common sense? how common is it?

Not very common at all. According to my former engineering teacher, there are supports and barriers to common sense:

Traits:

Judgment

Reason

Foresight

Thought

Self-Control

Deduction

(Mental and Physical) Awareness

Perception

Memory

Barriers:

Sentimentality

Indifference

Moral Inertia (basically, a tendency to be unwilling to change because of morals)

Egotism

Illusion

Impulse

As a result of using commmon sense, the person will be able to:

Concentrate their mind

Grasp the situation

Approximate

Also, there are three root causes to failure:

Common sense is not common practice (very true)

Being to sophisticated when you have not excelled at the basics (e.g. soling algorithms when you can't add)

Being unwilling to change (these changes are called paradigm shifts. Paradigms are widely accepted ideas or thoughts.)

To quote him, "[Common sense] is one of nature's priceless girts; an income in itself, it is as valuable as its application is rare."

As you can tell, he's quite the philosopher.

But back to the matter at hand.

Are you utilizing the supports of common sense, or are you succumbing to the barriers? THat is the question you must ask yourself. I suggest you copy the stuff I typed above, paste it on a Word document, print it out and hold on to it. It will prove useful.

It's always been a fact that there are more idiots than wise folks. Back before education was the responsibility of a third party I think there was more common sense because children could only learn from their elders who know better, but these days common sense and logical thinking is not taught anymore and is certainly not encouraged amongst the religious. Practicing Shaman... quantum physics rocks.

If it were common, everyone would have it.

All American citizens are required to follow the laws, and not violate the rights of others. Ignorance of the law is no excuse; each American is required to learn and understand the laws as they also uphold the rights of others--that is the agreement they enter into via citizenship and to remain free.

Common sense: so rare its like a freaking super power.

Common Sense = Not so common

I don't think that common sense is all that common.

Take the green movement for instance. These people seem to think that we are going to run out of trees eventually.

Well, if one were to think about it, we have thousands of miles of national forests. We have many of these areas which don't make any sense for anyone to inhabit. Oftentimes, they are completely protected. On top of that, thanks to e-mail, online bill pay and many other features of the internet, paper consumption is way down.

I don't know too many Greenies who stop to think about this.

Not among leftists it isn't.

One of them just flew his common sense into an IRS office today.

His common sense told him that was the only answer.

It does not exist in the left-wing. For example, a leftist idiot would say, we've got to spend our way out of debt! Just listen to 0bama, he talks about good budgeting and then spends like a drunken fool.

define common sense....once you can do that, and get everybody to agree on that, then we will all know what common sense is, but until then, good luck

Stupidity is the new swine flu, it spreads like a wildfire on yahoo!.