Random Observations

• Wanting to be liked is a character flaw.  It can leave the impression you agree with things you don’ t. Better to have this clear at the outset. 

• The ability to deal with ambiguity is a character strength.  Many people make too-hasty decisions because they don’t like uncertainty. 

• Wake up every morning questioning what you heard yesterday.  This soon weeds out nonsense- like that by working less hours you get more done (try that while self-employed!). 

• Women’s Improved status and power have not arisen from consideration of equity or fairness but because mechanical inventions cancelled men’s strength advantage. 

• It’s easy to convince people who aren’t doing well that someone else is to blame, and to convince those who are doing well that it’s all to do with their personal attributes. 

• Relative status is a zero-sum game.  The total of status available rises and falls with population. 

• Responses to climate change must be scientifically, economically and politically achievable- and global.  Until they are, adaption is the only rational path. 

• People are differently abled, motivated and have differing luck.  Holding grudges about any of these is destructive of society. 

• Stable civil society needs be merit-based, and everyone should be equal before the law.  Selection on gender and ethnicity, (‘identity politics’) is sexist and racist, creates seething resentments. 

• Top martial arts “masters” last about 10 seconds against fighters unconstrained by rules- an average woman against an average man roughly the same. 

• It’s the governments job to get people to compete for status, income and wealth (because this builds a strong economy).  It’s in an individual’s interests to subvert this when possible. 

• Morality is just aggregated self-interest- hence women and men have quite different understanding of acceptable behaviour, as do minority groups. 

• Every ethnicity, tribe, religion and culture colonises when it’s strong- this is how humankind has spread across the world.  Complaining about being on the receiving end is hypocritical. 

• For engineering projects, it’s impossible to know when to persist beyond all sense and reason, and when not to.  This is a lottery. 

• Art (and music) are what you do if you can’t do engineering. 

• Different selection pressures operating since two sexes first appeared 1.2 billion years ago makes it VERY unlikely men’s and women’s heads work the same way.    

• Societies ruled by feelings and empathy cannot provide living standards approaching those driven by rational policy because they prioritise the noisiest individuals ahead of wider public benefit. 

• When a development project is 80% complete, you’ve done 20% of it. 

• There’s an historical pattern in which ruling elites lose touch with reality and destroy their societies. 

• Until they target the worst first, international human rights campaigners and institutions will continue to be held in contempt. 

• Environmental extremism is a luxury disease that will disappear if its activists succeed in destroying the prosperity that has allowed it to flourish. 

• The apex of engineering success: problems that are only solved after immense effort and looming failure.  Easy problems are boring, too hard and they waste time, money, and destroy careers. 

• The best predictor of success in a wide range of human endeavours is general intelligence.  Unfortunately. 

• Humans are hardwired to want territory, power and personal property.  What a tragic delusion it is that some still seek to establish Marxist and socialist utopias.  How many more millions will die for this? 

• Striving to understand an engineering problem completely is what scientists do- but slowly and carefully.  They are rarely worth waiting for- understanding can come later. 

• Cultures can change- copy those that do something better rather than moan about unfairness. 

• Beliefs are most often driven by emotion not reason.  Smarter people are better at convincing others (and themselves) that they are exceptions to this and generally therefore make the biggest mistakes. 

• How much of our mental health crisis is caused by therapists convincing people they have a problem? 

 Peter Lynn, January 2026