this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2025
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I don't like the term "common sense" because anytime is used, the sense that is in question is almost always, not very common.
I agree, which is why I only use the term in a kind of negative reference: this knowledge is evidently not common place.
Err... well ok, unless it is the proper noun form, directly referring to Tom Paine's revolutionary war era pamphlet... which... I think is the sort of proximal etymylogical / cultural origin of the phrase as we use it today?
Either way, yes, its a bastardized term now, like how 'literally' now also means roughly 'figuratively + extremely' in certain contexts, from certain speakers.
I think that back in 1770's English, 'common' was also often used to mean something ... simple, unremarkable, basic.
Not just uh... plentiful, easily found in many places.
So then, 'common sense' would roughly translate to modern English as something like 'basic logic'.
And to loop that all around, I would say that people who ... do not treat driving a car like they are operating a ton or two of mass that can move up to 80 or 120 mph or whatever... you know, as that, well they actually are not excercising what I would call basic logic.
I get it. I miss when words meant something specific.
The one I'm still unhappy about is jealousy. It used to just be the fear of losing something you have. Now it also means wanting something you don't have.
Envy is a term that always meant, wanting something you do not have.
Over time, people have used the terms so wrong that the definition changed.
I think it says something about society that we have a word that means something, but we used another word to mean that thing so much that we changed the definition of the word to fit the usage.
Oh well. This is why we can't have nice things.