What are some examples of 'common sense' which are nonsense?

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Lemme try my favorite way to explain the birthday problem without getting too mathy:

If you take 23 people, that's 253 pairs of people to compare (23 people x22 others to pair them with/2 people per pair). That's a lot of pairs to check and get only unique answers

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the government can go into unlimited debt if it is willing to cause a hyperinflation at some point later in the future to eliminate all of that debt.

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Folk idioms that contradict each other are my favourite. For example, "the cream rises to the top" vs. "it's not what you know, it's who you know".

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The immune system is strong and defends your body against germs.

Which is why you should get vaccinated.

Vaccination primes your immune system so it can mount a coordinated response the first time it actually encounters the pathogen.

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Of course! Our society couldn't have multiple moving parts, could it?

And honestly, that's a great example of why "common sense" is so frequently wrong. Saying there's not enough is basically implying that everyone you don't personally know must be stupid.

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The sky is actually the entire colour spectrum with a bias toward the short wavelength end of the spectrum, which is why it appears pale blue.

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Moss doesn't exclusively grow on the north side of trees. Local conditions are too chaotic and affect what side is most conducive to moss. Don't use moss for navigation.

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Hmm. Business budgets are pretty similar to household budgets.

Government budgets are where things get a little fuzzy, because historically they always run a slight deficit until they fall to war or revolution and "reset". They're still budgets, though.

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Them and what army? (Well, the PLA, but going into MAD and great power military strategy would be too much of a digression)

A classical example of Westerners thinking human laws are laws of physics somehow.

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Nuance is boring, voting and/or complaining is easy.

I mean, people are right about slimy politicians too, but they never seem to consider that it's them that keeps electing those people.

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The thing about that is that it's a little too complete. How can there be both negativity bias and normalcy bias, for example?

To make any sense, you'd need to break it down into a flowchart or algorithm of some kind, that predicts the skew from objectivity based on the situation.

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Or overreact, and kill you that way. Viral fevers, allergies and septic shock are all examples.

Evolution is not a human designer. It's an endless pile of kludges that ends up working well enough. Although, in some ways that's even more impressive.

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In my experience it's only automated in the cities and most of the lights are manual everywhere else.

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They enlarged rt 3 near rt 95 in MA many years ago. It was getting backed up due to all of the people moving further out from Boston. I said "It will be full again in a few years." Yup. It was moving well for a few years so everyone piled into that area because the commute was better and within a few years it was a traffic jam again.

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“Survival of the fittest”

bitch, explain cows

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Cows are the most fit for their environment. Their environment being a useful and sustainable food source for humans to cultivate.

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"The squeaky wheel gets the grease"

"The nail that sticks out gets hammered down."

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In all of my ecology classes they were super specific about re-framing that concept as "survival of the fit enough"

You don't actually have to be the best example of something to have your traits carried along, just good enough to consistently make it to reproductive age and then procreate.

It helps explain a lot of weird survival mechanisms - it doesn't have to be the best way to do things but if it consistently works, then it's good enough. Like the old saying "if it's stupid, but it works, then it's not stupid"

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Yup, vaccination isn't reinforcements, it's training. It's having the other team's playbook before they even step foot on the field.

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What are some examples of 'common sense' which are nonsense?