Graduated Certification for Applying Common Sense by James Dunn

Hi James,

I have read your surprising essay. I am surprised that you think common sense needs teaching and certifying. I thought it was called common because most people seem to acquire it one way or another.

I live in a country where it seems that you need a certificate for almost every kind of work, even those that would appear to require only common sense. So maybe that shortfall in education is already being addressed here.

I think the world's problems are going to require more than general standards of common sense. Rather world wide changes in culture including; belief systems, economic systems, lifestyle, procreation, attitude to health, reasoning, functioning and more is required. Though I suppose more common sense would be a good start. Thanks for a good read. Georgina

Thank you for your reply.

Common Sense are information processes "commonly" needed by a social group. This does not mean that every person possesses those skills. An auto-mechanic is quite adept within a social group related to repairing cars. Within that social group the auto-mechanic has developed many skills and systems of understanding related to social, emotional, and communication processes with other mechanics, customers, vendors...

But take that same mechanic and put them in their state's house of Representatives and their self-esteem is no longer as strong. They will tend to doubt their own understanding of an issue and confer their beliefs to the social authorities of the Representatives. This is in-part justified. We do not want to harm others due to our own ignorance (lack of knowledge). Of great importance when changing social groups is the ability to efficiently teach one's self. This is what schools are primarily supposed to be teaching. So that students can become experts at anything passionately pursued.

This new social group they have entered has developed many skills and social circles the mechanic is as yet unaware.

Common Sense = Self-esteem Logic Predicting Consequences

Respect is attained by teaching one's self something that is useful for their social group. The teaching of this information to others in the group provides others with the potential of helping the group and being appreciated (social). If the information is useful, others in the group confer trust in who taught them. This trust is Respect. If the information is faulty, then instead of trust disdain is conferred.

The accumulation of trust and disdain provide the components and relative levels of self-esteem. A healthy group exchanges roles as originator and receiver of information.

An unhealthy social group is where information is only passed in one direction. People that are Arrogant (loathing of others).

An Arrogant person tends to exclude themselves from social groups. Provide an Arrogant person with the means to exclude others from an opportunity and what will happen?

Children learn very quickly when they engage in teaching each other; sharing respect for each other. In Middle School here in the USA, teachers tend to instruct students to sit quietly and listen to the teacher. This has the action of preventing students from teaching each other, isolating each student from being able to acquire respect from their peers. The result is a loss of self-esteem, a loss of common sense. The students when introduced to drugs, alcohol, ... that have not developed self-esteem and confidence in applying logic and predicting consequences, harm themselves in what they perceive as a strong social group.

My personal observations are that students graduating high school are not developing the skills of common sense associated with the environments they transition into: jobs, college classes, parent ...

My concern is that technologies related to manipulating space-time are in our not too distant future. The destructive potential is tremendous. For example: DARPA QUEST is attempting to have develop a quantum camera. This would potentially allow "interactive" framing of any reference in the Universe. There would be no security for anyone, anywhere.

I have no problem with sharing anything you want to know about me in an ethical environment; bank account numbers, income, SSN, ... Who are we going to trust with this technology? I said interactive. In addition to reading, the atoms can be changed.

Pie in the sky, it hasn't happened yet.

But we need to change the genetically engineered human that can't think further than the end of their spear. This will take time. We need people to think about consequences decades into the future, globally. When space-time manipulation technology arrives, we will need to have the ability to relate to consequences for thousands of years and throughout the Universe.

Baby steps now, and build capacity for later.

The more children are able to surpass our abilities, the greater likelihood they will surpass our own successes; international economic development, environmental responsibility, conservation of resources ...

Dear James,

I read your essay and tried to follow you in your thoughts, because for me it is "common sense" to respect the opinion of others.

My opinion is that "common sense" is an emerging quality of a group of individuals, you say it can be learned, but you can also learn in the wrong group the wrong sense. It is however always the individual with his own "I" and his consciousness who will yes or no accept RULES that seem to be common. Indeed you can learn these rules and get a licence for that knowledge, which does not mean that you agree with the rules.

Only when the "mentality" of the individuals is changing from "egoistic profit economy" to "living blissful together" with as you mention "voluntary activities" that give a good feeling to "everyone" then we are moving on to a better world.

