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        general >> truth >> intelligence or common sense
        
(Message started by: username101 on Aug 12^th, 2007, 1:00pm)

Title: intelligence or common sense
Post by username101 on Aug 12^th, 2007, 1:00pm

Is intelligence or common sense more important

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by towr on Aug 12^th, 2007, 1:58pm

Well, a lack of common sense tends to get you killed or locked up; a lack of intelligence gets you a job in government and management.
So depending on which fate you deem worse it can be either. ;D

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by mikedagr8 on Aug 12^th, 2007, 2:13pm

In general I'd say a combination is more useful than just one or the other. But then again, with intelligence, i would probably have an understanding of common sense...

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by username101 on Aug 12^th, 2007, 3:59pm

id say common sense would b better then intelligence and u cant choose both mike defeats the purpose of the question

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by JiNbOtAk on Aug 12^th, 2007, 11:35pm

Well, what's the difference anyway ? To have common sense ( which is not so common anyway ), you'd have to be fairly intelligent. To have a high IQ, but not acting sensibly, would definitely reflect a foolish person.

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by mikedagr8 on Aug 12^th, 2007, 11:37pm

If i had common sense it doesn't mean i'd be intelligent necessarily. e.g. being scammed on the phone, if i were just intelligent i'd think it'd be a good idea, if i had common sense i'd know it were a scam.

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by Aurora on Aug 13^th, 2007, 7:59am

Of the people I know, those with more common sense than intelligence seem to be a good deal better off than those who lack in the common sense department.

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by shasta on Jan 19^th, 2008, 10:44pm

What is commonly sensible is whatever the common person has been commonly told. The entire thing should be classified as a subcategory of the ad nauseam fallacy. Here's 3 more reasons not to like common sense.

1. Good sense is rare.
2. As often not, common sense is wrong.
3. Whenever anyone tells me they know something because it's "common sense", it strikes me as really meaning "I don't have any real argument for why we should believe it, but I'm strongly convinced of it anyway!".

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by rmsgrey on Jan 21^st, 2008, 9:28am

on 01/19/08 at 22:44:26, shasta wrote:

Common sense is mostly noticeable when it goes wrong - either by getting something wrong, or by being conspicuously absent.

Common sense includes things like knowing that water is wet, or having enough sense to come in out of the rain...

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by shasta on Jan 21^st, 2008, 9:17pm

It might help to give an exact definition of common sense. I tend to see it as whatever is commonly believed by the masses, or what one assumes the masses would commonly believe.

One can certainly conclude that staying out in the rain is a bad idea by looking at the correlation between doing so and catching colds. One can also note that the word "wet" refers to things that are moistened or soaked with liquids and would thus include water. In neither case does one need to hinder oneself by subscribing to common sense in order to do so. It seems the only things common sense gets right are those which are very obvious. In which case, real intelligence does better anyway.

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by rmsgrey on Jan 22^nd, 2008, 9:38am

on 01/21/08 at 21:17:37, shasta wrote:

Except that there are people who fit the "absent-minded professor" archetype worryingly well - they're scarily intelligent, but (in some cases literally) lack the sense to come in out of the rain.

In general, raw intelligence suffers from "the frame problem" - the question of how to decide what to think about.

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by towr on Jan 24^th, 2008, 9:43am

on 01/21/08 at 21:17:37, shasta wrote:

It might help to give an exact definition of common sense. I tend to see it as whatever is commonly believed by the masses, or what one assumes the masses would commonly believe.

That's sounds more like common knowledge than common sense.
Common sense, I would say, is better described as a way of acting, of solving problems, or perhaps, as an expectation of how the world (generally) behaves; a strategy to cope with every day problems. (And consequently it tends to fail in situations out of the ordinary.)

on 01/19/08 at 22:44:26, shasta wrote:

Here's 3 more reasons not to like common sense.

1. Good sense is rare.
2. As often not, common sense is wrong.

While common sense is often wrong, it quite often doesn't matter when it is. Otherwise natural/cultural selection would have weeded it out. Common sense is a successful strategy; among other things because it is cheap in terms of time and energy.
If something is approaching you at high speed, it is common sense to get out of the way. Now of course, rationally, it matters a great deal what is approaching you. But can you generally afford the time to identify the object coming toward you? And should you take the time to consider in which circumstances you can or can't afford that time?

It's so much easier, and efficient, not to overthink things when there is no need for it. There's typically no need to think about what to sit on, you take a chair; no need to think how you should enter a building, take a door; need to remember something, write it down etc. If there's no chair, door, or paper, you can always consider alternatives then.

Quote:

3. Whenever anyone tells me they know something because it's "common sense", it strikes me as really meaning "I don't have any real argument for why we should believe it, but I'm strongly convinced of it anyway!".

Plus, "I have no reason to doubt it."

