6 ms·

Common sense is frequently wrong and is usually invoked by people who want their beliefs to be taken as fact without needing to provide support

bluepod4 3y ago
Correct.
georgeashworth 3y ago
Citation needed
- spicebox 3y ago
  Touché - “Science has widely come to be understood as a systematic assault on common sense. Common sense said the world was flat; science showed this to be false. Common sense said the sun and the moon were the same size; science showed this to be wrong. Common sense said the Earth was the center of the universe; science showed this to be false. Common sense said matter was solid; science has shown this to be false” https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft8c6009k3&chunk.id=d0e1167&toc.id=&brand=ucpress https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft8c60...
  - HideousKojima 3y ago
    Citation needed that those things were, in fact, common sense. The earth being the center of the universe comes from ancient philosophers, not commoners (there's a reason the geocentric model is also called the Ptolemaic model). Those same philosophers also usually said the earth was round, not flat.
btilly 3y ago
The problem here is that the specific statement in question is hard to come up with a citation for, but rests on a chain of reasoning for well-known statements that do have a lot of evidence. And so "citation needed" is just a way to avoid trying to think. One of the many chains of reasoning that apply here are: 1. Success in business, science and technology are all strongly associated with intelligence. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/11/does-iq-determine-success-a-psychologist-weighs-in.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/11/does-iq-determine-success-a-... 2. Intelligence tends to be relatively stable. https://psychology.stackexchange.com/a/21726 https://psychology.stackexchange.com/a/21726 Therefore intelligent children contribute an inordinate amount to advances in business, science and technology. The next piece is not just how smart we are, but what we are interested in and how well prepared we are. There https://hechingerreport.org/why-the-preteen-years-are-a-critical-period-for-brain-development/ https://hechingerreport.org/why-the-preteen-years-are-a-crit... shows that there is evidence to believe that adolescence is a critical period - developing and supporting interests in that period will lead to lifelong improvement. And therefore we have good reason to believe that appropriate interventions in that age range really should have an outsized contribution to advancements down the road. Of course people who don't want to think can always ask, "Has there been a high quality longitudinal study demonstrating that adolescent interventions can result in an outsized impact on contributions to society later?" And, of course, there haven't. But even if they had, of necessity they would have happened long enough ago that enough has changed that the argument could come back, "The world has changed. Do we have reason to believe that this could work today?" And so if you want to think, the conclusion really is obviously reasonable. If you don't want to think, the quality of the evidence is such that nobody can prove it to you. On a question like that, how SHOULD we respond to a lazy "citation needed" demand?
- spicebox 3y ago
  There’s also plenty of evidence that improving educational outcomes for low performing students has an outsized impact. “Decreasing the number of high school dropouts by half would nationally produce $45 billion per year in net economic benefit to society … Improved education and more stable employment greatly increase tax revenue, such as a return of at least 7 dollars for every dollar invested in pre-kindergarten education … National savings in public health costs would exceed $40 billion if every high school dropout in just a single year would graduate”. [1] These show pretty clear economic benefits to improving outcomes for the average student. But the bigger issue is framing with as a “struggling vs gifted” problem. Where we have to choose between supporting gifted students or helping struggling students. It isn’t, education is one of the few areas where there is a “free lunch”. Every dollar invested in education results in more than one dollar in return. We can easily find both of these things, the real question isn’t which we should fund, but why we aren’t funding both. [1] https://www.elc-pa.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/BestInvestment_Full_Report_6.27.11.pdf https://www.elc-pa.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/BestInvest...
  - bluecalm 3y ago
    The paper you linked is based on reasoning like: "high school dropouts are way more likely to be unemployed therefore if we reduce rates of people dropping out of high school there will be more employed ones". That's also a problem with "citation needed" argument - people who are in position to publish papers are often motivated politically or just bad at thinking and logic.
    - srcnkcl 3y ago
      ah yes scientists, people known to be bad at logic and thinking... I guess you meant policy makers or people who implements those but whatever, what i know right...
      - bluecalm 3y ago
        I just quoted an obvious reasoning error from the paper man.
Aeolun 3y ago
You can take a look at the average intelligence of current research and business leaders and conclude that on average, they contribute more visibly. That doesn’t mean the cook in their kitchen, that frees up their mind to think about all that useful stuff isn’t just as necessary.
- tchaffee 3y ago
  Your observation that they contribute more visibly is maybe the most important part. If you include all the infrastructure and not just the cook then it becomes much more obvious that we are working much like an ant colony and we succeed and progress only as a unit and die as individuals. Humans are social animals. We need to ensure the success of every individual if we want to optimize the rate of progress of the entire group.

