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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,
by tehwalrus 11y ago
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-surrender-Marxist-teachers-hell-bent-destroying-schools-Education-Secretary-berates-new-enemies-promise-opposing-plans.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2298146/I-refuse-s...
[2] not that it stopped some of our candidates trotting out the awful line, as the article points out.
- cristianpascu 11y ago> it is extremely difficult to obtain empirical evidence that this is the case Hume would say it's impossible. And there's plenty of research out there to back him up. I'd disagree with him, but I have to disagree with you first. It's common sense among philosophers to be humean. :)
- reagency 11y agoTo err is humean.
- wmil 11y agoCommon 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 11y agoPriming 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"
- alextgordon 11y ago> 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. Much good it did us in the poll, of course. Interesting you mention that. The Lib Dems didn't do the common sense thing: ditch their leader. Even after a bloodbath in the European elections, even after opinion poll after opinion poll showed considerable negativity towards him. They had an abundance of data, but a total lack of common sense.
- tehwalrus 11y agoIf I'd had anything to do with it, they would have done.