Why I'm cautious about insisting that I know things outside of my own domain

What I learned in the automotive industry that now makes me cautious about opining on things I'm not expert about. Also, systems can be weirdly subtle and complex.

It’s often hard to really see what’s what [image generated in NightCafe Studio with text prompt ‘lots of tangled wires and shapes’

My work work has long been in the automotive sector. Specialising in a specific field can be unexpectedly revealing.

If real surprises are revealed, it should signal how little you probably know about everything else, even when you think lots of things are obvious.

This is because surface appearance is so often deceptive.

I went into automotive with several naive assumptions that would be rapidly dispelled. Some may surprise today's reader as much as they surprised me.

First among these was a belief that the primary purpose of car manufacturers was to build new cars and sell them for more than they cost to build.