Is there such thing as Common Sense?
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I had some great conversation recently which included a few conversations about the lack of common sense in the world. Interestingly from my conversations the lack of common sense in the world appears to be a fairly common view!
So I was listening to Marcus Buckingham author of "Discover Your Strengths" and I found my mind relating back to the common sense conversations I’d had. This is the essence of what Marcus said
On the 42nd day after conception the brain starts developing neurons, but not a few neurons, a 100 billion, and not over a life time, But 100 billion neurons in 120 days that's 9500 per second.
But
just like transistors
which make up computer chips neurons can't do anything unless they're
connected.
So
60 days before birth our neurons start trying to connect to each
other and when they make a connection a synapse is formed.
But
neurons don't just join to one other neuron, on average every neuron
connects to 15,000 other neurons.
So
just to be clear this means that by the
time your 3 years old you have 100 billion neurons each with 15,000
connections
Digressing
slightly, from the age of six your synapses start to fail, yes those
pathways you don't use simply fall into disrepair and break.
By
the time you wake up on your 16th birthday half your network has gone.
You
can build a few more connections through developing memory or learning but
you can never rebuild your network to the size it was when you were six
Back
to the plot, according to Marcus the areas of the brain which have
the strongest connections are the ones
which govern most of our thoughts
Now
this got me thinking over a very nice glass of Chapel Hill Vedehlo (a wine
I would recommend if you ever see it)
With
so many neurons and synapses the configuration of my brain and hence my
strongest connections are going to be very different to everyone else’s
in the world.
You
and me are absolutely unique, not just a little but if we (6.5 billion
people) were computers and our neurons were identical transistors it would
take more than 2,100 years before an identical configuration was built.
Add in the complexity of biology, learning and memory and the figure
becomes an infinite length of time.
To
me this means
I can think in a way that no one else has, will or would, and hence I will do things that no else has, will or could do.
And
if I'm looking for “my view of common
sense” then maybe its going to be a little harder to find than I used to
think.
Which
I guess is why a lack of common sense
in the world is a fairly common view.
Till next week be yourself
David Gardner
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