The problem with common sense

Discussion in 'Political Science' started by bomberfox, Feb 10, 2020.

  1. bomberfox

    bomberfox Active Member

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    the problem with common sense......... wait for it!..... is not that it isnt common, it is that it is untrained by empirical observations and careful analysis. It is easy in many cases when something like dont touch a heated stove is involved but in other cases, when one cannot fathom why a decision is made, we make a gut reaction based on intuition which will lead many astray when examining a more complex problem. Common sense as a benchmark is a very flawed one when we rely on what is innate or what is perceived to be innate. Intuition is something that needs to be trained.
     
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  2. AlifQadr

    AlifQadr Well-Known Member

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    Here is a bit of common sense and reality about the POTUS and elections of these United States and the United States . . .
    This comment or soliloquy is about The President of the United States of America; regardless to whether or not a person voted for the sitting POTUS, he is still the President of the nation, so by extension he is everyone American citizen’s president. I have heard to many make the statement that President Trump is “not their president” which angers me because as long as you have citizenship, he is YOUR president as well as EVERYONE ELSE’S president. Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and the first term of Ronald Wilson Reagan were my presidents even though I was too young to vote for or against them. When I became eligible to vote at eighteen, Reagan in his second term, George Herbert Walker Bush, then William Jefferson Clinton, George Walker Bush, Barrack Hussein Obama, and now Donald J. Trump, of which I only voted for George Walker Bush; regardless, all of them were POTUS so being that I am an American citizen, they were ALL MY PRESIDENT. When people make such statements that either one was “not their president”, they are in essence saying that they are not Americans or traitors to the republic called the United States. Our country is based upon elections for public government officials be they United States House Representatives, Senators; Congress, or POTUS on the federal level. On the states level, we have governors, mayors, town or city council members, public advocates, local judges and sheriffs, which are our local officials. This is all a part of being an American, take it or leave. I refuse to disrespect any office or this country by stating that any of the listed public officials are not mine because I did not vote for him or her.


     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2020
  3. bomberfox

    bomberfox Active Member

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    Thats a nice bit of red herrings. Do you just want people to kiss your ass so badly?
     
  4. Diablo

    Diablo Well-Known Member

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    Many people think with their emotions instead of their intellect, and make decisions which are actually against their best interests.
     
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  5. An Taibhse

    An Taibhse Well-Known Member

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    Common sense as applied until redefined to mean common acceptance of dogma. It used to represent knowledge accumulated by direct individual experience and observation that is common knowledge shared by direct experience of others, and it is also relative to the shared knowledge of those that accumulated it by exposure to the same experiences and observation and is dependent also on the level of experience. What I perceive as common sense in regard to a bits of knowledge, may not be the same as someone that has no direct similar experience or observation. A good example is, I have over 60 years of experience with firearms of all types and what I might consider obvious and categorized as common sense might be shared with others of similar experience, but not someone that has never handled a firearm, For instance, how to safely check if a semi auto, any semi auto firearm is loaded or unloaded may be considered common knowledge among those the experience, but not those without.
    Intuition is not knowledge that can be taught, but a product of a deep understanding, where the brain is able to rapidly and unconsciously recall it based on unconsciously assembling knowledge from thought or often unconscious observation, and sometimes, is derived from cognitive processes that are not directly explained by the person who has a specific intuitive insight. A favorite example of mine was that of two police offices I knew in Milwaukee, that, while cruising, go a report of a stolen vehicle. As one officer was writing down the description, the other listening noticed a car fitting the description in traffic. The other said, wrong license number, but the officer driving voiced a question...’how do you get bugs smashed on the rear plate?’ They initiated a stop and it turned to be the car reported stolen; the plates had been stolen from another car and front plate mounded on the back of the stolen car.
    When many people refer to ‘common sense’ they often are refer to knowledge based on shared dogma and many use the phrase ‘it’s common sense’ which can have an effect on those not wanting to expose their ignorance.
     
  6. Robert E Allen

    Robert E Allen Banned

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    Tell that to the 58,000 Americans that died in Vietnam. All of them had the common sense to know the strategies were stupid even though they were developed by extremely smart anf highly educated people using scientific data properly applied.

    Sometimes your education can make you stupid..
     
  7. Aleksander Ulyanov

    Aleksander Ulyanov Well-Known Member

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    The way I use it is as a synonym for "obviously". There's no such thing in actual fact as no piece of knowledge there is is known to and agreed upon to everyone. That's just common sense, obviously.
     
  8. VotreAltesse

    VotreAltesse Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It's more complicate than that. Even if you think in a "logical" way, there is a number of bias :
    pride, confirmation bias and so on. Our brain even if we do the best to abstract ourselves from our emotion is very biased. Furthermore, I'm not sure we can fully divide emotion and intellect unfortunately.
     
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  9. Diablo

    Diablo Well-Known Member

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    Well, you can at least assemble the facts, contemplate upon them, and then try and think critically. That's a lot better than believing whatever catches your fancy.
     
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  10. VotreAltesse

    VotreAltesse Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yes btw. I think it may be dangerous to think "I think in a rationnal way", because it's the best way to be blind to our lack of rationnality.
     
  11. Diablo

    Diablo Well-Known Member

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    Well, you can be irrational at certain times: when you're angry, or intoxicated, or sick etc. But you can recognise those times and make sure you don't take any decisions when you're influenced in those ways. fpr example, you're in different moods on Monday morning and Friday afternoon so you have to understand that.
     
