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Originally Posted by tame_deuces
There is a "research revivew" (Lazarfeld's review WW2 studies in 1949) often cited in psychology where he gauges people's reactions to various historical facts about WW2 - one of these being that educated people suffered more adjustment problems to war than non-educated.
People would then respond as if it was as if this was very natural and obvious, noting for example in the above example that street-smarts more prepared you for fighting than book-smarts.
Then they're told the truth, that the statements were in fact false and the opposite were true. For example in the above example educated people were in in fact far more likely to adjust to the horrors of war. People hearing that for the first time will of course often say that this is obvious, educated people of course being more knowledgeable about the horrors ahead.
Later studies have found the effect to be pervasive, especially when it comes to social sciences. This probably in part because everyone is somewhat of an expert of human psyche and relations, making us trust our judgment and be less prone to skepticism. Now we call it "hindsight bias", looking at studies, evidence and research and immediately calling it completely obvious or common sense.
And of course we shouldn't forget that many "obvious truths" have been dispelled by social studies, that this is not always the case hardly warrants calling something "a waste of money". In fact, that kind of thinking is often outright dangerous.
I think Schopenhauer's quote rings true:
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All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
I'll retrace my steps a little. It's not common sense, at least in practice. The majority of people (if evidenced by polls and the media) are partisan, and incapable of seeing two sides of an issue. It might be a rare thing for a person to step back and see truth on two sides of an issue. Therefore it may be rare for people to even realize how biased they are, especially while they are holding one viewpoint (most people can't hold two opposing viewpoints simultaneously).
Still I think that for a liberally educated person, this is common sense. Certainly many thinkers have thought this before and spoken at length about it. I think there's a kind of myopic reliance on studies in our scientistic climate. It is maybe healthier to exercise personal judgement and common sense rather than rely on studies, which are really proven and disproven at the same rate as our common sense.
It probably all boils down to an innate preference. Some people trust studies (S's in myers briggs) and others trust their intuition (N's).
As for whether my kind of thinking is outright dangerous as you say...I think it's dangerous to leave thinking up to the "experts" and make knowledge into something that is out there, spliced off into segments in labratories. There really should be more people exercising their common sense, in order to make it better and more accurate. Relying on outside date to make decisions leaves you a slave to the newest advancements in science, which are always replacing the old, always changing.
I was reading somewhere or heard something recently, can't remember, about a thinker who predicted that in the future all philosophers and thinkers would be segmented off into individual fields, and the days of the well-rounded thinker are gone. It is definitely true and I think that is frightening.
