Getting rebuked with "it's common sense!!"

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One thing that bothers me as an Aspie is when I get sharply rebuked with the line "but/because it's common sense!!" I do get the notion of common sense contrary to AS myths - indeed, in the past when I've been wronged by some bureaucratic (or company) policy - or heard of stories of people who have - I think, "how could they do something totally contrary to common sense??!" other than that, yes, I may not apply it consistently in spontaneous settings or may overlook theory of mind issues, but in many cases I genuinely believe that the path I took - spoken or acted - was grounded in rational thought.

And this is what troubles me. Often times, I'll get into an argument with somebody to explain how I arrived at the decision that I did, i.e. it was due to reasons X, Y, and Z, ergo...basically, just to be fair and convey to the other person that my action wasn't arbitrary. Regrettably, much of the time it just exacerbates the situation and they see me as obstinate.

However, as bad as it may sound, I'd rather they see me this way than see me as naive. If I think about it, which is worse, somebody sees me as naive ("Yes, I suppose you're right, I must be lacking in common sense") or somebody who is capable of their own thought and decisions?? Somebody who has a backbone? In some ways, it's really a defence mechanism against potential manipulators and bullies.

Either way though, I probably appear as a misfit based on my apparent insistence that common sense is highly subjective and that probably doesn't sit well with much of the NT "groupthink" mentality. Is this still your preferred approach & outlook too?

Considering the average intelligence of the "common" person, I want nothing to do with their idea of sense.

I agree with Jory, "common sense" these days may as well be worded as "blatent idiocy". I tend to stay away from that as much as humanly (or realistically) as possible.

That is the story of my life! Main reason me and my gf ever DO argue.

Her: common sense girl! this or the other
Me: but it made sense to me . . . .o,o

I hate the "common nonsense" that most people seem to have. A lot of people prefer to just believe what other people say instead of trying to reason it out for themselves. I've discovered that many of the things that are considered to be common sense are false and irrational. I'm still trying to sort out all of the lies that I've been led to believe that other people accept as common sense. The more I figure out, the farther separated I feel from society. I don't care though. I'd rather be right and be an outcast than be wrong and be part of the crowd.

Ah, to know truth and be unable to convey it so others may hear it's beauty is such an ironic fate in this world. For if truth bindeth thee into solitude, then lost is society and wisdom shall ne'er show it's face again.

And that's the rub: People don't want the truth, so they shun it, hide it, and discourage it, so they can believe whatever they wish to believe without being wrong.

But like I said, to know truth and be shunned away from the world is such despair. And in this, some might say, "ignorance is bliss".

There are no examples in the thread so far, so I don't know what those people are referring to when they rebuke citing "common sense". It could be different things, such as "the conventional thing everyone does", real "common sense", what THEY want you to do (controlling), and other things.

I get this rebuke all the time......and it's true I have no common sense.

Okay I can give a couple recent examples:

1) When I was working in an office for a temp. summer job I was given a list of contacts that was put on my desk and my supervisor was talking about this list and who I could contact for what-then he handed me a thumb-tack and said "here you can tack IT on the board" so I tacked the thumb tack to the board -not the list he had been talking about. Why would someone want a thumb-tack tacked to a board by itself I did NOT ask myself until it was too late.

2)Recently a friend asked me to transcribe notes for her -she gave me to 2 hour long lecture recordings to transcribe. This girl was going to reformat my computer for free when I thought I needed it so I wanted to do a favour for her. I told her that I was really bad at note taking and wrote exactly what the teacher said verbatim when I took notes so they were pretty useless- too much irrelevant info- it's that parts-to -whole problem- she said she did the same thing-but later summarized her notes -cut them down. So I assumed she wanted a verbatim transcription that she would later summarize. After 30 minutes into one of her 2 hour lectures I already had 6 single spaced pages -with every "um" that the teacher said recorded- every anecdote the teacher told re-written - nothing in my own words- a verbatim transcript- I realized I would be giving her 48 single spaced pages in the end - I called her to make sure this was actually what she wanted -of course it was not-she took "near verbatim" notes meaning very detailed -she did not literally mean verbatim! Why would a person want 48 single spaced pages of verbatim transcription of their recording-they might as well listen to their recording-I did not think until it was pointed out to me!

Although this may seem like taking things literally I generally don't do that. I usually get sarcasm and idioms. I'm good at making inferences in reading comprehension - as was noted on my neuro-psych report but as was also noted- these skills do not transfer over to real life practical social skills. It's more like having an intuition about what people would want or how they would see things and therefore what they mean.

Last edited by daydreamer84 on 07 Oct 2012, 12:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Another example is when I was working at a day care centre and I was told to wash the bottles and dishes. As there were tons and tons of them and I needed to get back to work quickly- we were short-staffed I should have done so quickly- but i did so very meticulously- fully scrubbing each one. One of the other ladies eventually came and grabbed the cleaning things from me and started quickly (and improperly-or maybe doing the bare minimum needed) cleaning them - saying it was only common sense.

I think the last one is ToM - it may be the consensus in that place to half-clean them, but it lacks much logic. Clean is clean and dirty is dirty. I volunteered at a stray cats' hospital and every container had to be cleaned spotlessly, so you can't know unless you have an intuition about the consensus in the given place, which we aspies lack.

