Being Smart and Having Common Sense are two Different Things

[Navvan]

Well I won't even go into the whole rain doesn't actually cause colds as the point of the thread was the separation of common sense and intelligence. However you might want to change it to something more... true. For example hot stoves will burn your hand is always a good one.

Yes the two are different things which is something that most people recognize. However what you call "Common sense" isn't really a thing. In fact the term would be meaningless except that most people have a general idea of how to interpret it.

A) What is and is not "common" in this case is almost impossible to define as is thus arbitrary/relative.
B) It isn't "sense" but knowledge.

All of what is called common sense is really a subset of knowledge. That is knowledge that is well known/easily gathered either through experience (touch a hot stove), being taught (Hey don't touch the hot stove it will burn you), or logical extensions (Objects that give off heat will burn other objects that touch it-> My hand is an object -> The stove will burn my hand if I touch it).

What is common is something that most people will know through one of these three ways. However what seems common to me might not be common to say someone else depending on who they are surrounded by/what they know. For example it may seem to be "common sense" that you need fuel/energy to run an engine. However if you were never exposed to a culture that knows of engines you would not know that.

TLDR: Common sense is just a way of saying "knowledge that most people around me have". Since intelligence is the capability to understand and knowledge is something you have learned they are different things.

A more interesting discussion would be what is more valuable for an individual to have, intelligence or knowledge. While I would argue for intelligence (especially with the invention of the internet) most of society does seem to value knowledge more. At least from my perspective.

 

[Mr.logic]

It just means that intelligence & wisdom are different things.

intelligence: knowing the exact amount of carbon in a body that has decomposed for 4 days.

Wisdom: knowing not to talk about a dead person to a family member.

 

[DarkRyter]

don't stand out in the rain or you will catch a cold. .

Colds are caused by Rhinovirus, not rain.

Low tempuratures that can happen during rain, might lead to hypothermia. However, there is no health hazards to standing in rain during warmer tempuratures.

There is no such thing as common sense. Some people know some things, some people know other things. There are things that alot of people know, and there are things alot of people don't know.

 

[Vault101]

snip.

somtimes its gets really frustrating when people laugh at you for "not knowing" things they think you should know

like when I went to a new (fucking huge) school I kept getting crap for being slow to know where things were...I didn't have of a sense of direction and trying to use the logical numbering systm (bulding c classroom 26) didn't always work

or the post office...I had no fucking Idea how any of it worked...BUT WHY THE FUCK SHOULD I? its fucking 2012 I've never had to use the damn thing in my life, its not common knowelege anymore because post offices are out dated in many ways

 

[Autumnflame]

working in restaurants .
someone could be intelligent and a scientist. but they can still be as stupid and ignorant as the unemployed bogan 2 tables over.

to make a reference to D&D intelligence and wisdom are 2 different stats

 

[Thaliur]

I've met some of the smartest people but they still don't know things like don't stand out in the rain or you will catch a cold.

Actually, Rain does not cause the cold. The virus is not spontaneously generated by large amounts of water. They just "survive" longer in cold air, and the mucosia inside your airways is weakened by dry heater air.

 

[Arakasi]

I've met some of the smartest people but they still don't know things like don't stand out in the rain or you will catch a cold. I'm wondering what people think about this.

Standing out in the rain does not cause you to catch a cold.
The cold virus is merely more prevalent in colder weather.
That is a misconception.

Also, common sense or street smarts, or whatever you want to call it, is one of the 3 types of intelligence.

 

[Bocaj2000]

What? Two different things aren't the same?

I agree. This thread doesn't need to exist.

 

[Nimzabaat]

So the fact that so many read the original statement and focused on one part of it without
understanding what the thread is about... That is really funny.

OT: Don't feed the trolls, that's... common sense.

 

[TAGM]

Well, common sense in essence is just smarts in terms of life experiences.

Really, it's a case of, when you say smarts, smarts in what? In EVERYTHING? That's practically impossible. I
n my view, Common sense is a subset of smarts, which does still make it different to smarts. I mean - There's smarts - the group, the global term - and then there's the subsets - like, math smarts, English smarts, not-getting-yourself-killed smarts, and common-sense smarts.

 

[Shaved Apple]

I know right, that's what I've been saying lol. But now i know the rain doesn't give you a cold now.

 

[TheNaut131]

Hey guys, about this whole rain thing. How about we just not stand in the rain because you'll most likely get wet? I kinda like the rain, especially after a few hot days, but if you simply stand outside at some point you'll gonna get pretty soggy and you might not smell too great either.

Yeah, I figured this was pretty obvious.

Frankly, I don't really acknowledge either. I just go with whatever one works and doesn't annoy me.

 

[II2]

Well, naturally... That's why Intelligence and Wisdom are seperate stats.

 

[gim73]

Yeah, this is true enough. I have a genius level IQ but it's not uncommon to hear me ask how the microwave/can opener/TV remote works. Even if I've been using these things for months.

Really? You don't know how a microwave, can opener, TV remote works? Would you like me to explain FIRE while I'm at it, because these are all SCIENCE things.

