
What is 'common sense'? - jeremynicolas
http://thelongandshort.org/issues/season-four/what-is-common-sense-.html
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hzhou321
Common sense should not be defined as common knowledge. It is not describing a
type of knowledge which one simply know or ignorant. Rather it describes a
most general type of critical thinking process where common people will reach
the similar conclusion when they are asked to engage in the critical thinking.

For example, cutting vegetables. I would say it is a common sense to always
put your holding figures on top (rather than under the vegetables or on the
side). It is not a common knowledge -- for one, not all or quite a portion of
our population never cut vegetables before so it can't be a common knowledge;
and for two, many who try to cut vegetables will make mistakes of injuring
their fingers due to lack this common sense.

However, it is a good example of common sense, if we imagine, that we ask any
common people to think about the situation and devise or choose from a couple
vegetable holding position, most of will reach the common conclusions.

Therefore, common sense is a common critical thinking process shared by us.

The problem with common sense is that most people -- or many of us most of the
time -- do not engage in critical thinking, as a result, fail to benefit from
common sense.

~~~
cubix
> For example, cutting vegetables. I would say it is a common sense to always
> put your holding figures on top

That's not actually what most experts advocate. Chefs are trained to hold from
the side, but with their finger tips curled underneath their knuckles for
protection.

[https://youtu.be/cV0c7qiNjuI?t=1m56s](https://youtu.be/cV0c7qiNjuI?t=1m56s)

~~~
jessriedel
If I had to pick a direction that that chef is holding the carrot from, it's
"top".

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robert_tweed
The term "common sense" is a pet hate of mine. Considered objectively, it's
the opposite of empiricism. It's what happens when you jump to the most
obvious conclusion, regardless of whether or not it's the right one. It's the
intellectual equivalent of vigilante justice.

~~~
cristianpascu
> Considered objectively, it's the opposite of empiricism.

It's not. Because we call it a sense, it might have nothing to do empirical
senses. It has to do with what we believe about the world, including right and
wrong. Common sense can be very well justified (the justification being
outhere, although not all are aware of it), or it might be something seen on
TV or read on HN. Perhaps it's fair to say that it's the core of a culture,
defining it at <x, y, t>. Of course, cultures are all mixed up since 1969,
thus everyone is all high about their objectivity. Back in the day, long
before I was born, it was better.

~~~
analyst74
Am I reading this wrong, or is cristianpascu basically saying he miss the good
old days before minorities had rights?

~~~
mc32
You're framing this from a western perspective, yet people in Papua new guinea
also have something called common sense, irrespective of colonization, etc.

Don't always look at things thru a western point of view or experience. Lots
of themes which exist in western culture actually also exist elsewhere.

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tehwalrus
The phrase common sense is awful, as @robert_tweed says, it is the opposite of
a considered opinion.

In politics, however, this idea is particularly egregious, as the article
elucidates.

If you're wrong about a scientific theory or a computer program, you can tell
well enough by testing the things. If you're wrong in politics, it is
extremely difficult to obtain empirical evidence that this is the case.

That is not to say that it's impossible: there is plenty of research out
there, and like all human-centric scientific research some of it is flawed,
and most is statistically weak. As far as I can tell, "common sense" as used
by UKIP, Gove, etc means assuming that any results which are contrary to your
brain's initial guess are either wrong, or actually malicious[1].

The Lib Dems (who I stood for in the election) have actually tried to do the
probably-impossible here and build a platform on evidence-based policy[2].
Much good it did us in the poll, of course.

[1]
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2298146/I-refuse-s...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2298146/I-refuse-
surrender-Marxist-teachers-hell-bent-destroying-schools-Education-Secretary-
berates-new-enemies-promise-opposing-plans.html)

[2] not that it stopped some of our candidates trotting out the awful line, as
the article points out.

~~~
wmil
Common sense can best be thought of as the collection of small facts that
people have acquired through thousands of years of observing humans and the
results. eg, Folk Wisdom.

It's much more useful than you seem to think it is.

Look at priming. It was a recent academic fad, Malcolm Gladwell included a big
section on it in "Blink". The idea that you could influence people to walk
more slowly by making them read a list of words associated with old age defied
common sense. Surely someone would have noticed this effect before.

