In your opinion is common sense something you learn, or are you simply born with it?

I believe that common sense is one of the writes to maturity.

I think the term “common sense” is subjective. There are the basics perhaps, such as look both ways before crossing the street, don’t stick your fingers into light sockets, poke a fork in the toaster when it’s plugged in or set a radio on the edge of the bathtub. People can be forgetful when they are preoccupied and some just don’t think at all and then some use the term to mean anyone that doesn’t do things the way they do them. haha

Common sense comes from having parents who are not afraid to smack you upside the head when you do something sorely lacking in common sense. So the less BS your parents tolerate the more common sense you will have.

So @Cruiser You are saying it is taught?

@SQUEEKY2 I am saying common sense is more learned along the lines of your parents saying to you….don’t touch that. They just taught you something very important….don’t touch the hot stove or don’t put your fingers in the fan, don’t put that fork in the wall socket. 99% of the time we don’t listen and the end result is a lesson learned not a lesson taught. Common sense is also learned by simple observation of the outcomes of others stupid moves.

Common sense has to do with reasoning and reasoning is dependent on one’s intelligence. Essentially, you’re asking is intelligence environmental or genetic. As with all nature/nurture debates, the answer is both. Genetic studies have shown intelligence to be 80% genetic with the remaining 20% being environmental.

You learn it through experience.

You learn it. I guess maybe a few things that can be called common sense are innate, but for the most part you learn common sense through experience, plus add in people teaching you through example, advice, and lessons.

Common sense is a subset of wisdom – an innate ability to perceive, comprehend, and evaluate. Like all wisdom, it’s acquired through maturity and experience.

Common sense isn’t common at all. Too bad.

Common sense is a basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge things, which is shared by (“common to”) nearly all people and can reasonably be expected of nearly all people without any need for debate.

Basic ability?
Hahahahahahaha.ahhh.

“Common sense” is yet another meaningless, overused term that everyone thinks applies to themselves yet criticizes everyone else for lacking.

@Darth_Algar Agreed, and also, there is an entire other facet to “common sense” as well, being it cannot be applied to certain specific situations if one has no experience with those situations. I’m a horse person and I don’t expect others that are not to have the “common sense” to be able to read a horses body language. If you approach a horse whose ears are pinned, signifying aggression and/or defensive posturing and you get bit or kicked, well…how can I claim you have no common sense when you are not at all familiar with equine behavior?
“Common sense” can only, really, apply to situations one is familiar with as well.

If my pilot keels over mid-flight am I lacking in common sense because I don’t know how to radio the control tower and ask for help in landing the plane? haha

@Darth_Algar – so the internet definition of the word -you find a problem with?
Ohhhhh. Now THAT is funny!
Again:
Hahahahaha…
hahahahaha- ahh…
Way too funny!
Thanks- I enjoyed that.
Whoo! | =D
et.al.

@msh

What are you on about now?

Definitely something you learn, I think. Lots of people don’t have it, so they couldn’t have been born with it. Unless, somehow, they lost it?

@Darth_Algar – you just criticized a dictionary’s definition of the term,
not mine. Too funny.