On average, people should be more skeptical when they see numbers. They should be more willing to play around with the data themselves.

Remember, the Congress doesn't get as many opportunities to make an impression with the public.

I view my role now as providing more of a macro-level skepticism, rather than saying this poll is good or this poll is evil.

We're living in a world where Google beats Gallup.

Shakespeare's plays often turn on the idea of fate, as much drama does. What makes them so tragic is the gap between what his characters might like to accomplish and what fate provides them.

One of the pervasive risks that we face in the information age, as I wrote in the introduction, is that even if the amount of knowledge in the world is increasing, the gap between what we know and what we think we know may be widening.

Plenty of pundits have really high IQs, but they don't have any discipline in how they look at the world, and so it leads to a lot of bullshit, basically.