How to Reconcile Passive Confidence With Extreme Overconfidence in the Financial Markets

I can't think of a form of investing that would be more overconfident than passive, putting incredible faith in just buy and hold forever. How do you reconcile that confidence with this social underconfidence? I look at the surge in passive as being a behavioral change that naturally arose from the betrayal of active management. Active managers were supposed to get you out of the top in 2007 and they didn't.