what is common sense?

This coming Wednesday at the Ideas Cafe,  we will be discussing what it means when we say "It is just common sense that......"

What is common sense?

Is it daily observations of our world that we all get and accept so that we assume everyone else should know and think the same as we do?

When should we not expect others to agree with our observations? (in other words, the sense is not common?)

Is it something so accepted by us that we do not question the validity of our observations? Should we question more of what we take as common sense?

Maybe our common sense is influenced by the social norm around us, that it is common sense that we should dress "properly" for the occasion. In this case, is common sense being used as a reason to not question social norms?

Is common sense being use as a reason to stop discussion and inquiry? How do we respond to the argument that it is just common sense?

If we disagree that something is common sense, how do we defend our case? By taking a poll?

Is commons sense being use by the majority to overwhelm the opinion of the minority? Is the majority always right?

Maybe common sense is similar to axioms in logic and mathematics. Geometry started with the concept of lines being the extension of a point and parallel lines do not meet each other. These are starting points that is difficult to ask "why".  Yet from these simple concepts comes all the various theorems of intersecting angles and big body of geometry with useful applications in the real world.

How do we know which common sense concepts are axioms and which are not?

Should we use common sense as an explanation at all?

8-Aug-12 Tyranny of choice, when is more choice not good for us?

Next Wednesday at the Ideas Cafe,  we will be discussing whether too much choice is counterproductive and actually bad for us.

Modern society is built on freedom and from this we infer that more choices means more freedom, therefore must be better. It will also be better if we get to have freedom of choice more often.

Barry Schwartz wrote a book "The paradox of choice" arguing the opposite, that we have passed the point that more choice is a good thing and that more choices (and freedom) are now a problem for the developed world.

Here is his video on TED from 5 years ago summarizing his position.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO6XEQIsCoM  (use this link if the above video do not work for you)

Do more choices shift the blame from the world for not making jeans that fit (when there was no choice) to ourselves (for not choosing the right one when there is so much choice)?

Is having more choices the reason why our expectations are so high making us easily disappointed?

Should professionals like doctors take a more prominent role is deciding our treatments than making us weigh treatment options that we are not completely familiar with?

What about the cost of having these choices.  There is no free lunch,  the supermarket that provides more choice generally have higher cost, therefore higher markup and prices.  Should we be shopping at stores with lower prices and less choices?

One of the human weaknesses in decision making described in the book "Thinking fast and slow" is that we tend to just look at what is in front of us when we decide.  What the author call "What you see is all there is".  Do more choices get around this weakness?

I also think that the more choice we have, the more our attention and resources are sucked into choosing what is just in front of us and we become oblivious to other more important things that is happening around us or just our of our sight and senses.  Can we avoid reading product label after product label when the information is there even if this is just for a can of soup while precious time is slipping away?

Should we challenge the notion that we are always better with more freedom?

Barry Schwartz did not offer what the right amount of freedom is optimal.  How would we know when we reach that optimal and start ignoring or limiting our choices after that?  Can we resist?

Meeting on assassination missions

We had our Ideas Cafe discussion this evening on whether assassination missions can be justified.

We started off with some definitions with Ted's help.  Assassinations always have a target, usually a politically prominent person.  It is different from a terrorist act where the purpose is to kill and create fear with no particular target person in mind.

Richard started off with the premise that killing another human for any reason cannot be justified.  It therefore follows that a planned and premeditated killing by assassination is definitely not justified.

Mano said that the rule of law must be followed.  Someone cannot just decided that another person should be assassinated and go do it. The act itself needs to be judged by laws applicable or at least in the international court.

Ted felt that assassinations can be justified in extreme cases but all other avenues must be explored first.  If the Iranian president is to be a target of assassination because of his claims of using nuclear weapons on Israel, then at least we should bomb the nuclear facilities first.

Shula then pointed out that in bombing the nuclear facilities, some other unnamed person (and likely more than one) will likely die as a result.  Which means that these people are being hurt because they are nameless just so that the real source of the issue, the president, is spared.

Dan pose the example that if he is the dictator of country and he makes his own rules that allows him to mistreat his people,  then there is not much point to judge him by the law of his country.  The United Nations as a rule are reluctant to get into the internal affairs of countries.

There is also the issue of the international court not being participated by every country.  Is it a truly international court if important countries like the US do not agree to be part of it?  Why should anyone be subjected to a court system that he had not agreed to be part of?

Rafi said that we cannot rule out killing as a deterrent. If we unilaterally declare that we will not kill for any reason because we respect human life while our enemies have no hesitation in killing us, then we put ourselves in a defenseless position against them. 

Mano mentioned the example of the anti abortionist who justify to himself that he needs to assassinate the doctor doing abortions in order to save the many unborn fetuses.  This thinking is no different than the utilitarian or conventionalist argument of using assassination as a way of minimizing future damage to innocent victims.

Mano also feels that most of us are law abiding citizens and he theorizes that assassinations likely involve the two extreme segments of society:  One segment includes those in the bottom, desperate and with nothing left to lose.  The other segment is the ones in the very top, who thinks that they are either above the law or that they know better than the rest of the "little people". 

This discussion reminded me of the discussion on spies and undercover policeman where they are by definition, lairs because they are hiding their true identity.  They have to do it in order to deal with segments of society or foreign governments, both of which are not following the rules of the country.

With assassinations, we run into problems of which law is in force, dictators that make their own laws and abuse their citizens, other cultural or ethnic value and believe systems. There are no stardard agreed upon frame of reference to judge.  So we revert back to might is right as a last resort to protect ourselves against others who are used to operating that way.

We like to be in civilized society with rules to ensure stability.  However, the real world outside is anarchy if we cannot get agreement to go by the same set of rules.

Messy but that is the way it is.