Comment by yalurker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yalurker | Hacker News Reader

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"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.

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