise Institute. He has authored multiple bestselling books and currently hosts the podcast Office Hours with Arthur Brooks.

13statements → 5claims → 3claims resolved → 0%fully supported → 4/5average certainty → 2.85/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated →

0 supported 1 partly supported 2 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 1 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

5 assertions · 2 opinions · 6 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Arthur argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Arthur Brooks: The bottom 80% of earners experienced zero economic growth
“This blended, by the way, with the Great Recession in 2008, 2009, such that basically 80% of the income distribution, the bottom 80% has experienced zero economic growth.”
Arthur Brooks Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 9:10 a16z Podcast | On Morals and Meaning in Products, Business, and Life

How they sound: speaking style how? →

253 words/min while actually speaking · 1.3 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Arthur Brooks: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews. Their coarse estimate from 3 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.0/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 3,847 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Arthur Brooks is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

Everything Arthur Brooks said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Contradicted
Arthur Brooks: The bottom 80% of earners experienced zero economic growth
“This blended, by the way, with the Great Recession in 2008, 2009, such that basically 80% of the income distribution, the bottom 80% has experienced zero economic growth.”
Arthur Brooks Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 9:10 a16z Podcast | On Morals and Meaning in Products, Business, and Life
Opinion
Arthur Brooks: Left-wing and right-wing populism are both nonsense
“It's rich people who've got your stuff, and both of those approaches are nonsense. Neither one of those approaches is legitimate”
Arthur Brooks Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 9:33 a16z Podcast | On Morals and Meaning in Products, Business, and Life
Opinion
Arthur Brooks: Believing in inevitable tech advancement means discarding morality
“The people who believe in the inevitability of technological advance in all areas at all times, these are people who have basically decided that morality is not important.”
Arthur Brooks Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 17:10 a16z Podcast | On Morals and Meaning in Products, Business, and Life
Assertion Open · timeframe Mar 2023
Arthur Brooks: Every additional child lowers immediate parental happiness
“Nobody has kids because kids bring immediate happiness. On the contrary, you find all the evidence suggests that every additional kid you add to your house lowers your happiness.”
Arthur Brooks Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 3:05 a16z Podcast | On Morals and Meaning in Products, Business, and Life
Insight
Arthur Brooks: Founders and policymakers often ignore work's human side
“Too often, those of us who work in the free enterprise system, whether we're in policy or whether people are doing a startup or whatever it happens to be, intimately Involved in the free enterprise system, either studying the system or using the system, they d…”
Arthur Brooks Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 5:08 a16z Podcast | On Morals and Meaning in Products, Business, and Life
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Brooks: Adam Smith was a moral theologian, not an economist
“Adam Smith was not an economist. Adam Smith was a moral theologian.”
Arthur Brooks Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 6:26 a16z Podcast | On Morals and Meaning in Products, Business, and Life
Insight
Arthur Brooks: Software engineers should view themselves as moral theologians
“Software engineers that are listening to this, Should be moral theologians. What is the meaning behind your work?”
Arthur Brooks Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 6:41 a16z Podcast | On Morals and Meaning in Products, Business, and Life
Assertion Contradicted
Arthur Brooks: There are 300,000 open skilled welding jobs in the US
“The American Welding Association, I just learned this, There are 300,000 skilled welding jobs that are open today.”
Arthur Brooks Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 11:41 a16z Podcast | On Morals and Meaning in Products, Business, and Life
Assertion Partly supported
Arthur Brooks: Free enterprise pulled two billion people out of poverty
“The free enterprise system has done in pulling two billion people out of poverty since 1970.”
Arthur Brooks Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 16:07 a16z Podcast | On Morals and Meaning in Products, Business, and Life
Insight
Arthur Brooks: Visionary entrepreneurs unlock latent demand, not existing demand
“The most conventional entrepreneurs look for demand that exists but is currently unmet. Visionary entrepreneurship is the kind where the demand doesn't even exist yet. The reason that Jobs was such an inflecting visionary character was because he believed in l…”
Arthur Brooks Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 19:46 a16z Podcast | On Morals and Meaning in Products, Business, and Life
Insight
Arthur Brooks: Immigrants are the ultimate entrepreneurs risking their lives
“Conventional thinking about entrepreneurship thinks about it in terms of starting a company, starting a firm. But real entrepreneurship is a way of life. And the most entrepreneurial people are people who put their capital at risk. And who puts their capital a…”
Arthur Brooks Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 23:03 a16z Podcast | On Morals and Meaning in Products, Business, and Life
Insight
Arthur Brooks: Society must structure itself to need people
“It's not good enough for us to help people. We have to need more people. Our society and our culture and our economy doesn't need enough people.”
Arthur Brooks Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 10:17 a16z Podcast | On Morals and Meaning in Products, Business, and Life
Insight
Arthur Brooks: All entrepreneurs share three core characteristics
“Entrepreneurs really have a few things in common. They put capital at risk. They're in search of explosive rewards. They use resources that they don't currently have in hand. They really all have these three things in common.”
Arthur Brooks Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 18:36 a16z Podcast | On Morals and Meaning in Products, Business, and Life

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
a16z Podcast | On Morals and Meaning in Products, Business, and Life Jan 2, 2019 16m
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