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Comment by bofadeez | Hacker News Reader

Why do we need a study to explain common sense to adults?

Because common sense is so often wrong, duh. Disproving people's intuitions is literally 100% of the value prop of science as a whole. Once we stop being surprised by results, we can stop doing science.

In this case, common sense is only verified. Whose intuition has been disproved?

A monkey could literally confirm this idea. So it fails at the very value proposition you're offering. It's at very least an unremarkable study, right?

That’s a good point, I suppose the other way we could do science is by looking into the time machine at the future where the experiments have already been done and we just read the results from the future and use that to decide which experiments to actually conduct based on the results they’ll eventually produce.

I guess this is useful for individuals who suffer from extreme autism and have trouble understanding social interactions. Which to be fair is a huge percentage of HN user base.

Nobody is saying the results are shocking. They’re saying that it’s still worth doing experiments to check things that “seem obvious” because we have been incredibly, dangerously wrong about things that “seem obvious” millions of times before.

Perhaps you could help everyone out by writing down what’s obvious to you so we know not to try to verify them by, you know, actual truth discovery. Bofadeez’ intuitive vibes are totally sufficient henceforth.

Let's do a study on whether it's generally painful to touch a hot stove with an unprotected hand. I know it sounds obvious but that's the spirit of science! No, I haven't suffered a head injury, I think this is a good idea!

Like I said, we buffoons would be better just using your intuitions :)

As the saying goes, because common sense is neither common nor sensible. ;)

I think that's a very creepy cultish point of view. You can easily be manipulated by corrupt science you don't have a PhD level understanding in. Why do you distrust your intuition? I would reference the book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (outlines how mental processes work rapidly and automatically from relatively little information... strengths of the adaptive unconscious in expert judgment)

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