Comment by grellas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by grellas | Hacker News Reader

Psychological studies of this type tend only to promote superficial analysis.

A co-worker who has a gracious, giving spirit (and, hence, is unselfish) is infinitely to be preferred to one embodies the opposite traits. That is the person who will be there when times get tough and sacrifice is required. It is the person who will not dart out the door, or dodge responsibility, when something has gone wrong and people have to step up to take responsibility. It is the person who will respect you as a co-worker, who will take a personal interest in knowing that you are well, who will sympathize when you share a problem, who will support you through your trials - I am not talking here about one who is a close friend but rather of the traits exemplified by one who has a loving, kind spirit that is ever alert to show concern for the welfare of others and who is willing to sacrifice for the good of larger aims besides immediate self-interest.

That is what I think of when I think of working with "unselfish colleagues." A genuinely unselfish person is an admirable person by any measure and will usually be humble to boot, not focusing on outward show and phony braggadocio that tends to the sort of self-advancement that is the exact opposite of unselfish.

Such people are known to all of us and are universally admired, or pretty nearly so. And the character traits that underlie the core of such a person cannot be identified or isolated in a superficial study of a few college students playing an artificial game or two.

Common sense will always trump "science" in our understanding of areas such as this and will allow us to sense intuitively what we really don't need people in white lab coats to tell us.

"Common sense will always trump "science" in our understanding of areas such as this and will allow us to sense intuitively what we really don't need people in white lab coats to tell us."

Wow, there is so much wrong with this sentence I can't believe it got up votes. This particular study may have flaws, and/or there may be errors in extrapolating the results of this isolated game to general workplace dynamics, but that doesn't mean science is bad.

"Common sense" does not, ever, trump science. "Common sense" is a lazy excuse for "I have an opinion that I can't back up with any data". How many times haven't we all read someone trying to make a claim like "It's common sense that marriage should be between one man and one woman".

Different people might have wildly different ideas backed up by "common sense". That's why we do studies - to find out what the truth is, even if it disproves our initial guess or we are uncomfortable/unhappy with the result.

In the hard sciences, you are absolutely right.

In social sciences, I am not certain you are correct, there is at least a solid counterargument.

All social sciences are dealing with topics with numerous confounding variables that cannot be removed, and many others that they do not try to remove.Common sense on the other hand is the accumulation of your observations of humanity over a lifetime.

I think Mr. Grellas' statement may be too strong, the social sciences likely will eventually catch up to and surprass any individuals common sense in understanding humanity. But I think that day is a very long way away and it will likely include the subjective observations of trained and worldly observers like Desmond Morris even when it does arrive.

For the forseeable future, I suspect he is right and that the common sense of an observant and worldly person is a better predictor of human behavior than the formal social sciences.

> Common sense on the other hand is the accumulation of your observations of humanity over a lifetime.

There is no such thing as common sense, and it is anecdotal, at best. Now if the OP and a statistically significant number of people joined together to assert the same point about the specific society discussed, we may have something.

How would you ever get a statistically significant number of people to agree on anything if each person relied on those sets of statistics to assert their point?

Feynman could tell whether or not there was a flaw in a proof just by hearing what the conclusion was and applying common sense. That worked for him since he had a really good intuition based on decades of thinking and personally observing.

Let me give an example. Let's say that you read a study by Cheesodyne Rocket Corporation that the Moon is made of extremely valuable and delicious Stilton cheese.

You could invest in this company based on their scientific analysis, perhaps even redirect your entire society to paying Cheesodyne exorbitant amounts to spend 20 years building a rocket. Critics can be mocked, downvoted, and placed in shackles for being ignorant unscientific rubes who don't understand that all studies published in journals represent absolute Truth that May Not Be Questioned.

Or you could use common sense and say that there's obviously a flaw in the study because the conclusion just ain't right.

I think it would be rather easy in that universe to prove that Cheesodyne's studies are unreliable because their scientists are all made of straw. It also helps that Cheesodyne's office building is in the shape of a gigantic straw man.

OK, we'll just remove the illuminating example that was giving you heartburn and leave the original point, awaiting your further gleeful downvotes to eliminate reasonable good points that don't fit your political agenda.

-> Feynman could tell whether or not there was a flaw in a proof just by hearing what the conclusion was and applying common sense. That worked for him since he had a really good intuition based on decades of thinking and personally observing.

The title is quite misleading, I think. The article clarifies that the sort of people others resent is the person who is too eager to volunteer for things, thus raising the bar for everyone and creating more work.

If someone at your office worked 16 hours a day, making you look bad, even though nobody would reasonably expect you to work that long if your colleague didn't do it, wouldn't you resent them?

Unfortunately, it's all relative, so the fact that he's hard-working makes you look lazy by comparison.

To put it another way, some people want to do the minimum they can to get paid and don't get any kind of fulfilment from their work. Couple this with the prevailing management practice of "man hours" scheduling[1] and the reason for the resentment described becomes obvious.

On the subject of "common sense" always trumping science I suggest reading the examples linked from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterintuitive

[1] The line is usually "Well blah managed to process 200 forms while you only managed 150, why are you so slow?". The debate the advisability of this method is another question.

Well stated.

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