Did this “common sense” survey.

With hindsight, I feel like there is a critical distinction between common sense and common knowledge. Most of these questions were related to common knowledge, so a statement of fact, which you may or may not know, or might disagree with.

To me, common sense is the ability to predict an outcome based on a broad awareness of previous outcomes. For example, if I am careless with a knife, the knife could cut me. Or, you can’t carry water (very far) in a sieve.

Common knowledge is something else altogether. For example, “the sky is usually blue during the day”, I would say is common knowledge. An example from the survey, “a grizzly bear is larger than a dog”, I would say is neither common sense or common knowledge. You may not know what a a grizzly bear is. “Water is a liquid” is probably common knowledge but, still, don’t you have to know what liquid means?

Either way, I don’t think you can apply any previous experience to these questions and predict the answer, so I don’t see how they could be described as common sense.

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