people fumbling through life......

[RP]

Originally Posted by fumei

I agree with first part, but I am not so sure about the second.

Over the course of 30+ years as a Special Education teacher, I encountered many students with considerable academic deficits but had "expertise" or what we called splinter skills in other areas. Case in point, I was working in a mental hospital with a young man with a severe hearing impairment. He was also academically very challenged for various reasons. One day I locked my keys in my truck and asked if anyone knew how to get into it. That young man who probably tested in the intellectually challenged range was in that vehicle within thirty seconds with no damage...

[fazool]

Well, no complaint because the conversation is interesting but, it has started talking more about common sense and stupid behaviors.

But my original focus was no really about common sense but about people understanding how the work around them worked......having no comprehension of the physical world.

You can have common sense and still not understand the world you live in.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by fumei

I would say that there probably is a correlation.

I recall many years ago, on a technical forum, that someone related that they were taking their son out of a major university because a required course was on critical thinking. He did not want his son questioning things.

He had quite a few "interesting" ideas...

Yikes Really ?

Ya we all know all major advancement has been the result of never questioning things

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by fazool

Well, no complaint because the conversation is interesting but, it has started talking more about common sense and stupid behaviors.

But my original focus was no really about common sense but about people understanding how the work around them worked......having no comprehension of the physical world.

You can have common sense and still not understand the world you live in.

Ya kinda hard to understand how reality actually works when your perspective requires you to live in an alternate one

[Glennwillow]

Originally Posted by fazool

Well, no complaint because the conversation is interesting but, it has started talking more about common sense and stupid behaviors.

But my original focus was no really about common sense but about people understanding how the work around them worked......having no comprehension of the physical world.

You can have common sense and still not understand the world you live in.

Speaking of the physical world, it was the farm boys in the Army infantry that thought up the idea in the hedge rows of Normandy of welding modified plows onto the front of the tanks so that they weren't rising up and exposing their vulnerable underbellies to enemy fire when they came over the hedges.

That kind of thinking shows knowledge of the physical world. People do live in a rather different world today.

- Glenn

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by Glennwillow

Speaking of the physical world, it was the farm boys in the Army infantry that thought up the idea in the hedge rows of Normandy of welding modified plows onto the front of the tanks so that they weren't rising up and exposing their vulnerable underbellies to enemy fire when they came over the hedges.

That kind of thinking shows knowledge of the physical world. People do live in a rather different world today.

- Glenn

Ya, you say "hedge" today, and people are likely think of the stock market

[rllink]

Originally Posted by fazool

Well, no complaint because the conversation is interesting but, it has started talking more about common sense and stupid behaviors.

But my original focus was no really about common sense but about people understanding how the work around them worked......having no comprehension of the physical world.

You can have common sense and still not understand the world you live in.

Do you consider yourself to be one of the worldly people? If so, how did you arrive at that conclusion?

[fazool]

Originally Posted by rllink

Do you consider yourself to be one of the worldly people? If so, how did you arrive at that conclusion?

Good question.......Growing up I was constantly touching things, understanding how things worked, building things, fixing things. I was super interested in everything around me - I had a million hobbies and activities and each one usually involved physical "things".

Then I went on the become an engineer, then a graduate degree in engineering and taught college while leading large design and manufacturing operations.

So I guess it is my experiences with the physical world that makes me comfortable I somewhat understand it.

But my opening salvo was that I don't expect people to be engineers or physicists but if you spend any time awake in the real world you will have an inherent sense that something flimsy in your hand like a downspout isn't going to hold a chained tree. That's like carrying a bowling ball in a wet paper bag.

Like shoppers who go to pick up their refrigerator in their Toyota Prius then sit there trying to jam it into the back seat.
Or the people removing a couch from a third story window and the guy on the ground trying to catch it.
etcetera...


Those kinda of things are a special kind of stupid and you dont need to be worldly to avoid that....

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by fazool

So I guess it is my experiences with the physical world that makes me comfortable I somewhat understand it.

But do you really ? ( not rhetorical , just an honest question) It has been my experience that people with an engineering type mind set are actually no better off statistically , some perhaps even worse, at understanding the fundamental illusion involved in all of our perceptions, of the world around us. I am guessing perhaps due to a highly focused and sometime tunnel vision like approach to reality, often necessary to reason through a solution to a tricky engineering problem.

But my opening salvo was that I don't expect people to be engineers or physicists but if you spend any time awake in the real world you will have an inherent sense that something flimsy in your hand like a downspout isn't going to hold a chained tree. That's like carrying a bowling ball in a wet paper bag.
Like shoppers who go to pick up their refrigerator in their Toyota Prius then sit there trying to jam it into the back seat.
Or the people removing a couch from a third story window and the guy on the ground trying to catch it.
etcetera...
Those kinda of things are a special kind of stupid and you don't need to be worldly to avoid that....

Ok agree avoiding that does not require being worldly. BUT might that "inherent sense" also be described as "common sense", or a lack thereof ?

