13 January 2009

[ScSS] Science, common Sense, Stupidity - Introduction

I am going to start a series on the fallacy of common sense.

Yes, our experience provides the most important anchorage to our ability to remember, reason and make judgment. However, the purpose of education is to enable us to see beyond everyday interactions, find out the real underlying principles and act accordingly. Most common sense (or intuition) works under certain conditions and situations. It is equally important to know where common sense will start to lead us to the wrong conclusion.

In this series, I shall attempt to describe some 'common sense' observation and present evidences that show that such common sense does not work under certain condition.

The inclusion of "stupidity" in the title of this series points squarely at a group of people who think who know everything and refuse to see reasoning from a logical and pragmatic angle. If you are one of those, you may excuse yourself from reading this series. It may offend.

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