Is common sense really all that common?

We dig into whether common sense is truly universal or just experience we forget we learned, using stories from removals work, horse yards, martial arts, and everyday life. We challenge the idea that intelligence equals good judgement, and we leave with a blunt reminder that “obvious” depends on context, culture, and consequences. 
• defining common sense as practical judgement built from everyday experience 
• separating intelligence and education from real-world decision-making 
• workplace examples where bright people miss basic safety and sequencing 
• horse safety and why “obvious” depends on exposure and coaching 
• military range habits and driving rules as learned behaviour 
• consequences and incentives shown through the weekly racoon-rubbish mess 
• a tragic balcony failure that shows cost-cutting can kill 
• how common sense changes over time with evidence and social norms 
• the real context behind the McDonald’s hot coffee case 
• culture and communication shaping what gets labelled “common sense” 
• takeaways for leadership, parenting, relationships, and managing expectations 
If you want any more information or give us an idea about what you want to talk about. Yes, go to the website beabetteryou.ca. There is a tab 'podcast'. Send us an email there. 

Have a question, a comment, or want to find out more? go to https://www.beabetteryou.ca/

Podcast thoughtfully produced by https://www.isleofsound.ca/

Transcript

Welcome And The Big Question

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is Straight Up Talk with Sharon and Peter. We are both proud Brits and Canadians. This is a no-nonsense weekly podcast about people, life, leadership, and all sorts of stuff. We don't always agree. This is Sharon and Pete with episode 9 of Straight Up Talk. I'm Sharon.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

And I'm Pete Johnson.

Defining Common Sense Without Ego

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Topic this week is common sense really all that common? I'll start out with a definition. The most widely accepted definition is the ability to make sound practical judgments based on everyday experience rather than specialized knowledge or or formal training. Common sense is often described as practical wisdom, good judgment, the ability to assess a situation and choose a reasonable course of action, knowledge that most people in a particular group are expected to know. The key point is that common sense is not usually about intelligence. As we know, we talked about last week when we did our podcast on degrees. Someone can be highly educated and still lack common sense in certain situations.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

And likewise, someone with little formal education may demonstrate exceptional common sense because they've accumulated practical experience. So over to you, Peter.

When Intelligence Fails On The Job

SPEAKER_00 1:31

What are your thoughts and experiences around common sense?

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Well, my experience is obviously in the removals business. Again, I go back to what I did for 30 35 years of my life. Um, we would get guys coming to work with us in the summer months, you know, like college guys, and uh loads and loads of brains, loads of intelligence, but no common sense. You know, they would bring they would bring stuff out to the truck to be loaded that you know, you you all your glass comes out at one time together, all your mirrors, everything like that comes out, they would just bring willy-nilly stuff out, and you'd say to them over and over again, every day the same thing, don't be bringing this out yet, you know, wait till you get called for it, and then and uh you know, but time and time again they just used to just didn't listen. And these guys were intelligent guys, these were like you know, some of them were at university and just having a midsummer

Horses Martial Arts And Basic Safety

SPEAKER_02 2:22

break.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Absolutely, and it just you just reminded me as you said that I worked at a horse ranch for five years, a horse ranch, people would come wearing flip-flops to a horse ranch. It was like give your head a shake.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

What what do you think horses are? They're not dainty ballerinas, yeah, 800 kilos on your foot. Yeah, that's gonna that's gonna hurt. Um I I asked Greg, our coach at Grand River CrossFit because he makes me laugh, and he gave us some some uh examples. Now he's been a martial artist for almost 50 years and he's been an instructor for 25 of those. He said it would be common sense not to come to your school and expect to challenge the instructor when you've had no experience. Can you imagine that? Oh no, yeah, that somebody who's got no knowledge of this thinks that all of a sudden they know more than take him on, not like oh, and and Greg is not someone you would want to take on, he could throw you clear across the room. He was also in the military, and he has, and I think actually military is very interesting. Um we were talking about this with degrees as well. They often want their colonels, etc., and people who are going up the ladder to have a degree, but they can be dumb as a box of frogs really in this way. Greg talks about on the firing range, common sense says you should keep your finger off the trigger at all times. But he had people on the range, um, and there's always one that let off a shot when they thought they had the safety on the fire.

SPEAKER_02 3:56

Yeah, you have plenty of accidents in in in the military. People, you know.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

So that comes down to to common sense. Yeah.

Rules We Learn Versus Rules We Assume

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Um driving is is another one. It's common sense, you come to a stop sign to your turn. Now, this we what is interesting about this though is is it cultural this because we've got these stop signs in North America, of course, in the UK.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

It's give way, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

We have and we have roundabouts, yeah. Roundabouts here. But what you have to learn though, so I'm not sure that this is common sense more than you have to learn it. When you come to a four-way stop sign, whoever gets there first has right of way. So you have to you have to learn

The Neighbour Who Never Learns

SPEAKER_00 4:39

that. So we noticed something else on the way this morning, actually, to CrossFit about our neighbour.

