Re: Ph.D's and telephone booths

["Shapiro, Mark" <mshapiro@EXCHANGE.FULLERTON.EDU>]

Dear Brian,

I enjoyed your short essay on common sense.  Indeed, there are many folks
who hold Ph.D.'s or other high degrees who are completely lacking in common
sense.

One of my favorite examples is a Caltech faculty member who is a quite
well-known physicist in a rather "hot" field.  On a European trip he became
so engrossed in reading a scientific paper while waiting at an airport that
he totally ignored the announcement that his plane was leaving.  When he
realized that he had missed his flight he was at a complete loss about what
to do.  He had to call his secretary back in Pasadena to find out what to do
next.

She patiently explained to him how to find the ticket counter in order to
get rebooked.

Mark
http://www.IrascibleProfessor.com

-----Original Message-----
From: brian whatcott
To: PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu
Sent: 1/1/01 4:02 AM
Subject: Re: Ph.D's and telephone booths

At 16:07 12/31/00 -0500, you wrote:
> There are plenty of Ph.D.'s who couldn't find their way out of
> telephone booth in Fresno with a roadmap.
>
> Mark Shapiro

A Short Essay on Common-Sense.

This irascible comment from Mark echoes a popular sentiment.
It's not of quite the same kind as
"If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?"
 because it's understood getting rich requires a motivational
drive that not all people may wish to exercise.
This "Can't fight his way out of a paper bag" sentiment is
a judgment on a quality that people call "common sense".

It's not clear what exactly comprises common sense - it's often
said it is by no means common. The idea is found on the lips of people
who are conscious that they are no genius, yet act in a collected way.

I have sometimes supposed that there are folks who are specially
careful to guard the impression they allow other people to gain
of their behavior. They tend not to ask questions when unclear about
 a concept: to do so acknowleges that they are ignorant in some topic.
It's as though they act on the saw, "Keep your mouth shut and people
think
you're dumb; open it, and people will know for sure."

 I believe it may reflect some 'Playhouse in the Mind', so that when
a Navy skipper sails into a hostile port and establishes no cordon
sanitaire round the hull, in the way that American Embassies and
military
 installations abroad are adjured to establish, we assign his lack of
imagination about the conseqences of his actions or inactions to a
lack of horse-sense, and censor him acordingly.

A person who sincerely believes he has to play by different rules
from the population at large is also tempted to ignore some internal
 censor.

The English former headmaster of a distinguished co ed prep school whose
idea of punishment included requiring adolescent girls to remove their
underwear and drape themselves face down on his knees with their dresses
round their necks was probably in this category.
 His record in turning out scions of well-known families was so
prominent,
he was enabled to win merely a two year probation for numerous offences
of
this perverted kind. He was of course known to the bench - an always
helpful
circumstance, as we have recently seen in electoral context.

I think of athletic coaches as rather common-sensical people; it is true
the criteria by which they are judged is a highly visible binary
variable:
win/lose. It is this common-sense bred by identifiable objectives,
I suspect, as well as the American passion for winning recreational
games,
that gives them entree to the educational hierachy.




brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>  Altus OK
                Eureka!