Call For Uncommon Sense

On your next incarnation, consider the two lines forming for sense before you return. In one line you can have "Common Sense," and in the other line, you can receive "Uncommon Sense." Now which would you prefer? I'd take uncommon sense, because common sense is, well, so common. And often wrong. Common sense typically involves conclusions based on direct observation or reported direct observation, which means it so subject to sensory misinterpretation (what! you've never seen water shimmering on a hot highway?) or miscommunication (Joe said Ralph said Suzie said Jane saw...) I'm not the only one contemplating this bugger of a problem:

Better world: Beware of common sense - 10 September 2009 - New Scientist

"Good intentions are not enough. If leaders and governments are serious about achieving their aims, they must base their actions on hard evidence.

YOU break your arm. At the hospital, the doctor tells you his team is going to inject iron nanoparticles into the broken bone and use electromagnets to realign it. Wow, you say, you've never heard of this method. "Oh, it's never been tried before," says the doctor. "But our hospital needs some publicity, and it sounds really impressive and high-tech, doesn't it?"

You would rightly be appalled if hospitals chose treatments this way. We expect medical therapies to undergo rigorous trials to ensure they are safe and effective. Yet we seem content to let our leaders conjure up policies based on what sounds good, rather than on what has been proved to work..."