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.
Being Smart and Having Common Sense are two Different Things
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Because common sense is usually neither common nor sense? For example, with the rain, it does little to make you sick other than making you cold and lowering your resistance to various germs. The rain in and of itself is not some magic producer of colds.
And yes, they're two different things. It helps to take each with a grain of salt. A smart person isn't going to know everything, and can still make simple mistakes, and 'common sense' can be quite inaccurate.
And yes, they're two different things. It helps to take each with a grain of salt. A smart person isn't going to know everything, and can still make simple mistakes, and 'common sense' can be quite inaccurate.
To me intelligence is based on information (math, science, etc) while common sense is based on experience. You can't teach experience.
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.
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.
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.
In retrospect that probably would have been the most humane thing to do, but in those sort of split-second situations you react before you have time to consider the full ramifications of your actions.Matthew94 said:
Luckily modern society provides plenty of opportunities for my error to be redressed, from open roadworks, murky bodies of water, live wires and naked flames, to the language on warning signs not being aggressive enough for him to accept, so the gene pool will probably be spared without my intervention (or lack thereof).
I also forgot to mention, this guy has a prosthetic finger because he once touched a circular saw that was spinning. It never occurred to him that this razor sharp spinning saw blade that cuts through wood would do the same to his finger and for some reason, he had the urge to feel the edge of it.
He'll probably shuffle off this mortal coil by putting his head in a wood-chipper or licking a chainsaw.
One thing I always say to one of my coworkers when he says I have no common sense. I tell him "Common sense is just assuming what you're doing is right."
How am i trying to show i have common sense? I made this thread because i wanted to hear people's opinions because i know some people think they're the same thing. And obviously if you stand out in the rain for awhile you will get sick that was just the first example that came to my head. Now be a good little boy and stop trolling please.
I must meet this person ! I want to see it and observe it and study it. Science could learn a lot from that person.Jamash said:
O.T
Yeah, the way I see it even knowing a lot and being smart are to different things. Knowing a lot means just that, but I interpret being smart/intelligent the capacity to use the information or knowledge you have to solve problems you haven't seen before. So in a way, common sense is just the experience you built or "remembering the solutions you had to work out before" by using you intelligence. My concept is probably flawed, so feel free to correct me.
Don't use that word. Especially since you yourself said it wouldn't be obvious. Besides, no, you wouldn't automatically get illness for being in the rain. It is more likely, as Matthey94 said, but not at all mandatory.Shaved Apple said:
Don't use that word either, because don't know how to do it properly.Shaved Apple said:
Since people are giving stories of those who lack 1 of the 2, so here is an example of pure stupidity.
My sister was revising for a maths exam, so when me and my family took a trip in the car to Sheffield to visit relatives, I threw a basic question at her.
"Ok sis, our car is travelling at 60 mph, how many miles will the car reach in an hour?"
She responded "100".... *Facepalm* That was in early November of 2011, every 2/3 weeks I would run the question by her again, it took her until April of this year (5 months and 1 week later) to figure out that there are 60 minutes in an hour, for a 15 year old girl that's fucking retarded.
Common sense is more for practical matters rather than academic matters, so yes they are different.
My sister was revising for a maths exam, so when me and my family took a trip in the car to Sheffield to visit relatives, I threw a basic question at her.
"Ok sis, our car is travelling at 60 mph, how many miles will the car reach in an hour?"
She responded "100".... *Facepalm* That was in early November of 2011, every 2/3 weeks I would run the question by her again, it took her until April of this year (5 months and 1 week later) to figure out that there are 60 minutes in an hour, for a 15 year old girl that's fucking retarded.
Common sense is more for practical matters rather than academic matters, so yes they are different.
Jesus wept, sounds like he was lucky to have got this far.Jamash said:
Yeah, I thought this was pretty much a universally held belief. Common sense often isn't that common. Not saying I have much of it myself, but you do wonder how some people get through life. I lived with a lad last year who couldn't change a lightbulb.
Not even one of the bayonet-socket type ones, a screw-in one. How is that even possible?