And the result was that the common sensers were right. Key priming studies
turned out to be outright fraud. The rest weren't repeatable.

~~~
reagency
Priming is a broad topic. Only certain kinds were debunked.

Wikipedia summarizes "Although semantic, associative, and form priming are
well established, some longer-term priming effects were not replicated in
further studies, casting doubt on their effectiveness or even existence"

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api
Common sense is optimization of decision making with heuristics and data
compression. It comes at a cost-- cognitive biases, illusions, etc.-- but
imagine trying to function in the world if you had to reason through and
empirically test each decision.

"Will that lion eat me? How should I construct a study to AAAAAhhhh!!!"

In common use the term is also used to refer to intuition, which is something
else. Intuition is also a bit of a sloppy term but mostly reveals to massively
parallel so-called "right brain" modes of cognition that rely heavily on huge
scale pattern recognition instead of linear paths of logic.

------
Animats
Important question, weak article.

"Common sense" used to be a term used often in AI research, although seldom
implemented. Collecting large numbers of factoids has been done (see Cyc and
ConceptNet). That didn't lead to common sense, although it helps some quesion-
answering systems.

A useful working definition is that common sense is the predictive capability
needed to get through the next seconds to a minute of life. This is what you
need to not fall down, get hit by moving objects, and avoid predators. If you
can't manage that, life will be short. It's a basic function of animal
behavior.

Not enough has been done in that area. It's essential for robots. Google's
self-driving cars have something like that, trying to predict what other cars
are going to do in the immediate future.

One way to work on this problem is to have a system that looks at movie clips,
and is asked to predict what happens next. It can, of course, be trained by
looking at what does happen next. Image analysis is now far enough along to
attempt this. Anyone doing that in recent years?

~~~
AdieuToLogic
Interesting take on a vague and, IMHO, insoluble question due to its intrinsic
subjectivity based on an agent's previous exposure to its observable world.

Continuing along an AI theme, wouldn't "common sense" be closer to the choices
selected from the belief network developed by an agent's percepts over time?

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JesperRavn
There are some things that there is no reliable scientific data on. Almost any
argument is going to rely on these things in some way. E.g. Black people
commit much more crime per capita than White people. Some people might
consider it common sense that no amount of discrimination by the justice
system could account for such a gap. Other people might say the opposite:
there is so much specific evidence of discrimination that we should expect the
overall system to be extremely biased.

Sure, specific studies might fill the gap, but more questions will be raised
about the details of those studies, and the cycle continues.

While we should use all available evidence, at the end of the day we need more
information than object evidence can provide, in order to form opinions about
important topics.

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captaincrowbar
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." \-
Albert Einstein

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markvdb
Nazi Germany used the term "gesundes Volksempfinden", not only as a part of
its internal propaganda, but even as a legal principle.

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesundes_Volksempfinden](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesundes_Volksempfinden)

(Sorry, I couldn't find a relevant wikipedia article about it in English.)

~~~
AdieuToLogic
Pretty quick on that Godwin's Law[1] trigger man...

1 - [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/godwins-
law](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/godwins-law)

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delinka
Not sure about the UK, but in my neck of the woods here in the US, "common
sense" refers to not being physically reckless, especially toward others. I
understand that politicians like to co-opt terminology for themselves. Let's
blame the politicians, not 'proper' vocabulary.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
I think that's the "Golden Rule". Either way, your definition of "common
sense" isn't particularly common, and whether it even makes sense has long
been the subject of debates in ethics.

~~~
delinka
Human language is ambiguous. As it has been since it was invented. And people
abuse this ambiguity to further their interests.

Ultimately, that's my point. Are there any colloquialisms that everyone would
agree can have only a single definition?

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meerita
I really loved to read "Everything is Obvious" (once you know the answer)
book. [http://everythingisobvious.com/the-
book/](http://everythingisobvious.com/the-book/)

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synesso
This is a pet hate of mine too. When I hear this phrase I'm automatically
inclined to disagree. I mentally hear it as "I'm not prepared to think
enough".

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afarrell
As someone who worked on Open Mind Common Sense as a freshman, I should warn
y'all that it accepted submissions from random people on the Internet and so
contains many statements that are patently ridiculous.

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TheLoneWolfling
What on Earth does this website do to scrolling, and how can I stop it?

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tomlock
It is common sense to think that the "common sense" of 2000 years ago was
wrong. It should be common sense to think that common sense today is also
likely wrong. :)

Oops.

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kev6168
Common sense is the unsolicited opinion offered by a bystander, usually in
hindsight and starting with the phrase "It's common sense that ..."

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AdieuToLogic
What is common sense?

Recognizing that inane insoluble questions such as these surface again, and
again, and again...

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meeper16
It is the most uncommon thing of all.

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Animats
This is why web developers shouldn't be given control over scrolling.

~~~
cristianpascu
Specially to create carousels. :)