All together the essays of this contest are the building blocks for a change of mentality mentality, and I think we should value that, so if you have some spare time please read my essay : "STEERING THE FUTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS ?" and eventually give it a rating at the scale of your appreciation.

best regards

ilhelmus

Ilhelmus,

I'm not sure what you are referring to when you say "voluntary activities". "Voluntary" does not occur in my writings. Perhaps the meaning of voluntary was inferred by something I wrote.

We do not offer Respect to people that are new to our social group. We offer them the opportunity to build respect by listening and watching them in the hope they have something useful to offer. Respect is not given, it is earned.

The use of logic (Critical Thinking) and predicting consequences is needed by almost every social group to grow. Irrational (logically wrong) expressions and short-sighted decisions (not able to predict consequences) harm not only the social group, but society as a whole. I have been working with a drug addict for about 9 years. The effort to rationalize (find expressions that sound like they support a position) a behavior is always flawed, but the human mind does not want to recognize its' own short comings.

By broadly introducing Critical Thinking and Predicting Consequences into social groups raises the bar broadly to live without supporting corruption.

Definition: Corruption = "unethical allocation"

When related to the legal system, then "illegal allocation".

Most people can not define corruption in an actionable sense. Therefore, the working structure of corruption is hard to identify. But knowing that unethical allocation of opportunities and/or resources is corruption, then a person can actively destabilize the corrupt activities.

Respect when strong is based in trust. Trust is a basis for collaboration. Collaboration is needed to leverage opportunities to generate a return on investment. Logic and Predicting Consequences is required to support ethical social relationships. Ethical relationships coupled with Common Sense (as I defined) provide the tools to identify, develop, and manage low-risk and significant opportunities to produce a significant return on investment.

The alternative to not having the skills to support Common Sense is unethical behaviors. This causes degradation of trust and only minor collaboration. Only high-risk or insignificant opportunities can be acted upon.

Usually, successful corporations that are involved with unethical efforts, strongly enforce ethical behavior of their employees. But they create a boundary where control of assets are manipulated by unethical people. So the majority of assets being built are by ethical peoples. But assets are utilized unethically by corporate corruption at higher levels of administration.

I don't believe a person that is not a significant part of a corporation can pass judgment upon them. For a corporation to be viable (supporting the lives of many people), certain relationships are sustainably needed to be implemented. However, I believe that if more people broadly had strong skills in implementing Common Sense (as I defined), then unethical allocation of opportunities become less prevalent.

Currently wars dominantly are created by powerful groups of people to steal the resources of other people. The local people are manipulated into believing in a higher cause, but the actual purpose is the stealing of resources. The lack of Common Sense (as I defined) of the people at-large allows them to be easily manipulated.

I believe far greater economic development occurs when broad trust through consistent application of logic and predicting consequences is present.

I will be visiting your essay.

Thanks for explaining.Georgina

I just realized I did not convey why "Certification" is needed, and not just posting information on a website.

Expressing one's self using Critical Thinking and Predicting Consequences cannot be learned without recurring practiced efforts. The human mind reuses old habits. Expressing something irrationally does not change without Refereed constructive criticism.

Self-Esteem is often profession-centered. To evaluate one's self requires assessment modeled based upon the actual profession and the characteristics of the related social group.

These are extensive tasks.

To pay for the expertise to model assessments specific to an individual needs funding. The act of Certification provides a business system to support broad applicability.

Any good intention without a business model is without merit; it is not practical.

Dear James,

Conscience is the only true common sense we all share.

Please read

Levels of consciousness.

I have created a custom search engine and a portal of portals

Any Body Can Do - Everything For Good to popularize the truth of our common sense or conscience.

I am a father of 3 little boys of ages 8,6 and 3 and I know it is not an easy task to teach them some good behavior and not to fight with each other with out enticing them with some gifts. It's amazing how even though they are biological brothers in the shorter frame of time and space of a single family, they tend to fight so vehemently sometimes. Now I can understand this situation extrapolated to a large scale of human kind, which easily forgets the truth of brotherhood and fights. It is for this reason we need to find ways to remind us all of who we really are and hence the fancy website to grab the attention. You might find categories in the website which are purely entertaining as it is a crucial part of enticing an ever wandering human mind.

"I thinks, therefore we are"

I thank you for your work and I hope you will adopt and spread your alter egos work of "Any Body Can Do - Everything For Good" as well.

Love,

I.

"I'm not sure what you are referring to when you say "voluntary activities". "Voluntary" does not occur in my writings."

