I'm prepared to concede that stupidity does not help survival. One must after all understand not to poke a tiger with a stick. But intelligence leads to curiosity, and curiosity has never been a quality that helps one pour his or her genes into the pool. The truth must lie somewhere between. Whatever the reason, it is clearly mediocrity, at best, that lives and breeds.

Decisions are always made with insufficient information. If you really knew what was going on, the decision would make itself.

People tend to believe that good fortune consists of equal parts talent, hard work, and sheer luck. It's hard to deny the roles of the latter two. As to talent, I would only say it consists primarily in finding the right moment to step in.

Don't assume that a species is intelligent because it produces intelligent individuals.

Throughout our long and sorry history it has been men who supposed themselves to be exemplars of integrity who have done all the damage. Every crusade, whether for decent literary standards or to cover women's bodies or to free the holy land, had been launched, endorsed, and enthusiastically perpetrated by men of character.

There'd been studies over the years supporting the proposition that groups composed exclusively of women usually made intelligent decisions, that exclusively male groups did a bit less well, and that mixed groups did most poorly of all, by a substantial margin. It appeared that, when women were present, testosterone got the upper hand and men took greater risks than they might otherwise. Correspondingly, women in the mixed group tended to revert to roles, becoming more passive, and going along with whatever misjudgment the males might perpetrate.

Certain types of decisions can be safely ignored. Some issues will go away with the passage of time, others will be so slow developing that the decision-makers will depart before the results of their neglect becomes manifest. Which brings us to the environment.