Thoughts on technology, society, politics, and design
Monday, September 15, 2008
Uncommon Sense
My last post elicited several comments, most in person, from some liberals and a conservative, all defending common sense. The funny thing is, each of them had a different definition of what common sense was....
back then when you were writing about common sense, we didn't have this wonderful example before us of the public, with its common sense, and the bulk of the republican house members, with their common sense, seeing that 'bailing out wall street' defies common sense. it stuns me to think that most people have much of an opinion on this when it involves technical levels of knowledge of extraordinary complexity. all of us here, without that level of knowledge, ought to be considering who has that kind of knowledge and whether he/she is some one we can trust about this crisis and how best to move forward. that's the nature of expertise; we need it, we hate it--why do the experts get to decide?; 'common sense' appeals to us because we want not to be at the mercy of a world more complex than we can manage ourselves. but that's the world we live in. most of us understand we don't have the technical knowledge to fly a jet plane or to do cardiac surgery, but we think we have the technical knowledge to avert a huge economic catastrophe. wow!
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2 comments:
back then when you were writing about common sense, we didn't have this wonderful example before us of the public, with its common sense, and the bulk of the republican house members, with their common sense, seeing that 'bailing out wall street' defies common sense. it stuns me to think that most people have much of an opinion on this when it involves technical levels of knowledge of extraordinary complexity. all of us here, without that level of knowledge, ought to be considering who has that kind of knowledge and whether he/she is some one we can trust about this crisis and how best to move forward. that's the nature of expertise; we need it, we hate it--why do the experts get to decide?; 'common sense' appeals to us because we want not to be at the mercy of a world more complex than we can manage ourselves. but that's the world we live in. most of us understand we don't have the technical knowledge to fly a jet plane or to do cardiac surgery, but we think we have the technical knowledge to avert a huge economic catastrophe. wow!
Well said and totally agree.
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