Common Sense

Common sense gets a bad rap these days. “Contrary to common sense” is as frequent a phrase in some journalism as  “it was a dark and stormy night” is in bad novels. Science, logic, “just the facts, m’am.“ No need for your silly superstitions. 

But I have come to mistrust logic more than I do my own common sense. I find some “facts” dubious, many too many “facts” irrelevant. My own intuitions are composed of an almost infinite set of experiences, each tied with each other, forming a tough fabric of how my environment works. And that bundle of intuitions is what I use to judge anything using common sense. It works quite well. 

The problem is not only that facts can be wrong, but that they can take on more weight than they should. The fact that immense numbers of people are killed or injured in car accidents does not prevent me from driving. Contrarywise the “uncommon” side effects of a drug may give me pause before I take it. I tie all my actual experiences into evaluating these facts.

And logic _ the narrative produced by certain arrays of facts _ is also suspect. The clearest examples are the stories spun out by lawyers and conspiracy theorists. Logical analysis is often far removed from common sense truth. 

Of all the worries I have concerning artificial intelligence, the greatest is that it contains no common sense whatsoever. Dangerous. 

That is my common sense take this morning.