Wilde seems to like manufacturing things people don't say or mean. Then he puts them in quotes and attributes them to us. He did it to me as well. Not collegial.

I.,

My concern here is that "Good" is most often interpreted based on personal perspective and not Universal perspective. What is Good for a church pastor can be devastating to someone of another religion. Opportunities are often denied persons based upon religious preference.

Good and Evil are words used most often to manipulate political influence to support personal agendas. There is no Evil or Good in actionable terms other than politics.

To destroy Evil, simply never again speak of it.

Ethiical is much different than Good. Good references the individual, while ethical references everything, everywhere, for all time domains. Due to our current limitations, ethics is narrowly considered.

Remember the "Prime Directive" from Star Trek. I think it should be to promote and sustain the greatest diversity of life. Which may one day mean the extinction of humans to protect the Universe, or other universes.

Broad consideration does not necessarily put humans on top. Especially when we are the cause of broad destruction.

James,

Certainly common sense and critical thinking are a requirement for a society that must consider a viable future that insures long-term survival. I don't believe that any of us know just how to accomplish that worthy goal. Certainly the qualities you mention are needed, and your corporate-type structure and your application examples help to make it possible. Certainly long-term planning is an element if you think and plan in a reasonable fashion.

My problem too is knowing not only what should be done but also what isn't done. How to approach it and emit the type of behavior required is another matter. Your ingredients are sound.

Jim

Hi James,

Very interesting essay, thank you! Teaching common sense is a honorable goal but teaching people who don't have the capacity to have such a skill is useless I'm afraid ;-)

Jim,

Not knowing what isn't done is a re-application of predicting consequences. In the profession of "Project Management" and "Program Management" (supervisory) these advanced skills are called "Requirements Management" and "Risk Management". The following is just a rough overview off the top of my head.

When a program manager first is introduced to forming a project, a representative group of experts get together with the customer and their team to define a "Project Charter". This defines the central intents of what is to be accomplished and design decisions map back to this Project Charter throughout the project until deliverables are finished and delivered. Otherwise wasted time is spent wavering in determining what the customer "might" want, or can do without. The Project Charter becomes customer approved.

From the Project Charter the List of Requirements is built by a team of experts. These are all things that become implicitly stated from the Project Charter. For example: SAE Standards related to the build, Federal Government Guidelines, IEEE Standards ... Phases of development and related milestones, payment schedules, required reporting, detail depth of documentation, customer specific requirements ... list of deliverables.

Asset Management from the status of the previous and present projects in development are referred to help determine a timeline for development. Typically a Gantt Chart and/or Project Management Software is implemented.

Requirements Management and Risk Management worksheets are implemented to capture details of requirements and their costs and risks and their potential costs and related delays. Asset Management is referred to for estimating availability of resources.

So far, all of this has occurred without getting paid by the customer so previous profits from other projects must pay for these efforts. Cost estimating is done based upon past experience. This is where experience plays between profit, losing the bid, and law-suits/bankruptcy. The Program Manager is only partly responsible for cost estimating. Built into the cost is labor for covering some number of other project estimates where the customer will choose another company to do the work.

The Customer pays for Phase I and no further payment will be received until the first milestone and related deliverables are conveyed to the customer.

Next the Program Manager assembles a team of Project Managers. The team assembles a Statement of Work (SOW). The SOW details every step and every Work Order down to the largest reasonable effort that one person can reasonably accomplish with their known skill set and experience. The Team updates the Requirements Management and Risk Management worksheets as they discover new potential issues.

Then the team of Project Managers under the direction of the Program Manager schedule the expertise and material and begin development.

The coordination of Requirements Management, Timeline, and Risk Management are tightly monitored throughout the development to ensure what isn't yet done is completed on-schedule.

What you asked is an advanced skill of Common Sense where self-esteem in that environment in-part comes from practiced application and developing experience.

We all, including myself, can always improve our Common Sense skills related to the Social Group in which we are involved. Common Sense is Group-centric. For example, Common Sense between a Program Manager and a team of General Electric national defense contractors is very specific.

The Common Sense component of Self-esteem in that environment is based in a developed set of thumb-rules to deal with the emotional condition of team members, developed social etiquette that does not fully transfer to other companies, and systems of communication processes that are expected. These components can be documented so that a new Program Manager can come up to speed quickly in dealing with the specific National Defense Contractor to ensure that risks in obtaining the bid are minimized.

