[jodrellblank]

> "So, you have a lot of people commenting here that this is obvious common sense"

You have this about everything, everywhere. It's a pet peeve how much stuff people will attribute to "common sense" so they can do the internet "I'm superior" thing.

"Wear sunscreen, it's just common sense". No it isn't. We evolved on Earth under the sun, we feel good when going out in the sun, it's bright and beautiful. Rubbing petrochemical distillate or industrially processed plant extract on your skin so the invisible light discovered in 1801 doesn't denature the invisible DNA discovered in 1869 is not common sense it's learned behaviour. Nothing much about Science is common sense, it took thousands of years from the dawn of Civilization until the Enlightenment era and still people can go through years of education and then choose to believe what we want to believe instead of what the evidence shows.

'Common Sense' is that the world is simple, designed for a purpose by a human-like mind one or two levels up from us on the power scale, and inhabited by life-like energies and spirits, some of them malevolent. Common Sense is that things which didn't happen today or yesterday will probably never happen. Common Sense is that things which happen together cause each other; if the relative comes to town and the crop fails then they are bad luck, if the relative comes to town and the baby is born healthy then they are good luck.

Why would it be any kind of 'common sense' - 'sound judgement not based on any specialised knowledge' - that glucose (1747) response differs for the same meal if you need a continuous glucose monitor (FDA approved in 1999) to find that out?!

[tharkun__]

You are using one particular "definition" of the phrase common sense. It does appear when I search as well. But so do others.

    knowledge, judgement, and taste which is more or less universal and which is held more or less without reflection or argument. As such, it is often considered to represent the basic level of sound practical judgement or knowledge of basic facts that any adult human being ought to possess. 

Now with that definition some of what you said very definitely would no longer be the case as the above definition would seem to automatically "adjust with the times" so to speak in that what we might expect most adults to know and understand changes over the years, decades and definitely centuries.

[whycome]

Most? 50.1%?

[tharkun__]

To be fair, what I quoted said "any", so I guess they mean closer to 99.99% but I'm with you on "unfortunately common sense seems to not be quite as common as one might wish for" ;)

[whycome]

> "Wear sunscreen, it's just common sense"

And this isn’t even universally true. It’s tied to skin color. Sunscreen won’t do much for someone with extremely dark skin. In medical lit, “common” often refers to “white persons.”