SPEAKER_02 4:46

Yeah, do tell. Um well, this guy at the top of our street on garbage day every day without foul puts his garbage out the night before. And it's you know it's getting warmer and warmer now, so you got plenty of raccoons out there late at night searching around for food and without foul every single week they go through his garbage, it's all in the streets, all across the street. He never learns, he never learns. And you'd think that's just common sense. Just get up in the morning at eight o'clock. I mean, the garbage guys don't come till ten, ten thirty. So you've got plenty of time to do it in the morning. Why would you put it out at night?

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Why do you think he does it?

SPEAKER_02 5:24

I don't know, because he's got no common sense. But also, what's the other reason that he Well's no consequences because the garbage guys clean it up every week and it takes them, it must take him forever.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

So he hasn't changed his behaviour because there's no need for him to because there's no consequences.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Yeah, absol absolutely. There was go go

A Tragic Moving Job Lesson

SPEAKER_00 5:45

ahead.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

Yeah, there are there are other times where having no common sense or not being aw, you know, aware of the dangers uh in the workplace, like I'm going back to the removals business, where it can be tragic because there was um it was an incident just before we came back to Canada, there was a uh there was a house in um uh Kedogan Square in central London, like uh Belgravia, that area, and there was guys moving in a settee onto the second floor. And what would normally happen is you'd get either get a cradle and put put the put the heavy piece of furniture on the cradle, and then you'd get a couple of guys on the balcony, receive it and pass it into the room. And the reason they do that is because it it was too big to go up the stairway. Right. So it has to be brought in from the outside. But on this particular job, they had six guys all out on the balcony, and they tied ropes to this really heavy settee. It was 150 kilograms, the settee alone. Plus, you got the four or five guys on the balcony. Of course, you know what happened. They went straight through the balcony. The balcony wouldn't take the weight, and uh three of them fell, two of them died, and one of them was seriously hurt, and they also injured people on the ground as well. So that was having no common sense. Now, somebody on that job should have said, hold on a minute, we're hoisting up a hundred and hundred and fifty kilogram uh sofa. Right. It must have been a bed bed setee, I'd imagine, with a frame inside it, with a heavy mattress to be that heavy. And we we'd done a few over the years, you know, but we you you'd get a you'd get a high-up truck in and like a crane, and uh you'd lift it up that way. You wouldn't you wouldn't rely on the bat the strength of a balcony. Because them places in Kadugan Square, they were built in the Victoria during Queen Victoria's reign. So they're 150 years old, them buildings. So that that metal railing was 150 years old. You're putting your trust in a metal railing that's 150 years old.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

So you you've got a bunch of guys there, and not one of them. What a job for, man.

SPEAKER_02 7:44

Well, I think what happened, I I I read a little bit about the the story behind it, and um apparently the job was running late, it was a refurb, they'd already okay, there was already well over budget, they didn't want to get the h the hi-ab company in, the crane company in, because they're expensive, you know, it's a thousand pounds to hire a truck with a crane for the day. They just thought, well, we just got six guys here on the job, we'll just pull it up. And of course, they just went straight through the railings and they fell about 40 feet to their demise, yeah, splat. Very, very, very, very tragic story, but uh again, it shows that not one of them had any common sense. And there were six guys on that job.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

That's I mean, th that's never gonna change that level of stupidity, really, because being able to calculate what's going on, the weights of things, but people don't don't see things because they take it for granted.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Yeah.

How Common Sense Changes Over Time

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Uh I wondered whether common sense changes over time, and it it does because many things that were considered common sense 50 years ago are no longer accepted. It used to be the case where they used to say smoking's harmless. There used to be doctors who would advertise cigarettes, yeah. Not wearing seat belts, you know, they weren't that wasn't considered an issue. Kids riding in cars without car seats. Um there's all kinds of things that affect what our common sense really is. So there are some global things about smoking on aeroplanes, you remember that? Yeah. I know that was um yes, because the smoke stops at row 23. It knows not to go any further.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Some of the things that I've seen on on YouTube that drive me nuts is don't pet wild animals.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

That I just I cannot believe that people have to be told that, yeah. Have to be told. There's there's images of people getting out of the cars in the middle of Yellowstone Park, somebody trying to pet a buffalo.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

And then they get I'm just gonna feed this gorilla.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

I'll I won't be long.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Well, there aren't any gorillas in Yellowstone Park. No, I'm just saying in Kenya there is exactly. So there's there's things that are just I can't believe that people don't don't get them. Why would you get out of your car to pet um a fierce animal?