  12. VotreAltesse

    VotreAltesse Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I fully undestand that, but you're always in a mood, even when you don't perceive it. You're always perceived by many bias such as halo bias, confirmation bias. You're alway disturbed by your pre existing biases. We're all just flawed human, and that every days of the week. You're more or less intoxicated by that.
    Thinking that you're absolutly rationnal is a danger and it's a danger because it's about denying that irationnal part in us that will always exist. The only thing we can do is moderate that
     
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  13. Diablo

    Diablo Well-Known Member

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    I don't really agree with that. I understand my moods, whether anxiety, depression, elation, or just the desire to punch someone in the face, and I can adjust for them. I never make a decision straight away, I always sleep on it. That's habit from 20 years of being in senior management roles.
     
  14. VotreAltesse

    VotreAltesse Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    A mood, it go beyond simply strong emotions. It's also emotionnal attachment to things, people, and concepts.
     
  15. Diablo

    Diablo Well-Known Member

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    The questions you ask are: does it work? Is it do-able? Is it the right thing to do from a moral perspective? Is it legal? Can we afford it?
     
  16. Patricio Da Silva

    Patricio Da Silva Well-Known Member Donor

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    I would say that any president. However, here's the problem with your......your, well, what is, exactly, is a sentiment, that's an emotional thing.

    So, because it's a sentiment, the radius of logic I would use, well, really, you can't use logic on a sentiment.

    But, if you understand that it is a sentiment, perhaps you can stretch your imagination a bit to understand that not everyone shares the same sentiment, as we are constructed differently in terms of emotion.

    Yes, technically, you are correct, but to say, 'my president' , that's an emotional declaration, not one that can use logic as a measure.

    So, when I hear the president, every day, most everything that he says, are some variant of the following items.

    1. He brags
    2, He trolls democrats (egregiously).
    3. He's having a petty argument with someone who is not important or is being rude with someone who doesn't deserve it.
    4. He rants inchoherently, while trolling, bragging, engaging in pettiness, etc.

    He rarely acts up to a standard I would expect of a president. Now, I didn't agree with Bush, at all, but he didn't evoke an emotion in me that told me, 'he's not my president'.

    But Trump does mostly #1 and #2

    As a democrat, I don't appreciate a troll. That he is a troll, I'm not making this up, Rush Limbaugh, on air, declared it so, early on.

    I'm sorry, when a so-called 'president' trolls me just about every time he opens his mouth, he's not talking to me, he's talking only to those that voted for him, because he knows that kind of talk reinvigorates his base. He's telling me that he is the president of about 42% of the electorate, if that.

    But, it's not just that, he makes NO effort to widen his reach, he makes no effort to reach out to people like me.

    On top of this, his fans love it when he does this , and they can't comprehend the simple fact that this is a terrible quality for a president.

    Donald Trump is not a real president, he just plays one on TV.

    Moreover, he's done some seriously bad things, like separating children from parents permanently, for no greater crime than a class B misdemeanor, he's done a few thousand of those. Imagine if that were your child? Your kid, lost, forever, just because you sought to leave a land where you are being threatened, your children's safety is at risk, you don't know much about the world, you are a simple farm person, and someone tells you of "America, the land of opportunity and freedom " you follow that dream, and when you get there, Trump takes your kid away, forever, and sends you back to your former hellhole, after detaining you for several months. Imagine if that were your child?

    Study the IG report, and, after reading it, there's no way in hell you tell me all of the kids separated were reunited with their parents.

    https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2018-10/OIG-18-84-Sep18.pdf

    And, the above is only one serious point of contention, I have many others.

    I'm sorry, but this man is evil, he's not my president, and he shouldn't be yours, either.

    Vote the MFer out of office.
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2020
  17. An Taibhse

    An Taibhse Well-Known Member

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    Hmmm, not a fan of logic, eh?
     
  18. willburroughs

    willburroughs Well-Known Member

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    That is all fine, as long as you were equally angered by the exact same sentiment that was expressed towards Obama, because that was a very common refrain at the time.
     
  19. Oh Yeah

    Oh Yeah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Thank you for explaining my first 3 marriages. I married the same type gal's to the point they all first names that started with a J. and all were Pisces. All ended in divorce. Then one day a lady told me "nothing changes if nothing changes". Well my 4th wife is different from the first three and we have been married 35 years. Some habits are hard to break though, she was a Pisces. In fact the same birthday as the second wife.
     
  20. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Donor

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    It's very interesting that there seem to be so many differing ideas of what, "common sense, " means. Albert Einstein, for example, famously defined it as the collection of prejudices we acquire by the age of 18. I always thought that, " conventional wisdom, " was what he'd really had in mind & the confusion had arisen because of differences between English & German, his 1st language. But when I just now checked to make sure I didn't mis-paraphrase his quote, I saw that unkempt-Al had other quotes in which he clearly defined it differently: " May the conscience and the common sense of the peoples be awakened...; " & by naming common sense as the 3rd great essential for achieving anything worthwhile.

    For myself, I think of common sense as referring to the ability to REASON, available to any functional human being; in other words, using common sense means employing logic at a level that requires no special knowledge, advanced training, or stellar intellect.
     
  21. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Donor

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    Of course, like many terms in English (in this case), " common sense, " can have more than 1 meaning. I'll note, however, that the old Webster's Dictionary I have handy endorses my general view w/ its 1st definition: sound & prudent but often unsophisticated judgement.

    Now including, as some in this thread have, " INTUITION, " as a form of common sense is not so well justified. The 2nd & only other sense given in my Webster's is: the unreflective opinions of ordinary men. While gut-feelings & instincts might technically fit w/in that description, the common-sensical thing to do would be to call those things by their own names & not assume others would naturally conflate the three, even if there's a thread of overlap.
     
    Last edited: Aug 18, 2020

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