Wikipedia defines common sense as “knowledge, judgement, and taste which is more or less universal and which is held more or less without reflection or argument”
Try to avoid using this topic to express niche or unpopular opinions (they’re a dime a dozen) but instead consider provable intuitive facts.
Pretty much anything related to statistics and probability. People have gut feelings because our minds are really good at finding patterns, but we’re also really good at making up patterns that don’t exist.
The one people probably have most experience with is the gambler’s fallacy. After losing more than expected, people think they’ll now be more likely to win.
I also like the Monty Hall problem and the birthday problem.
Related to gambling: being “pot committed”
A lot of outdoor survival “common sense” can get you killed:
Moss doesn’t exclusively grow on the north side of trees. Local conditions are too chaotic and affect what side is most conducive to moss. Don’t use moss for navigation.
Don’t drink alcohol to warm yourself up. It feels warm but actually does the opposite: alcohol opens up your capillaries and allows more heat to escape through your skin, which means you lose body heat a lot faster.
Don’t eat snow to rehydrate yourself. It will only make you freeze to death faster. Melt the snow outside of your body first.
Don’t assume a berry is safe to eat just because you see birds eating them. You’re not a bird. Your digestive system is very different from a bird’s digestive system.
If you’ve been starving for a long time, don’t gorge yourself at the first opportunity when you get back to civilization. You can get refeeding syndrome which can kill you. It’s best to go to the hospital where you can be monitored and have nutrients slowly reintroduced in a way that won’t upset the precarious balance your body has found itself in.
Don’t eat snow to rehydrate yourself. It will only make you freeze to death faster. Melt the snow outside of your body first.
Wait, how does that work? It seems like it should take the same energy to melt it either way.
Also, do people not know every berry isn’t edible? Even here where not a lot grows, there’s plenty of decorative ones around that will give you the violent shits.
Ideally you’d use an external heat source to melt the snow so you’re not wasting your body heat on it (it’s also generally a good idea to boil water of unknown quality before drinking it to reduce the risk of getting sick, which would be especially bad if you’re lost in the wilderness). Failing that, I’ve also heard people recommend filling a water bottle with snow and putting it in between the layers of clothing you’re wearing so it’s not directly touching your skin, that way you don’t lose a bunch of heat really quickly.
I guess that’s true, if you eat a whole bunch of snow at once you could get too cold - especially if you do it while not moving. If you have a fire, of course this is all a non-issue; just make sure not to light yourself, your surroundings or your container on fire, especially during sleep.
it’s also generally a good idea to boil water of unknown quality before drinking it to reduce the risk of getting sick, which would be especially bad if you’re lost in the wilderness
Hmm. Are there known cases of illness known from snow melt? It’s not guaranteed clean like domestic potable water, but I can’t imagine it carries too much by natural water standards, either.
Hmm. Are there known cases of illness known from snow melt? It’s not guaranteed clean like domestic potable water, but I can’t imagine it carries too much by natural water standards, either.
There’s always a risk of bacteria. Maybe not super high a risk, but getting food poisoning while lost in the woods can really screw you over.
Wait, how does that work? It seems like it should take the same energy to melt it either way.
presumably they mean using something besides your body heat to melt it
Ah, I guess the way it was worded that could be it.
I do know tucking some under your coat in a container is one thing you can do, if you’re in a desperate situation. At best that slows down the rate of heat loss, though.
Police are there to help you.
That budgets for households, businesses, and goverments have much to do with each other
Edit: fixed typo. ‘nd’ to ‘and’.
Hurr durr but the national debt is like a credit card and all debt is bad. China can just say pay up and we’re fucked.
And other stupid shit my parents used to say.
China can just say pay up and we’re fucked.
Yeah, them and what army? (Well, the PLA, but going into MAD and great power military strategy would be too much of a digression)
A classical example of Westerners thinking human laws are laws of physics somehow. I assume Westerners, anyway. It’d be weird to hear this from anyone recently imported.
the government can go into unlimited debt if it is willing to cause a hyperinflation at some point later in the future to eliminate all of that debt.
Hmm. Business budgets are pretty similar to household budgets.
In government budgets thing do get a little fuzzy, because historically they always run a slight deficit until they fall to war or revolution and “reset”. If it’s a rich country, they can raise taxes whenever they feel like, too, assuming they don’t care about re-election.
Folk idioms that contradict each other are my favourite. For example, “the cream rises to the top” vs. “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”.
“The squeaky wheel gets the grease”
“The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.”
I like to try and combine these to see what kind of reactions I get.
The cream rises to who you know.
The squeaky wheel gets hammered down.
He who laughs last, comes around.
Great minds killed the cat!there’s actually aword for this type of mixed idiom: malaphor
I like saying “we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it”.
Most people don’t catch it.
Good call, I’ll start looking out for these!
Pressing the crosswalk button over and over will make the light change faster.
Well it finally changed the 8th time I pressed it, so checkmate.
The most vulnerable will be hit the hardest.
- Countries are rich because they have free markets.
- Tariffs are a good thing and competition is for losers.
- No one deserves a handout, as money should be earned.
- Large companies deserve a giant economic stimilus, because if we don’t, our economy will crash.
