> I think the unfortunate reality is just that we as humans do bias toward wanting to hire people who are in fact able to communicate well and demonstrate their abilities to you
I mostly agree with your assessment, except I don't think that it's unfortunate at all. If applicants are so dense that no one can get along with them, those people, imo, should be removed from the team.
It doesn't matter that you can 10x everyone around you, when you are bumming a team consisting of hundreds of people out.
You've got the topic of the conversation somewhat wrong.
The problem discussed above was that some people are simply bad at handling the kind of stressful situations that interviews present them with. (Note, it's not necessarily about any stressful situation, just one where you're under intense scrutiny.) Hence, you can end up not hiring someone because they're struggling to show their skills in an interview, even though they'd be an excellent hire otherwise (including being a great team member). This is, indeed, unfortunate.
I mostly agree with your assessment, except I don't think that it's unfortunate at all. If applicants are so dense that no one can get along with them, those people, imo, should be removed from the team.
It doesn't matter that you can 10x everyone around you, when you are bumming a team consisting of hundreds of people out.