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

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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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Is this true?? I always assumed that electric ranges simply had a variable duty cycle controlled by the knob. That would mean that if you want to get a pot up to a specific temperature, the fastest way is to set the knob to high until you reach the temperature, then reduce the knob to the desired temperature.
This is different from how an HVAC works, where you set an actual temperature and the HVAC runs until that temperature is reached.
But I coyote be totally wrong about how electric ranges work.

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I did a test on mine using two burners and an infrared thermometer: Starting cold, I turned one burner to medium and another to high, and measured them as they heated up. They heated at the same rate until the medium burner reached its target temperature.

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I think they probably appear in different types of situations, not all at once. And maybe different types of people/thinking are more prone to some than to others.

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Moss doesn't exclusively grow on the north side of trees.

My brain was like "why do people so desperately need to find moss that it not being on the north side would mean death?" Before remembering many people don't know which way they are facing (or left and right) usually. (Also, I'm sure I'd do worse in an unfamiliar area)

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Yeah, that's fair, for sure, to some degree. For instance large fractions of policing funding should be redirected into various social services, and military spending can get fuck off all together.

But also, wealthier people paying more than an equal share of tax is a good thing too, and provides lots of intangible benefits (e.g. better education systems and fewer people in extreme poverty and desperation leads to lower crime rates)

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