bluepod4 3y ago

Correct.

georgeashworth 3y ago

Citation needed

spicebox 3y ago
Touché - “Science has widely come to be understood as a systematic assault on common sense. Common sense said the world was flat; science showed this to be false. Common sense said the sun and the moon were the same size; science showed this to be wrong. Common sense said the Earth was the center of the universe; science showed this to be false. Common sense said matter was solid; science has shown this to be false” https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft8c6009k3&chunk.id=d0e1167&toc.id=&brand=ucpress https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft8c60...
- HideousKojima 3y ago
  Citation needed that those things were, in fact, common sense. The earth being the center of the universe comes from ancient philosophers, not commoners (there's a reason the geocentric model is also called the Ptolemaic model). Those same philosophers also usually said the earth was round, not flat.

btilly 3y ago

The problem here is that the specific statement in question is hard to come up with a citation for, but rests on a chain of reasoning for well-known statements that do have a lot of evidence. And so "citation needed" is just a way to avoid trying to think. One of the many chains of reasoning that apply here are: 1. Success in business, science and technology are all strongly associated with intelligence. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/11/does-iq-determine-success-a-psychologist-weighs-in.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/11/does-iq-determine-success-a-... 2. Intelligence tends to be relatively stable. https://psychology.stackexchange.com/a/21726 https://psychology.stackexchange.com/a/21726 Therefore intelligent children contribute an inordinate amount to advances in business, science and technology. The next piece is not just how smart we are, but what we are interested in and how well prepared we are. There https://hechingerreport.org/why-the-preteen-years-are-a-critical-period-for-brain-development/ https://hechingerreport.org/why-the-preteen-years-are-a-crit... shows that there is evidence to believe that adolescence is a critical period - developing and supporting interests in that period will lead to lifelong improvement. And therefore we have good reason to believe that appropriate interventions in that age range really should have an outsized contribution to advancements down the road. Of course people who don't want to think can always ask, "Has there been a high quality longitudinal study demonstrating that adolescent interventions can result in an outsized impact on contributions to society later?" And, of course, there haven't. But even if they had, of necessity they would have happened long enough ago that enough has changed that the argument could come back, "The world has changed. Do we have reason to believe that this could work today?" And so if you want to think, the conclusion really is obviously reasonable. If you don't want to think, the quality of the evidence is such that nobody can prove it to you. On a question like that, how SHOULD we respond to a lazy "citation needed" demand?

spicebox 3y ago
There’s also plenty of evidence that improving educational outcomes for low performing students has an outsized impact. “Decreasing the number of high school dropouts by half would nationally produce $45 billion per year in net economic benefit to society … Improved education and more stable employment greatly increase tax revenue, such as a return of at least 7 dollars for every dollar invested in pre-kindergarten education … National savings in public health costs would exceed $40 billion if every high school dropout in just a single year would graduate”. [1] These show pretty clear economic benefits to improving outcomes for the average student. But the bigger issue is framing with as a “struggling vs gifted” problem. Where we have to choose between supporting gifted students or helping struggling students. It isn’t, education is one of the few areas where there is a “free lunch”. Every dollar invested in education results in more than one dollar in return. We can easily find both of these things, the real question isn’t which we should fund, but why we aren’t funding both. [1] https://www.elc-pa.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/BestInvestment_Full_Report_6.27.11.pdf https://www.elc-pa.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/BestInvest...
- bluecalm 3y ago
  The paper you linked is based on reasoning like: "high school dropouts are way more likely to be unemployed therefore if we reduce rates of people dropping out of high school there will be more employed ones". That's also a problem with "citation needed" argument - people who are in position to publish papers are often motivated politically or just bad at thinking and logic.
  - srcnkcl 3y ago
    ah yes scientists, people known to be bad at logic and thinking... I guess you meant policy makers or people who implements those but whatever, what i know right...
    - bluecalm 3y ago
      I just quoted an obvious reasoning error from the paper man.

Aeolun 3y ago

You can take a look at the average intelligence of current research and business leaders and conclude that on average, they contribute more visibly. That doesn’t mean the cook in their kitchen, that frees up their mind to think about all that useful stuff isn’t just as necessary.

tchaffee 3y ago
Your observation that they contribute more visibly is maybe the most important part. If you include all the infrastructure and not just the cook then it becomes much more obvious that we are working much like an ant colony and we succeed and progress only as a unit and die as individuals. Humans are social animals. We need to ensure the success of every individual if we want to optimize the rate of progress of the entire group.