Common Sense
Many people think they know what it is, but can't really explain it. Let's change that!
An explanation first: Apparently this is the old name for the Simple-Minded Wisdom trope, but the page is still there - and almost empty.
We shouldn't leave it like that. Now I had the idea to turn it into a Useful Note. What do you think about this?
This would make a good page quote:
- "Common sense (which, in truth, very uncommon) is the best sense I know of: abide by it, it will counsel you best. Read and hear, for your amusement, ingenious systems, nice questions subtilly agitated, with all the refinements that warm imaginations suggest; but consider them only as exercitations for the mind, and turn always to settle with common sense." (Letters to His Son, letter 52)
Hello, Unknown Troper. You'll need to get known to lend a hand here.
"Common sense is knowing not to put a tomato in your underwear before riding a bike. Therefore, I have no common sense."
The quote is longer, these are the relevant parts. "Don't forget to put underwear on!"
(Walks in with underwear over trousers) "Like I'd forget, it's just common sense."
"Well, genius, what would be putting them on underneath your trousers?"
Many things may seem like common sense so much that when outright stated, the person becomes a Captain Obvious, yet it needed be said because the addressee has little common sense. I think the whole thing was just Lampshading the lack of common sense, to be honest.- I see my old post there, and I can't believe it's me who wrote it. Especially the MLP part, that was just brilliantly synthetic.
-
This trope is strongly tied to Stating The Simple Solution and No Nonsense Nemesis. One common way to avert it is to have Complexity Addiction, or otherwise act Too Clever By Half (like the aforementioned Sherlock). Another is to lose oneself in abstraction and ivory towers. The Evil Overlord List attempts to inject Common Sense and avert those tropes by having a six year old check the brilliant plans for any glaring flows (in Real Life, a more serious variation of this is considered standard procedure in Operations Research and other planning and decision-making efforts: to show the final draft of a plan to someone who was not involved in conceiving it in any way, so that they may spot anything the creators may have missed while immersed in being clever and creative).