This is one application for having a certification program to help ensure selected Program Managers can quickly develop the "practiced" skills to engage in these high level negotiations.

However, for smaller projects just keep the equivalent of a grocery list. :.)

I tend to disagree. We all have deficiencies as compared to others in specific situations. But I think you meant someone who is handicapped or a drug addict.

I have not as yet considered tools to address drug addicts as yet.

However, a person with ADHD has certain challenges to overcome. Typical symptoms include, but are not limited to: chronic tardiness, sloppy work, hostile to authority, procrastination, working harder not to accomplishing some task than just doing the task, hiding out ...

In the Common Sense structure that is being developed at www.UA-KiTS.com, are the beginning of tools to address certain personal challenges that people have.

One tool for those with ADHD is that when reading, every time a person notices their mind has drifted they should make a small mark at the top of the page. Use a Post-it if the page cannot be marked, or even put a Post-it on the top bezel of the computer display. The conscious act of making the mark over time will tend to train the mind to remain focused while reading.

This is just one of hundreds of techniques that are available to be taught to help persons with professional disabilities to compensate for their perceived lack of common sense.

A tool for the average person is Refereed Debate, and can be easily used in classrooms and meetings to multiply interactive experiential learning. A teacher/lecturer normally stands in front of a room and infrequently engages students/participants one at a time. The students/participants have no hope of sharing respect with their peers. Referred Debate can be set up with 3 to 10 participants in each group. The object is to find and support the best pathway to achieve a common goal.

The Referee is initially the person most experienced in critical thinking and predicting consequences. In grade school, this is the teacher. In a company meeting, this might be a program manager.

As certain participants reliably express themselves logically and with well-developed predicting of consequences, then they are rotated in as Referee.

The Referee verbally guides the expressions of debate participants to cite three categories of weakness: logical, path of consequences, sustainability. Additionally, the Referee verbally guides the expressions of debate participants to cite three categories of strength: emotional connectedness, social connectedness, and Clarity of processes. A list of points given or taken is provided to each participant before-hand.

Types of issues in each category might include: logical inconsistencies, holes in considerations, vagueness ... and points are charged to the participant.

The result is the sharing of Respect between participants as they teach each other useful relationships. The process is practiced experience. The educational platform is Project Based Learning (PBL). An entire rudiment project can mentally be planned in a few minutes by thinking through the needed requirements, risks, resource availability, and processes. Practiced expression quickly builds these skills where reading about it does little to change engrained behaviors.

These are just examples of what can be done with people who appear not able to learn common sense.

Please keep in mind that the non-profit 501(c)3 corporation is at present just a place-holder until I can find other people who have the philosophical, psychological, and logical skills to augment my own. I do not know everything .... yet :.) No really, knowledge is a continuous learning process.

Every certification agency (SAE, IEEE, AMA, ABPS ...) have all started with an Articles of Incorporation and incrementally grown. A complete solution is not needed up front. Continuous asserted effort builds resources quickly.

I am seeking persons that can contribute to development. I can perhaps obtain a grant to pay for the first phase of development and implementation if I can find persons with related recognized qualifications in philosophy, psychology, human resources administration ... support@ua-kits.com

Additionally,

The Referee in Refereed Debate is in a different position than the participant and continuously learns techniques and relationships. So the Referee is learning every bit as much as the participants.

For those visiting this essay, I would appreciate if you would rate the topic as it relates to being able to take action to Steer the Future of Humanity. This topic is more than viable, there is a market need and funding resources to create a distributed self-sustaining implementation.

If you have any recognized qualifications and an interest in contributing to development, a grant application can be submitted to ED.gov and other organizations to pay contributors for their efforts.

support@ua-kits.com

UA-KiTS

Unlocking Aptitude - Knowledge in Translational States

Dear James,

Thank you for the score you gave to me. You are right about the missing part of providing sustainable support of investigative efforts. However, my article, being written by a physicist, hardly could deal with such items, and I wanted to put the accent on the epistemological attitude facing the legitimate unification of knowledge, of realities and, mainly, of humans. Indeed, I think that attitude is first; economics is later. As a matter of fact, one can find quite often such confusion in most of the western countries, namely, that prosperity in education comes from prosperity in economics; I think it is exactly the opposite.