Just being a genius is only part of the formula. Curiosity is another large chunk. The third chunk to being smart is not getting the 'counter-knowledge' that certain parents like to fill our heads with. You know, the things like the earth is 6000 years old and people lived alongside the dinosaurs... yeah...

Often, smart people lack what others call the 'social graces'. You might think that it's 'common sense' to treat other people a certain way. A lot of this stuff is entirely optional. It's subject to change and flux as society evolves and devolves, so a smart person might not care to change and conform to social norms.

Also some people have a weird idea of what is common sense. You might think that it's common sense to know how to change you oil and fix a flat tire. Other people figure it's common sense to stop spending money when you run out, but we have record levels of debt that prove that that is not truth. Remember, the sense is never a 'common' thing.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Actually, they are not any different. Intelligence is a word that encompasses many things: you capacity to learn a new subject, your ability to find a solution to a new problem, the ability to apply seemingly unrelated knowledge to new tasks and so forth. Common sense, if it had a definition, is simply one's ability to quickly find a reasonable solution or a problem they have never encountered.

Generally speaking, someone who is truly intelligent (in other words, smart) will posses the trait of common sense. By contrast, one can appear intelligent but lack common sense. Education is not always a mark of intelligence even though it often goes hand in hand.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

They are both intelligences, just different types. Its not a binary switch.

There's people who can list off the dates every piece of classical music was composed on and the composer who wrote them, but have no understanding of physics. There brilliant machinists for whom most English eludes them. Just like there are people who are 'smart' who lack 'common sense.' Not because common sense and intelligence are two separate things, but because so many different types of intelligences exist. Common sense takes intelligence, just a certain type of it.

 

[Sandjube]

I agree completely. I am pretty smart when it comes to things I have an interest in, but much of the time I just can't seem to grasp basic things/had no idea about them.

 

[Latinidiot]

In my first year at university, when I had no choice who I lived with, I shared a house on campus with someone who was so dumb he wouldn't survive outside society.

Obviously he was smart, or at least academically smart enough to be accepted by a fairly prestigious university, yet he was so fucking stupid it beggars belief.

One time he was in his room upstairs and he heard the front door open, so he went onto the landing and leaned over the railing to see who had entered the house... except he leaned over the railing with both hands in his trouser pockets.
Naturally he tipped over the railing and would have fallen to his death if I hadn't left the upstairs bathroom at the exact moment he tipped and managed to grab his ankle and stop him falling.
He was quite shaken up by what had happened, but mainly because he couldn't understand how it had happened, like he lacked the basic understanding of physics and also lacked the basic survival mechanism that would normally prevent a person (or animal) from leaning forward over a sheer drop while all their limbs were restricted.

Another time he couldn't understand why a rose he bough in a bar had withered and died after a week, despite him keeping it in water. We tried to explain that it was already dead, that it wasn't part of the plant and had no roots, that plants need to be planted in soil to get nutrients to live. Then we had to explain what nutrients were and we finally gave up when all he understood was that if he put this dead stem in some dirt, it would come back to life.

Every time he cooked a baked potato in the oven he smoked out the kitchen because he used to butter it before cooking. He just didn't understand that a large knob of butter would change from a solid to a liquid when exposed to heat and that that liquid would drip off a spherical object and burn when it landed on the oven's heating element. No matter how many times it happened and how many times we told him why it was happening and why what he was doing was wrong, he just didn't get it. To him, filling the kitchen with black smoke was part of the process of cooking a baked potato.

He was also very arrogant in him ignorance, proclaiming that he knew everything, therefore if he didn't know it, it wasn't true.

Whenever he cooked something in the oven, he timed it by switching the Microwave on for the same amount of time so that the ping of the Microwave timer would indicate his oven food was ready.

We told him that he couldn't do that because it would damage the Microwave, but because he couldn't grasp the concept of radiation and how Microwaves worked, he didn't believe us. He also wouldn't accept that putting a fork in the Microwave while he turned it on was a good compromise, again because he didn't accept the hocus-pocus science behind what we were telling him.

The only way he finally accepted it was when we went to great lengths to find the instruction manual for the Microwave and show him in black and white where it clearly stated do not operate with nothing inside and do not put metal objects in the microwave, but even then he was still openly sceptical about our scientific reasoning behind what we told him and didn't accept the concepts of radiation, microwaves and electricity.

So yes, in my experience it is possible for someone to be smart yet have absolutely no common sense at all.

Sir, that man is neither smart, nor intelligent. He is in fact, an idiot that's pretty good at remembering books people ask him to remember.

 

[Hagi]

I'm one of those guys who pretty much disdain 'common sense'.

I firmly believe that if something is a good course of action then it can be explained. Your example of standing out in the rain is pretty much the reason why I disdain 'common sense'. Rain doesn't cause viruses. You provide what you deem to be a sensible course of action yet refuse to give an adequate explanation, instead chalking it up to 'common sense'. Which, whilst certainly common, seems to be a far way from sensible.

Either back up your advices with actual explanations or just admit you don't have a clue what you're talking about. 'Common sense' just seems like an excuse for idiots to voice their opinion on just about everything because apparently you don't need rational thought to be taken seriously, you can just claim it's 'common sense' instead!