SPEAKER_02 10:06

And safety around horses, as we've said before.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Well, yes, what's interesting about that though is you have to think of context. How would people know if they don't know anything about a horse? Now, I think it's different with a wild animal. I don't know how you could not know that wild animals are potentially dangerous. I really am not sure about that. But people come into the farm when I used to work there and also drives me nuts as well. And I go to a horse show, and people non-horsey people come, can I stroke your horse? No, you can't.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

And can I punch you in the face? Anyway, that's a different topic. But we always have to teach people how to be safe around a horse. If you say to them, where should you stand? To you and me, it's common sense because we we know it. You move around a horse and you stick either very, very close to it or very far away.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

Because if it's kick zone, yeah, horses being prey animals see out the side of their heads, you know, their eyes on the either side. So you don't go up and spook a horse, you're gonna get kicked or something even even worse. But if you don't so you can't say that all common sense is common sense. Um, oftentimes it's things that we take for granted because we've had to do it.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

You've learned it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

So what's accepted as global common sense, um, one thing one

Hot Coffee Culture And Misread Stories

SPEAKER_00 11:26

that you always say to me, I mean, we've been together 14 years, and and whenever you've cooked something. 14 years. Whenever you cook something on the on the on the oven, you go, don't touch that.

SPEAKER_02 11:38

It's don't touch that plate, it's very hot.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Is it is I I feel like I'm three years old or something.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

Yeah, but what they warn you in McDonald's, don't drink the coffee because it's so hot. That you know, so I actually looked at the cup, it says on the So I I looked that up, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Because that is actually people tell that story as though it is about um common sense. So the public narrative became well, somebody sued because the coffee was hot, but the actual case is far more complex. The coffee was reportedly served at temperatures significantly higher than typical home coffee and caused severe third-degree burns. So evidence presented during the trial suggested there had been numerous prior burn complaints. So the lawsuit became famous because many people saw it as a failure of common sense, but actually it's not, it's a product safety issue. So it became a debate about what common sense actually means. And what's also interesting is it it's different in different countries. You know, in the UK, common sense includes things like understatement, social awareness, indirectness, and diplomacy. We think that's what they are. In North America, it might be initiative, speaking up, independence. Um, and in Japan, it's very different. Common sense is more about reading the room, harmony, indirect communication. So I think what the whole thing about common sense is it might not be actually as common as we think it is, but there are certain things that if you think about what you're doing, you have to be able to filter out what is potentially dangerous just because I haven't been exposed to it before, but to think about what we're doing. Um, psychologists and sociologists would say that no, common sense actually isn't all that common because it's typically experience plus culture plus assumptions plus context. For example, a manager might say it's common sense to tell your team when priorities change, but a new manager might not do it because they've never managed people before and they don't know. You know, people don't know what they don't know until they know it is one of my favorite favourite things.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Uh sure great saying that.

Brutal Takeaways And Rough Seas

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Yeah. So uh we're coming up to time now, but my brutally honest takeaway of the week is just because something is obvious to you doesn't mean it's obvious to someone else, right? Yeah, this is where most arguments start. Managers think employees, you should know this. Parents think teenagers, well, you should know that. Customers think, well, businesses should know this. Spouses think partners should know. Yeah. But you keep telling me to not touch the hot plate. Anyway, so reality is that people are operating from different experiences, information, and assumptions. So could common sense actually be knowledge that's become invisible to us because we've known it for so long?

SPEAKER_02 14:37

Maybe.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Peter, over to you.

SPEAKER_02 14:40

You want my my fast take on it?

SPEAKER_00 14:42

I do, you're brutally honest. Take away every week.

SPEAKER_02 14:45

Um one of them, one of my favourites is don't go swimming in rough seas. Yeah, it's always a no-no, which is something I did when I was living out in Jersey. I used to go for swim every night after work, and then one particular night it was really rough, and I thought, oh, I'm only gonna go out a little way, I'll be alright. It took me half an hour to get back.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

That's a perfect example of something that should be obvious. Yeah. I think I don't know how anybody could not see that.

SPEAKER_02 15:11

So that's a great my first experience of the high tides in Jersey, the Channel Islands of the UK, they they they have very high tides and they pull you out.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

And I think we overestimate our ability to get out of certain situations as well. We don't think the bad thing is ever going to happen to us.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

I think as you get older, we tend to get a bit more savvy. Yeah, like over overtaking, don't overtake on a bend.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

That sometimes comes about from experience, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:44

Definitely, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

And uh also being road aware, which you and I are very road aware.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Anyway, so without

Listener Ideas And Where To Write

SPEAKER_00 15:52

blurring on.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Thank you everyone for listening. If you want any more information or give us an idea about what you want to talk about.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

Yeah, yeah. Come on. We want some new ideas.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Yes, go to the website beabetteru.ca. There is a tab called podcast. You can send us an email there. And this week's podcast has been thoughtfully produced by the Isle of Sound. Well, it's good night for me.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

And it's good night for me. Good night, everybody.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Good night, everybody.