You say well that we don't even teach common sense at schools (neither public nor private): common notions are completely oriented to making money, to generate and utilize technologies, to worship the body, to be as popular as possible, to reach wealth at any price, and so on and so forth. In other words, we have consciously organized our world on an egoistic basis and, as a consequence, rather that dignifying the human individual by making him more responsible of the world, humans within, we block the natural volition of humankind to live with the others, to live for the others as the best possible self-service, to back feed a healthy self-esteem, ... That's why I believe science can become an area of hopefulness for humankind in the future, provided we actually understand the crucial role of self-critique in science generation and the importance of learning other ways of thinking the world and the whole reality. ¿Don't you think so?

Best regards,

Alex

P.-S. I shall read your paper in detail. Only then, I will be able to making comments to you; however, I can see in advance that it will be an enjoying experience.

I understand scope of practice has a lot to do with scope of publication. Your profession is interesting for me. Physicist?

Regarding why teaching Common Sense broadly is important to the future of physics.

If we are living in a construct that allows for simulation/virtual-consideration, then we ourselves may be able to use the underlying construct in Building Universes - Relativity from Quantum Causality.

http://vixra.org/pdf/1402.0041v1.pdf

This is repeatedly implied elsewhere. What are the implications for intelligent life?

If you have a computer model, where there is environment evolved consciousness. Proposed elsewhere is a lack of substantive structure is an indication of a simulated environment. This is the realm of present particle physics and the Standard Model, there is nothing substantive below the size of an atom. Yet artifacts considered as subatomic particles have features larger than an atom; like boson. This contradiction seems to be supported by as yet non-observable systems of causal connectedness.

"Connectedness" is not a proper word. But it is a key feature in describing causality that exists despite and without direct reference to energy.

Energy has a component of m/s or space/time. As long as Qubits are related directly to space/time then energy is a required consideration. However, as in quantum entanglement, energy need not be a consideration related to a logic state. We may yet not have the means of creating an energy-less evolving causal state, but that does not mean it is not possible.

No two things can occupy the same space at the same time; in macro-physics. But in subatomic physics many things occupy the same space at the same time. There is no empty space anywhere in a Universe of Relativity.

Illusion is simply any system that is considered with incompletely considered perspectives. Everything we know is incomplete, so yes, cosmology from our perspectives is an illusion.

Probability, error tolerance, and limitations for approximations mask causality.

The contradiction between the macro and subatomic worlds seems to indicate a structural component of causality. Many more than one set of connectedness can share a causal component. The simple (exaggeration) shift of a causal connection is like the difference in spin observed in quantum entanglement. Seemingly instantaneous propagation. But outside of relativity, it is potentially just a slight shift between similar causal systems; energy-less.

The potential is that Building Universes - Relativity from Quantum Causality can be done without any energy at all except where we want to interface our space/time tools with the universes we build.

The universes we build need not have the same physics constants as our universe. As such, we can build alternate dimensional spaces. When interfaced with our universe; warping of space/time, worm holes, black holes, gateways between locations, quantum cameras ...

I believe we can build a mechanism to Exactly model our universe, and manipulate it to create computational systems. But the physical outcomes will exactly match physics and not the approximations provided by mathematics.

In any "real" physical environment, it would take an extraordinary number of seemingly abstract mathematics relationships to model the systems of relationships that are in constant change within a cubic centimeter. To do so without error is presently and for the foreseeable future impossible. A change in course on a practical pathway to manipulate space/time is needed.

http://vixra.org/pdf/1205.0021v1.pdf

By using the structure of the universe to build a system for analyzing a piece within our universe (quantum camera), then we are not relying upon approximations. Math will likely still be used, to get us into the general area we want to be. But the quantum camera would respond and interact with the our universe exactly.

The quantum camera would be a subset of a universe that we build.

To be sure, this is not pie in the sky relationships.

Billions of dollars in grants are available for this type of research:

https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=7fa50ea731f2aa4529b223b7f5b38987&tab=core&_cview=1

Why is broadly teaching Common Sense imperative?

....

Who will control the technologies developed?

Business Model to Broadly teach Common Sense:

How should we steer the future of humanity?

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2045

Method for ethically monitoring and eliminating all corrruption:

Corruption = unethical allocation of resources and/or opportunities

http://eliminate-all-corruption.pbworks.com

These combined methods provide for eliminating corruption from both the Top/Down (management of NSA) AND Bottom/Up (broadly teaching Common Sense).

Broadly teaching Common Sense is vital to the ethical use of technologies developed by physicists.

Common Sense ermöglicht Physik Karriere Straße.