Common sense
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For something that is supposed to be common, however, it is often rare to find. | For something that is supposed to be common, however, it is often rare to find. | ||
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For all practical purposes, "common sense" is a body of "rules-of-thumb" for how the world operates, which may or may not be shared with others in the community. For the most part, this works fine; for instance it is common sense not to walk in front of a speeding car, cause at some point in your past, you've seen fast things hit fleshy things and said to yourself, "ouch". Common sense would also suggest that a small person might best avoid antagonizing a large person cause one can easily imagine the effects of flying fists. What common sense is not, is taking the time to mentally calculate the effects of the car's momentum being transferred to your own body, or how far the impact will push you, or any other higher end science based function. ''get out of the damn way!, cause that's bound to hurt'' will suffice. | For all practical purposes, "common sense" is a body of "rules-of-thumb" for how the world operates, which may or may not be shared with others in the community. For the most part, this works fine; for instance it is common sense not to walk in front of a speeding car, cause at some point in your past, you've seen fast things hit fleshy things and said to yourself, "ouch". Common sense would also suggest that a small person might best avoid antagonizing a large person cause one can easily imagine the effects of flying fists. What common sense is not, is taking the time to mentally calculate the effects of the car's momentum being transferred to your own body, or how far the impact will push you, or any other higher end science based function. ''get out of the damn way!, cause that's bound to hurt'' will suffice. | ||
Revision as of 20:20, 16 September 2011
“”The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counter-intuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.
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| —Carl Sagan |
Common sense is something which you think you know to be true but that may not actually be true. It is a way of reasoning based on immediate knowledge gathered about the world, and basic rationality applied to that knowledge. However, the danger with common sense is that it the scope of knowledge can be quite wrong, and the basic rationality can simply not be deep enough for an attempt at finding truth. For something that is supposed to be common, however, it is often rare to find.
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The uncommon nonsense
For all practical purposes, "common sense" is a body of "rules-of-thumb" for how the world operates, which may or may not be shared with others in the community. For the most part, this works fine; for instance it is common sense not to walk in front of a speeding car, cause at some point in your past, you've seen fast things hit fleshy things and said to yourself, "ouch". Common sense would also suggest that a small person might best avoid antagonizing a large person cause one can easily imagine the effects of flying fists. What common sense is not, is taking the time to mentally calculate the effects of the car's momentum being transferred to your own body, or how far the impact will push you, or any other higher end science based function. get out of the damn way!, cause that's bound to hurt will suffice.
Often, many physical laws that are true (such as quantum mechanics) defy common sense ("how does an electron need to turn through 720 degrees to come back to where it started?!"). The lesson: if something doesn't seem right even if "common sense" says it should be, it's time to get your science on.
For example, it is common sense that if you drop a ball, it will fall. It always has, and it always will. It is common sense that the sun came up yesterday and will tomorrow. What is not such common sense is that gravity is a force (maybe) or an interaction between the ball and the Earth causing the ball to be drown down to the earth, and the earth to in fact be drawn up, theoretically. Common sense would in fact deny that possibility, though it is the more true one.
Confusion
Common sense is often confused with rational thought, being that people often believe common sense must be true and act incredulously to rational or scientific ideals that contradict common sense. This is due to the fact that the human brain can easily work with ideas like "common sense" and "rules of thumb" but can't quite cope with physics and statistics. For instance, it is statistically more probable to die from an asteroid impact (a rare and implausible event to many people) than a lightning strike (a common and very plausible event, particularly to golfers).[1] Common sense is often made up of much prejudice and snap judgment, and therefore is not always useful and can certainly be irrational even when it is useful.
A similar train of thought is used by religious fundamentalists who insist that while other religious groups may have their own, incorrect, "interpretation" of holy scripture, their own group does not have an "interpretation" at all. They, you see, simply read the plain and direct words of scripture, whose meaning is clear to anybody with common sense.
Under no circumstance is "common sense" ever to be confused with common law. You'd be surprised how many people get those two mixed up, and how many of them wind up going to jail.
See also
- Bayesian
- Common Sense was also the name of a pamphlet by Thomas Paine that was highly influential during the time of the American Revolution.[2]