Voting for a Certain Stupidity!

Nate Silver & Michael Lewis in conversation. Two really smart guys finally get to one really, really dumb guy. And what's funny, according Lewis, and the folks he's writing about in his new book, "The Undoing Project," the dumb guy's dumbness, his belief in his own infallibility, was a big drawing card for the folks who ended up voting for him. People voted for a Certain Stupidity!

"To have someone running for president who essentially insists he’s infallible is such a sign of stupidity. I mean, that kind of attitude to your mind and your gut instinct is idiocy. It’s stupidity. It’s not intelligence. It’s not a strategy. I mean, it is a strategy by default, but it’s not good. So, they would look at Trump and be appalled, but then a lot of people do that. They’d be appalled just intellectually, never mind [his] groping and whatever he’s done with his taxes and all the rest.

People are drawn, people want to make the world a more certain place than it is. They’re very uncomfortable thinking probabilistically. And they’re very uncomfortable turning to someone for advice or leadership and having that person be at all diffident, at all unsure. They want that person to seem totally certain. So, they want, in a weird way, idiocy from the people who give them advice. Stupidity."