Common Sense is Stupid

Hey. I want to tell you something. Common sense or common thinking is often wrong. So yeah. How most people think on a day-to-day basis is wrong.

Often, common thinking can be encapsulated into common sayings like “Third time is the charm.” Well, I want to break down why so many of these are just wrong. Perhaps you may glean some insight from my commentary and not become a mindless NPC.

1.     “Anything worth doing is hard.”

Why? What is the empirical evidence to back up this statement? Why does doing something worthwhile have to be hard and miserable?

People love coffee. I love coffee. Making coffee is a worthwhile experience. I tried my hand at making lattes by taking a class in Guangzhou several years ago. I found the experience relaxing largely due to the skill of my instructor. Even though his first language is not English, he instructed me with poise and clarity. Although I don’t make the meanest latte, I can produce good flavor and foam. All of this took a couple of hours during an Airbnb experience. It didn’t take that much effort. And it was fun. Who said making lattes had to be difficult?

What about something more difficult like becoming fluent in a new language or becoming a grandmaster in chess? Shouldn’t that be difficult? Shouldn’t it take a lot of time?  No.

Researchers found some people spent 3,000 hours of deliberate practice to become a chess grandmaster. At the other end of the end of the distribution, others took almost 24,000 hours to reach grandmaster ranking. The median is between 8,000 to 10,000 hours. The fact that the distribution is so wide shows that the 10,000-hour rule is a misleading myth that oversimplifies the impact of mere practice. Malcolm Gladwell, the author who popularize this notion, overlooked so many other factors like genetics, quality of deliberate practice, coaching, environment, and logistics. Other studies have replicated this fact. Published in the Guardian, a study of violinists “found that merely good players practiced as much as, if not more than, better players, leaving other factors such as quality of tuition, learning skills and perhaps natural talent to account for the difference.”

I think these facts should serve as a lesson for young students and athletes. How many people work hard and how many of those who worked hard achieve their desired goals? A small percentage. The casual factor(s) is not hard work. In fact, various studies have shown that hard work counts for 30% to 40% of variance for chess grandmasters, concert violinists, and professional athletes.

Source: Princeton University

In fact, science has shown that adjusting factors like logistics, environment, practice quality and varied learning, etc. make it easier for someone to progress and achieve mastery. So why not focus efforts on these factors?  

2.     “If first you don’t succeed, try and try again.”

This belief is universal and universally stupid. From a young age, I think this is one of the most harmful prevailing ideas held by humanity. Not only does this belief holds us back from achieving more, but it also causes irreparable harm.

What underpins this belief is once again our worship of hard work. We believe that hard work is what will eventually lead to success. Still struggling to grow your side hustle? Keep trying. Failing to pass a class? Study more. Not making progress at your job? Keep at it!

Why would doing the same thing repeatedly cause a different response? This is just a repeat of the Greek myth of Sisyphus pushing up the boulder up the hill repeatedly.

The general thing to do is to change and adjust. Let’s tackle the issue of improving grades in class. Many students miss two items: identify the specific areas of improvement and measure your progress. Often, students do not pinpoint specific enough areas to improve. They would identify something like this: “I need to work on factoring.” That is simply not specific enough. For one, there are many methods of factoring. What kind of factoring do you need to improve? What about that specific type of factoring bothers you? To master factoring, one needs to competent in other skills like identifying and understanding terms, coefficients, and exponents. In my experience, students have difficulty grasping factoring due to a lack of application. They don’t understand why it is important to learn factoring.

However, there comes a time when quitting is the better option. I know from experience. Recently, I quit a career choice I spent almost a year and half trying to break into. After spending just over a month in training, I decided to quit. The life was not a fit for me, and my health was starting to suffer. On top of that, the money relative to the time and effort spent was not worth it. I wish that other people could follow my example.

Take our country for example. America has fought two wars post-2000: Iraq and Afghanistan. From any objective standpoint, our involvement in those two countries caused more harm than good. We spent 20 years in Afghanistan. We also spent 2.3 trillion USD and lost approximately 2,400 soldiers. In the end, the Taliban retook control of the country. Trying to make Afghanistan into a modern functioning republic was a fool’s mission. After killing Osama and taking down al Qaeda, the United States should have left. But the political leadership wanted to accomplish a broader vision.

Source: Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs, Brown University

3.     “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

I saw an article on Buzzfeed addressing this. The piece read, “I got a hammer that wants a word with your knees if you believe that.”

In addition to glorifying hard work, our civilization reveres suffering for a greater cause. So many people think pain and suffering is necessary for gain. Not true.

There is a such thing as irreparable damage. I have heard so many people say, “I will catch up on sleep on the weekend.” You cannot catch up on sleep. It’s like time. Once you lose it, you lose it forever. Let’s get into why this is the case.

Our bodies, including our metabolism, circadian rhythm, and regenerative processes, are sensitive to changes. Losing a small amount of sleep, say one hour, can have cascading effects beyond just feeling awake. On the surface, losing sleep can lead to higher risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension. In one study published in Sleep Medicine, researchers found that catching up on sleep on the weekends does not undo the impact of losing sleep during the work week. To make up sleep debt, you need to sleep 4 hours for each hour of sleep missed. If you lost two hours of sleep the night before, you need to get eight additional hours of sleep on top of your regular amount. Plus, the hours to make up lost time are markedly more the further away the sleep debt is or if the debt is accumulated. Thus, this is why the damage to your mind and body from lack of sleep is permanent. It might not kill, but it sure can lead to things that can.

Source: HealthMatch, CDC

What’s worse is that trauma and severe adversity can be passed down the generations. More and more epigenetic studies (Epigenetics is the study of how your behavior and environment can cause changes that affect way your genes work and are passed down.) substantiated the claim that epigenetic changes from traumatic events are passed down to their descendants. Across various studies, children and grandchildren have higher rates of diseases and dishabituating conditions. BBC News highlighted one study that analyzed the health records of 4,600 kids of POWs against the kids of 15,300 veterans who had not be taken prisoner. It showed significantly different health outcomes: “The sons or POWs had an 11% higher mortality rate than sons of non-POW veterans…The sons of former POWs were slightly more likely to die from cancer.” It goes further and says that the epigenetic changes were more prominent on the male side, stating “The hypothesis is that there’s an epigenetic effect on the Y chromosome.”

4.     “The early bird gets the worm.”

Does getting up early actually cause success?

You cleared your inbox and written down your checklist for the day after waking up at 5 AM and read your newspapers. Does any of these tasks increase profit margin or grow market share? From all my observations of early risers, especially those of old generation, their habits have not caused the results they wanted. If that were true, they would all be multi-millionaires, in-shape, and traveling the world.

Society’s insistence on conformity goes against mother nature. People have different chronotypes. Some are morning birds. Others are night owls. Evidence shows that people with different chronotypes operate more effectively during different parts of the day.

Source: RUDN University

Unfortunately, society is geared toward a 9 to 5 schedule. Thankfully, the COVID pandemic and subsequent shift to work-from-home is making work more flexible. In future, I hope society continues evolving to better fit our natural differences.

Conclusion

I hope I demonstrated that common thinking or common sense is not so great for sound and rational decision-making. The problem with common sense is that it relies heavily upon personal experience, and personal experience falls prey to many limitations. So perhaps, I convinced you think more critically and independently.