- Being spied upon by your government or foreign governments whom I worship is okay, because I’ve got nothing to hide.
- Outsiders that sells goods that can be used to spy obviously and should be barred from all markets forever because they’ll definitely spy on you and spying is wrong.
- If you feel threatened by another country, a pre-emptive strike should be allowed.
- You don’t mess with the sovereignty of a nation. It’s sacred and should be left intact.
- Police should always be allowed to use overwhelming force and their actions should be lauded
- You should have the right to protect yourself using firearms against tyranny as governments in general are never to be trusted.
Is the goal to point out contradictions in the pairs you gave?
The harder it is to pull a bow, the faster the arrows.
Isn’t that true, all other things being equal?
Depends.
Compound bows are designed such that you put in a LOT of energy where your mechanical advantage is high (at the start of the draw) then less as your mechanical advantage diminishes (at the end of the draw).
This makes the bow very “light” to pull and easy to hold drawn, but the energy with which the arrow will be fired is higher than almost any other design, save some cross-bows.
So, correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t that also change the way that the arrow is accelerated by the bow? Like, it starts a little slower, and then has increased acceleration until the string returns the the starting position? Whereas a long or recurve bow is going to have the hardest acceleration at the very start, since that’s where the most energy is stored?
And if that’s true, how does that affect the flight of the arrow? I know that with stick bows, the arrow bows as it’s being accelerated, and then wobbles slightly before stabilizing a few feet in front of the bow. Some of that is likely because the arrow has to bend around the bow stave. But do you see less of that with a compound bow?
A modern compound bow will fire the arrow in a straight line, directly forwards, as the bow will have a section that allows the arrow to be shot through the space that would be occupied by the stave on a traditional bow. While the bow must obviously be gripped in line with the tension, the rest of the center section is offset to allow the archer to both shoot and sight directly along the line the arrow will travel.
How much firing then causes the arrow to bend would depend entirely on the stiffness of the arrow, but the resulting total energy being imparted is not going to be different just because the acceleration curve is different. If the arrow bends, then yes, you’d lose some energy to that.
But if anything, starting off slow and then accelerating harder as you go is the gentler and more efficient acceleration curve when accounting for that.
If everything is equal, the arrow gets out of tune. If you tune the arrow it becomes heavier.
“Survival of the fittest”
bitch, explain cows
Cows are the most fit for their environment. Their environment being a useful and sustainable food source for humans to cultivate.
In all of my ecology classes they were super specific about re-framing that concept as “survival of the fit enough”
You don’t actually have to be the best example of something to have your traits carried along, just good enough to consistently make it to reproductive age and then procreate.
It helps explain a lot of weird survival mechanisms - it doesn’t have to be the best way to do things but if it consistently works, then it’s good enough. Like the old saying “if it’s stupid, but it works, then it’s not stupid”
Fittest for the purpose of being chosen by farmers to participate in breeding.
Lol a better example would be “bitch, explain humans” we’re the biggest anomaly to this statement. In ecology we refer to our evolutionary perseverance as “survival of the collaborative”
Cows are not a natural species
I view it as a thought terminating cliché people use when they’re too lazy ti fully explain themselves. It can be useful for things that are truly obvious, like if you try touching something fresh out of the stove without protection you’ll get burned, it doesn’t really add anything to bother explaining it.
“There’s a first time for everything.”
No, not if I don’t do that thing. I will not have a first time for murder. Getting murdered might be out of my control, but I won’t commit one.
That’s more of an turn-of-phrase, no?
If “common sense is not very common”, why is it called common sense?
Slightly off topic, sorry.
When people say that, they mean they’re so much smarter than everyone else they could fix it all in a moment.
Of course, in reality, the cranky old man saying that has just stayed so uninformed about the issues he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.
we need more working powers to keep our wealth and our standard of living up. obviously, as things are crumbling around us, this means we don’t put in enough effort to maintain things, and more hands would help.
that is a false thought. The labor market is regulated by supply and demand. That means, fewer workers lead to higher wages and a higher quality of life. It might seem paradoxical, but having a smaller workforce means people in the country will be able to afford more stuff.
That is especially important as people discuss the birth-rate, and immigration, in all countries, also in the US and in Europe. People say things such as “women have 1.6 children on average, which means our population is declining, and obviously that is the reason why our quality-of-life seems to be going down as well”. However, the opposite is true. As automation takes over and well-paying (and meaningful) jobs are eroded, having fewer people around doing all the work actually drives wages up, and leads to an improved quality-of-life.
The labor market is indeed regulated by that supply and demand. That is a foregone conclusion. However, that doesn’t guarantee necessarily higher wages and thus higher quality of life, proportionately speaking.
That itself is a struggle over whether “general profit”, after accounting for wages, is reinvested for the social needs, such as housing, food and water, education.
Assuming that “general profit” (savings) + wages (needed for laborers’ means of subsistence) = value created.
And assuming wages are sufficient enough for higher quality of life.
But put into the equation the landlords, the shareholders, industrialists that dominate our world by virtue of owning the property that shapes it, who want to depress wages, if it means more “general profit”, and direct their savings towards more capital accumulation
