The rise of idiots
One day, you receive an email from a stranger claiming to be a financial adviser. He offers his services with the promise of making you rich. As proof of his ability, he recommends buying shares in a relatively unknown company because their price will rise the next day. You dismiss him as a fraud—or, at best, an amateur—and ignore the advice. Out of curiosity, however, you check the following day and discover that the shares he recommended have indeed gone up.
You receive a second email from the same stranger. This time he recommends buying shares in another relatively unknown company because he predicts that their price will rise the next day. Once again you disregard him, but curiosity leads you to check—and, sure enough, the recommended shares rise the following day.
A third email arrives, like the previous two, but this one warns that a particular company's share price will fall. The next day, it does.
You receive a fourth email and then a fifth, and each time the recommended shares rise or fall exactly as the stranger predicted. That makes five correct predictions in a row. When the sixth email says that a certain company's share price will rise, you decide to buy some of its stock. The following day, just as predicted, the price goes up.
Excited, you follow the advice in the seventh email, then the eighth, ninth, and tenth. The predictions keep coming true, and you make some money. The next email contains no prediction. Instead, the stranger says that if you want to continue using his method, you must pay—and the price is extremely high. You will need all your savings and even have to sell your car, but you believe you are buying an infallible method, proven correct ten times in succession, for making money on the stock market. The stranger disappears with your money. You never hear from him again. It was all a scam.
How did he do it?
At the outset, the fraudster emailed 10,240 people. He told half that the shares of an obscure company would rise the following day and told the other half that they would fall. Once the next day's result was known, he wrote only to the half—5,120 people—who had received the correct prediction and gave them another one. The next day, depending on the outcome, he contacted only the half who had again received the correct prediction—2,560 people—and sent them a new one. He repeated the process with 1,280 people, then 640, 320, 160, 80, and 40. After ten rounds, he was left with 20 people who had received ten correct predictions in a row. A share price could only rise or fall, so every prediction guaranteed that at least half the recipients would receive the correct answer. The fraudster was therefore certain to end up with 20 people who had seen ten consecutive predictions come true. He took the savings of those 20 people—including you—then vanished so he could repeat the scam.
How do idiots rise?
Many people who have succeeded in the stock market have done so in the same way: they simply happened to be among the half who made money on a particular trade, and inevitably some people will be lucky several times in a row. In our little story, 20 out of 10,240 people were lucky enough to receive the correct prediction ten consecutive times. People who win this way do not win through knowledge or skill; they win through pure chance.
Just as some people profit in the market by chance, others succeed in business, politics, or the pursuit of fame for no other reason than chance. With so many possible outcomes across so many careers and fields—some favorable and some not—it is inevitable that certain people will make the right decisions by chance, make the right investments by chance, and generally rise by chance.
This explains the rise of idiots. How can people who are clearly idiots reach the top of companies, governments, and other fields? How did they get there? They arrived exactly as probability predicts—by chance. Now that they are in the spotlight and under everyone's gaze, their idiocy seems obvious. But while they were climbing, nobody was scrutinizing their abilities or skills. And because every social system involving power is essentially political—whether in government, business, show business, the art world, or elsewhere—anyone who acquires a measure of power receives support from people who want something in return. That support multiplies, accelerating the idiot's ascent. It is a simple transaction: many people grant power to one person so that this person will give them something in exchange. Sometimes the idiot understands that something is expected in return and sometimes he does not; it makes no difference. He keeps rising despite being an idiot. He may not even know he is one. He may believe he is rising because of his intelligence, political skill, or decision-making ability, when in reality he is rising only because chance selected him as the idiot who would rise.
How many people win the lottery? Very few. Do lottery winners succeed through intelligence, skill, ability, or merit? No; they win by chance. How many people become millionaires, presidents, or stars? Very few. Did all of them get there through intelligence, skill, ability, or merit? No. Many merely found themselves in the right place at the right time several times in succession. There are many intelligent, skilled, capable people, but proportionally very few millionaires, presidents, or stars.
Does this mean everyone who rises is an idiot? No. Many rise on their own merits because they are genuinely capable or intelligent, or at least charismatic. History has given us examples of great politicians, businesspeople, and public figures who left ample evidence of their genius. But many others rise by chance; probability predicts that they will.
If someone acts like an idiot, behaves like an idiot, and speaks like an idiot, do not doubt it: that person is an idiot—even if they have risen to the top.