[fazool]

Originally Posted by KevWind

But do you really ? ( not rhetorical , just an honest question) It has been my experience that people with an engineering type mind set are actually no better off statistically , some perhaps even worse, at understanding the fundamental illusion involved in all of our perceptions, of the world around us. I am guessing perhaps due to a highly focused and sometime tunnel vision like approach to reality, often necessary to reason through a solution to a tricky engineering problem.


Ok agree avoiding that does not require being worldly. BUT might that "inherent sense" also be described as "common sense", or a lack thereof ?

Maybe....good discussion and interesting conversation. It's hard to tell because I see the world through my own eyes. Now from what I've seen significantly more of the engineers around me appear to have that tunnel vision about the world and reality etc. So, if I am recognizing it in others, I think it's different than me so just from relativity I think I don't have that tunnel vision approach (including reality and metaphysics etc.)

second question....

I hadn't thought of it that way. I was thinking common sense is more about how to behave and "inherent sense" is more about understanding things. But I concede they could be interchangeable.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by fazool

Maybe....good discussion and interesting conversation. It's hard to tell because I see the world through my own eyes. Now from what I've seen significantly more of the engineers around me appear to have that tunnel vision about the world and reality etc. So, if I am recognizing it in others, I think it's different than me so just from relativity I think I don't have that tunnel vision approach (including reality and metaphysics etc.)

second question....

I hadn't thought of it that way. I was thinking common sense is more about how to behave and "inherent sense" is more about understanding things. But I concede they could be interchangeable.

I find it pretty interesting also.
For example consider the phrase "see the world through my own eyes". Which in that specific context I think everybody does.... But consider while technically partially correct, in that the eye is the mechanical transducer "through" which different frequencies of light waves hit the photoreceptors and are turned into electrical signals,.... BUT in reality it is the brain which "sees" the image.

The profound implications of this simple scientific fact, often go unrecognized and are just taken for granted or simply overlooked, as to the relevance of the broader context of the illusion of realty.

I'll go one step further, and posit there is no color in objects we see in our illusions of reality.
Rather there are collections of atoms and molecules that reflect certain frequencies of light. Which are transmitted as electrical signals (which are arguably is colorless) from our eyes to the brain, which then assigns as a "color"

[rokdog49]

Boy, this thread really went into a deep,deep rabbit hole.

Anyway, it has been my experience that people get by somehow...
...or they don’t and somebody else gets by for them.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by rokdog49

Boy, this thread really went into a deep,deep rabbit hole.

Anyway, it has been my experience that people get by somehow...
...or they don’t and somebody else gets by for them.

Na it's not really "deep" at all, and also cannot be accurately or conveniently dismissed as simply a "rabbit hole" as in the Lewis Carrol "alternate" reality.

Because there is no "alternate" in applying the common sense observation of the vast difference between what the normal capability of human (all humans ) sensory perception allow us to "see, feel, smell, and hear" in our world ,,, and what is actually going on in the sub sensory sub atomic level , which is in fact the fundamental reality of the world around us. Yet is vastly different than what we perceive.
All one need do is look through a microscope or a telescope to begin
to understand that difference, and that concept.

Now I do understand it is not comfortable for many, to actually look at this concept of difference objectively, and acknowledge, what that "difference" might ultimately entail . Because in doing so the inevitable logical conclusion reasoned out, may very well mean that besides our sensory perceptions, ( being to some extent part illusion) , that our mental perceptions, about the world around us, (that we have convinced ourselves are just "realistic" or "reality based") in fact may not completely align with actual reality either

[RedJoker]

Originally Posted by KevWind

But do you really ? ( not rhetorical , just an honest question) It has been my experience that people with an engineering type mind set are actually no better off statistically , some perhaps even worse, at understanding the fundamental illusion involved in all of our perceptions, of the world around us. I am guessing perhaps due to a highly focused and sometime tunnel vision like approach to reality, often necessary to reason through a solution to a tricky engineering problem.

Related, I've heard the comment that when hiring an engineer, be careful that you don't accidentally hire an engineer.

(I'm an enginerd so I found this pretty funny...)

[Tele1111]

Originally Posted by KevWind

Na it's not really "deep" at all, and also cannot be accurately or conveniently dismissed as simply a "rabbit hole" as in the Lewis Carrol "alternate"

Now I do understand it is not comfortable for many, to actually look at this concept of difference objectively, and acknowledge, what that "difference" might ultimately entail . Because in doing so the inevitable logical conclusion reasoned out, may very well mean that besides our sensory perceptions, ( being to some extent part illusion) , that our mental perceptions, about the world around us, (that we have convinced ourselves are just "realistic" or "reality based") in fact may not completely align with actual reality either

Correct of course Kev. This entire thread and branching conversation also “assumes” that humans operate with free will. If you study, or even follow neuroscience, that’s a questionable assumption at best. And again, it’s not difficult to comprehend.

Mark