The best, common sense explanation for common sense is its shortest. “Experts” don’t do the determination—each person’s assessment does the determination. In that sense, experts don’t exist.
Common sense involves moments of patient waiting—the dismissing of one’s own initial, instant, reflexive, knee-jerk opinion. It requires fleeting moments of long moments of time, patience, and self-awareness.
Ignorance is blind jumping to opinion-as-fact regardless of contradictory evidence and opposing facts. It happens without the brain’s engaging; it’s raw belief void of thought. A disembodied, all-knowing expert—but an expert whose existence is based on opinion—assists the person to jump to conclusion, but not to think.
- Spend a few moments of time waiting, waiting for the initial, knee-jerk, unsupported opinions to pass, and get to the evidence that forms that matches Nature and the surrounding world,
- or spend those moments of time collecting the existing, mismatched, previously collected opinions, and get mired in broken models that don’t match the surrounding world.
The match between the person’s internal world model and their surrounding world informally defines everyone’s level of ignorance—a high level of disagreement indicates a high level of ignorance.
Those whose internal models are similar, although they may have moments of disagreement, will generally find ways to cooperate and survive. Those groups whose internal world models more closely mirror their surrounding worlds will find themselves having their internal world models matching more closely with each other. Birds of a feather flock together.
- Common sense involves a relationship with one’s self.
- Ignorance involves a lack of involvement and a lack of there having a relationship with one’s self. Awareness starts within—it’s an inside job.