Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Common Sense, Common Nonsense, and Uncommon Sense

Last night I listened to Nobel Peace Prize winner Harry Kroto's interview on Science Friday that was recorded live here in Tallahassee at FSU, and he had a nice handful of interesting points. One thing he discussed was common sense, common nonsense, and uncommon sense. This ties in very nicely with a blog idea I had a few days ago relating to media outlets while catching a glimpse of CNN. Kroto has enabled me to explain my idea much more elegantly than before. So here it goes.
One of the reasons that I attribute to our general population's poor understanding of the world they live in is the poor source of information most of us utilize to learn about our world. If you are listening to NPR for your source of facts then you are getting common sense reporting. If you tune in to CNN, MSNBC, Fox, ABC, etc. then you are getting common nonsense reporting. If you pay attention to Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, and the like, then you are getting uncommon sense information.
By this I mean common sense to be what any average person should be able to conjecture by rationally ingesting the facts. Common nonsense is the kind of information that people not equipped with intelligent facilities would regurgitate. Uncommon sense is the kind of information that only people with higher than normal thinking capabilities would come up with. People with uncommon sense can put the facts together and echo them much better than the status-quo has the ability to.

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