The second may also be ToM - I would assume a person receiving a favor has to get something that saves them time/energy, and that something would be a summary, not a transcription. The issue with ToM is that it's situational. When I was transcribing from recordings of interviews to Holocaust survivors at uni as a student's job, I assumed the professor wanted each hum, sigh, pause transcribed, and I was right.

The first one...I don't know which aspie impairment it is, I suppose it causes reading comprehension problems too, others here will probably know. I used to teach reading comprehension at uni and to identify what the "it" pronoun refers to in a sentence.

But none of these examples are caused by a lack of "common sense".

I have gotten this from my office clerk at my old job. He didn't like how he had to spell everything out to me. One of the things I can remember well is when he told me to bring up five or six rollaways. So I brought up five and went back to work. Then at the end of my shift he asked me why were they not made and I said I don't know. He then told me I was supposed to make them and how long have I been working there. I should know these things and it's common sense. He told me why would he have me bring up rollaways and not have me make them? I thought of a logical answer and said "Maybe you were going to have someone else do it." Then he started to guilt trip me by saying if one of the guests asks for a rollaway and none of them is made, our boss is going to be asking why weren't any made.


I remember another time after my wedding I was opening up our wedding gifts and I got one from my aunt and uncle and cousin and they never travel out of state for family reunions or weddings. Dad told me it was because they were cheap so I said 'they may be cheap, but at least they weren't cheap enough to not give us a wedding present." Everyone laughed. My husband told me few weeks later it's common sense that people would know to not say that to someone so that is why no one told me to not ever say it to them.


Someone can tell me to take the trash out but at least I have enough common sense to know to put it in a trash can, not just throw it outside and leave it on the ground or just leave it sitting on the floor in the house because they didn't tell me to take it outside. But I wouldn't have enough common sense to put in a new trash liner. Hey they could be doing it themselves and they only wanted me to take out the trash. I know I can always ask if they want to put in a new trash liner. Problem solved. At my old work, I just figured next time the office clerk tells me to bring up the beds, I will ask him if I am supposed to make them too just to be sure.

I remember one time my mother told me to shake the dirt off the rug. So I picked it up and started shaking it and she told me "Do it outside, silly girl." I am sure that be lacking common sense and someone told me online it was more of a logic problem than taking it literal. One of my other online friends told me the same because the dirt would go all over the place and I wrote, "you use a broom to sweep it up." True, my mother did not tell me to take it outside to shake it. But my logic is, you sweep up the mess you made after shaking it. Sure I have seen people shake their rugs outside but I never made the connection you are supposed to take it outside and do it, I just thought it was so they wouldn't have another mess to clean up. "Oh I don't feel like sweeping up all this dirt so I am going to take it outside and shake it" But I bet if I didn't want to do more sweeping, I would have decided "I am going to take this outside so I won't have to sweep the floor again." Boom, if I were too lazy to sweep the floor again, I would have had common sense to take the rug out and shake it. But if that were a logic problem, then that would mean other aspies have logic problems also when they take things literal. Tell an apsie to take the trash out so they do and don't put in a new trash liner, hey that was just a logic problem than being literal.

Yeah you're right about it being TOM.......I think maybe what people call common sense is just intuitions people have because of TOM.

I'm very good with reading comprehension when reading though...I always have been...just can't transfer the skills over to real life......

This is the kind of thing I do. It is a kind of logic but it's a kind of logic involving theory of mind- and a lot of people have an intuition for this kind of things as well- because the actual request was just to shake out the rug....there was no specification about where or how to do this......but I think an NT (and probably some aspies - but not me) would automatically intuitively understand that your mother wanted the house cleaner which is why she wanted the rug shaken out...to clean the house, get dirt out of the house.....so therefore you should go outside to shake the rug so the house and the things inside the house remain clean. You could do this without intuition- just with logic- but then it would take some time to think through and real life interaction takes place on the spot...not a lot of time to think things through. I think it's the same as my reaction in the tack example I described above - if I had enough time to logically think through what it could refer to I would have understood- just a minute-but I was expected to react right away- so my first automatic thought was that it referred to the last thing given to me and talked about - the thumb tack.

I don't know for sure myself, but Albert Einstein allegedly once said: "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."

Einstein's view of time and space linked, where there is no absolute time that is the same for everyone, is still not "common sense" for most people. It has been pointed out by others that if humans developed technology where very very fast speeds were regularly achieved then the effects predicted by Einstein would become part of that society's "common sense" as they are observed in everyday life.

The thing about not taking the rug outside to shake it, yeah logic could lead to the conclusion that it should be done outside, but the person who did this knew that dirt was being shaken off the rug and thought the plan was to sweep it up afterwards to dispose of it. I can see that. I have had similar experiences, not exactly the same situation with a rug or whatever, but where I was asked or told to do something, and I did what seemed "logical" to me, but then found out that I was missing vital information necessary to make a better decision. Others assumed I just "knew" that information, and I suppose that is what many would call "common sense."

But overall, common sense is not necessarily true or better. It used to be "common sense" that man would never fly in a heavier-than-air powered machine, and that man would never walk on the moon. It is good to have people who look at things differently than most other people. In general, diversity gives us strength, not weakness.

I usually get rebuked with 'common sense' since some people consider what I do at times to be 'acts of plain stupidity/idiocy'.