For one thing people often don't have arguments for things that are obvious to them. How would you argue that the sky is blue? Is it even a reasonable question?
What arguments would you expect for 2+2=4, it's almost a basic fact (and not necessarily true at that). If you give an argumentation for it in terms of set-theory most people would look at you strangely.

And there is a reason why common sense is common: it works. Even when it's wrong, it often still works. You can take a squareroot of negative numbers; even though common 'knowledge' says you can't. But for most people imaginary numbers don't apply in their situation; so the common sense approach works. Why complicate things by being right?

Common sense is practical; it works surprisingly well, which is why it sticks around. If anything there is evolutionary pressure in favor of it. It helps to make use of our limited capabilities in a time and resource constrained world. Trying to eliminate it would only make life difficult, and potentially very short.

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by Azgard on Apr 1^st, 2008, 8:32pm

I would go for common sense.

Common sense is a thing not so common these days. Just look at university students on campus: they can be fantastic intelligent students in whatever area they happen to be studying, but they don't even think to look before they walk onto a road or cross a street. :-[

People who have plenty of intelligence but nothing in the way of common sense make you shake your head and wonder...

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by Grimbal on Feb 3^rd, 2010, 1:52am

on 01/24/08 at 09:43:13, towr wrote:

What arguments would you expect for 2+2=4, it's almost a basic fact (and not necessarily true at that).

OK, integers are defined as follows:
There is an element e in N and an injection s:N->N (s for "successor"). For each x<>e, there is an y such that x=s(y).

By definition (of the symbols "1", "2", etc)
1 = e, 2 = s(1), 3 = s(2), 4 = s(3), etc.

And addition is defined as
x+e = s(e)
x+s(y) = s(x+y)

From there you can prove
2+2 = 2+s(1) = s(2+1) = s(2+e) = s(s(2)) = s(3) = 4

Quote:

If you give an argumentation for it in terms of set-theory most people would look at you strangely.

Er....

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by towr on Feb 3^rd, 2010, 3:00am

Good thing we're not "most people" ;D

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by iatkrox on Jul 2^nd, 2012, 1:02am

Intelligence is more then common sense !!!!!!!

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by arun gupta on Feb 11^th, 2013, 4:00am

You can fine more common sense's instead of intelligence. Because every intelligence has/have common sense but every common sense's doesn't have intelligence.

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by rmsgrey on Feb 11^th, 2013, 5:12am

on 02/03/10 at 01:52:42, Grimbal wrote:

OK, integers are defined as follows:
There is an element e in N and an injection s:N->N (s for "successor"). For each x<>e, there is an y such that x=s(y).

I can add arbitrary numbers of cycles to N and still satisfy your definition - for example:
D=s(C)=s(B)=s(A)=s(D)

It might be worth refining your definition to the minimal set N which satisfies the requirement that there is a unique element e such that there is no x with e=s(x). Oh, and the set thus defined is only the non-negative integers - the integers are trickier to define that way because 0 is no longer special because of its place in the order - it's special because of its relation to addition.

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by peoplepower on Feb 11^th, 2013, 7:39am

We can interpret the sets N and Z in different contexts to get shorter definitions.

N is the intersection of all inductive sets. The successor function is defined by s(n)=nU{n}.

If I remember correctly (from Abelian Categories by Freyd) the abelian group of integers, Z, can be characterized up to isomorphism by two properties:
1. If A is any nonzero abelian group, then there are at least two homomorphisms of Z into A.
2. Any idempotent homomorphism of Z into Z is either trivial or the identity.

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by BenL on Feb 21^st, 2013, 6:28pm

Common Sense - without it you can have all the intelligence in the world and still not know what to do with it...

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by 0.999... on Jun 26^th, 2013, 7:04pm

on 02/03/10 at 01:52:42, Grimbal wrote:

OK, integers are defined as follows:

Here (http://mathoverflow.net/questions/23193/axiomatic-definition-of-integers), you can find some other ways to define them.

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by Grimbal on Jul 22^nd, 2013, 6:35am

OK then, integers can be defined as follows.

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by sanaya on Sep 2^nd, 2013, 6:57am

Can a person without common sense be intelligent?

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by towr on Sep 2^nd, 2013, 9:08am

That depends on how you define intelligent.

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by webtasarim on Oct 20^th, 2013, 5:19pm

Of course common sense s more important than intelligence . First of all we should be responsible and well intentioned people . Intelligence is up to you . Not important for everyone . If you are indulgent people , everybody can understand you

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by matt419 on Dec 18^th, 2013, 10:54am

You need to elaborate more on the difference between intelligence and common sense. You see, if one is smart intelligence wise but dumb common sense wise, then sometimes we tend to percieve that person as being dumb.

Title: Re: intelligence or common sense
Post by anglia on Aug 14^th, 2015, 11:57pm

I think common sense is more important. Intelligence starts from common sense. If you don't have common sense, then it means you can't move forward with intelligence skills.