"Really brilliant people, the kind of people that can take different ideas from different sources and synthesize them into new things, they don’t read books in this way. They just read them. If they do take notes, it’s to check something with some other source or if it’s something they want to remember."

Ah yes, let me take a note of that and remember to mimic these "really brilliant people" who all operate in one way.

I think my own view is not too far off yours, oops, but the way you wrote it as a statement of fact (which is really like 4 propositions in one) made me chuckle.