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Leaving Common Sense Behind in the Paleolithic
Do humans possess common sense? And if so, does it actually help us?
Imagine you lived 50,000 years ago. You spend much of the day relaxing and playing. Threats mainly involved being attacked by a predator, which may be lurking in the shadows, so you’re weary of the dark and the unknown.
You rely on your own personal experiences, or what was taught to you by the rest of your family, as well as your senses to keep you safe and happy. You have some technology, but very little and extremely limited.
The technology that you do use seems to have always been. You use the same tools as your distant ancestors, many many generations ago used. You walk the same paths, and live basically the same life. Very little changes.
It is this ancient world, largely devoid of changes noticeable in a human lifetime, in which human “common sense” evolved. It is this world for which human intuition and insight is adapted. But it’s a very different world from the one in which we live today.
Human common sense evolved in a world where our needed skills were foraging for food, and avoiding poisonous or spoiled food, hunting, and interacting with closely related members of our bands, which topped off at around 150 members before splitting into…
