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284 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2019
"Q: In 2016, you devoted a book to the dangers posed by the election of Donald Trump. Do you consider him a supreme asshole, or is he worse than that?
A: Yes, Donald Trump is a supreme asshole, an überasshole, if you like. I mean by that, that he’s an asshole who inspires respect and admiration for his mastery of the art of assholery, despite heavy competition from his peers. Assholes generally have to fight for the title of “asshole in chief� or “baron� of assholes, but few can match Trump’s prowess at piling assholery upon assholery (Kim Jong-un, in North Korea, being a notable exception). Those who manage it for a time, like Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, often end up becoming more docile."
"Studies show that cynical idiots are so uncooperative and mistrustful that they miss out on professional opportunities, and therefore earn less than others do."
"we’re all equipped with a bullshit detector called negativity bias.18 This is a tendency that leads us to give more weight, attention, and interest to negative things than to positive ones. Negativity bias has significant consequences on people’s opinions, on their prejudices and stereotypes, on discrimination and superstition. As with housework, we notice the little things only when they haven’t been done. It’s because of the negativity bias that we find it easier to deal with an idiot than with a genius in a complex social setting. In addition, this bias leads us to read more meaning into a negative event than a positive one."
"they rely on short-term logic and sweeping generalizations. Their thinking is categorical—everything is black or white, with no nuance. They’re stubborn and obtuse, and rational arguments hold no sway with them: they won’t ever back down from their opinions. They think what they think, period."
"We are unaware of most of the biases that affect our reception of information, and of the propensities that sway our reasoning."
"I side with those who say that ignorance is not stupidity. Ignorance is a strong engine of knowledge, provided that you know you’re ignorant, and that you know what you don’t know. But we are unaware of most of the biases that affect our reception of information, and of the propensities that sway our reasoning. The problem, and it’s a serious one, is that even after these biases are exposed, they continue to work. All the more so in situations that are not conducive to doubt. Whereas stupidity, true stupidity, is the hallmark of a frightening intellectual complacency that leaves absolutely no room for doubt."
"To define intelligence of a very high order, it’s useful to consider the stunning capacity some people have exhibited to leave behind the broken paths and dominant models of their own eras, and to innovate, rather than to content themselves with the prevailing assumptions of their times. Galileo, Darwin, Einstein, and also Kant and Descartes, were capable of thinking differently than others in their epoch."
"It may be that stupidity, as examined in this essay, maybe the source of many discoveries and inventions that have helped to make our world more comfortable. No doubt the propensity to transgression, supported by optimism that favors risk-taking, has contributed to progress and discovery. By this logic, stupidity and creativity are two faces of the same coin, whose common factor is divergent thinking."
"In a way, words that free themselves from their referents and proper meanings escape the ordinary confines of language. But a word is always a problematic entity: its meaning is open, and can be the object of negotiation between two interlocutors"
"Here we touch on a point that brings the language of ideology and the language of stupidity into close communion: the shift in frame of reference that makes words come unscrewed, if we may put it that way, from their relation to reality,4 even if we can’t quite categorize these improper uses of language as lies."