Common Sense

Sometimes Insight comes in a blinding epiphanous flash, where the lightpoints of knowledge all align and we get a glimpse of Revealed Truth.

Other times, it comes like drips of water on a rock. Eventually, you notice and wonder "Gee, where did that hole in the rock come from?" This is one of those.

"Jack" was an SVP in our Chicago office when I was a young Associate consultant in Boston. He wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he was smart enough. And he made up for the rest in physical presence. He was handsome, buff, filled up the room. Sometimes wrong, but never in doubt.

I worked with him on a paper mill project in Chillicothe, Ohio. He asked me to write up a report, and gave me some confusing instructions about it. I did my best – and he rejected it, giving me yet more confusing guidance.

I tried again, and again he said it wasn't right. I asked him why, and didn't get much clarity. He was getting frustrated with me, and frankly I was getting frustrated with him.

So I bought a six pack and holed up in my motel room. I decided i'd just write the damn thing myself on my terms; let him fix it if he was so smart. I wrote for three hours and fell asleep, angry and exhausted.

When I tossed it onto his desk the next day, he took a look at it and said, "Well, finally. That's what I was trying to tell you all along! What took you so long?"

At the time, I was just frustrated and angry at him. i didn't glean any bigger insight from the experience beyond blaming Jack. The insights came later; drip, drip, drip.

In the rear view mirror, it turns out I had (ignorantly) done the right thing. I had applied common sense. Rather than attempting to extract insight from another's instructions, I applied the 'smell test.' It had to make sense, common sense. I just made commonsense of it.

There's a clever saying that "common sense is not common." It's not true. It's just a clever saying. I have learned from my experiences that we are all endowed with copious amounts of common sense.

Think "If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck..." or "If it sounds too good to be true, it's probably not true." We all know how to spot Nigerian Princes, and most of us can spot phonies, whether IRL or through AI.

Over time, this approach gradually coalesced into some heuristics. I learned that:

• If statistical techniques like regression analysis don't comport with common sense, don't put them in the report;
• Green eyeshade accountants, when shown videos of human interactions, all read them the same way as PhD psychologists – it's a human thing;
• Occam's Razor isn't just a philosophic concept, it really works in the real world;
• If you spot a turtle on a fencepost, it probably didn't get there by itself;
• Nine times out of ten, conspiracy theories are out-explained by simple coincidence plus incompetence;
• If everyone says something is true, there's a good chance it might be true;
• The idea that "there are no coincidences" may soothe our metaphysical yearnings for explanation, but it's predictively worthless. We are daily surrounded by hundreds of coincidences, of use only to magicians and hucksters who know how present them to entertain us and charge us admission for the fun;
• Never do market research on yourself;
• Truth is independent of our knowledge of it, though True Believers will doubt that. (Actually they'll doubt many of my little rules of thumb).
• Honorary mention 1: Never play poker with a man named Doc.
• Honorary mention 2: Never eat at a restaurant called "Mom's."

We are all the products of millions of years of evolution. Our instincts are hard-earned and finely honed. Yet we are tempted to overrule our innate knowledge by an over-reliance on faux rationality and quantitative analytics. By deepfake videos like Taylor Swift endorsing Trump. Or by not-as-smart-as-they-think-they-are bosses and others in positions of authority. What are your hard-learned heuristics?

Quick Wisdom Quip: Dare to trust your gut. It's better than you think.

Practical Tip:? Turn off the computer and sit quietly. Ask yourself, "What's not making sense here?" Then ask "What would make good common sense?"