When conservative commentators disprove the various claims of Leftist ideology, they usually do so in one of two ways. The first is by bringing a counter argument – “you claim male privilege, but I would be arrested if I hit you like that”. The second is by pointing out flaws in any evidence brought to support the Leftist’s point – “the reason there’s a disproportionate amount of black people in prison is because they’re committing a disproportionate amount of crime”.
Conservative commentators rarely disprove the various claims of Leftist ideology by pointing out why these claims are as far away from common sense as you can get in the first place.
It may be because people think the common sense test is too simplistic and in order to disprove something a more sophisticated method is required. It may be because people simply don’t know how to use the common sense test to disprove anything, which in turn will mean you won’t notice when people only believe things because they have failed to carry out a common sense test and therefore you won’t know that all you need to do to disprove those things is to point out their lack of common sense.
Apart from that you won’t know the power of pointing out that someone believes something only because they have lost their mind. I mean why settle for a method of disproof which makes a Leftist shrug and say, “well that’s your opinion”, when you can use a far more powerful method which will leave a Leftist with that special type of rabid anger that only comes when even the person themself realises they’re wrong.
What Is the Common Sense Test?
When a piece of information enters your brain, the very first analytical process that it undergoes is the common sense test. The information will pass through your common sense filter to see whether it raises any red flags. You may never have noticed this process before because of one or more of the following reasons: it goes on in your subconscious, it happens very quickly, or you’re too stupid to realise something like this occurs.
Your common sense filter works by asking one simple question.
Does the incoming piece of information make any sense at all? Does it fit in with my pre-existing knowledge of the world? Does it fit in with everybody else’s pre-existing knowledge of the world?
If the answer is yes, then that piece of information will be labelled as ‘sensible and possibly correct’ before its stored in its appropriate location. If the answer is no, then that piece of information will be labelled as ‘told to me by a cretin’.
Many people think that “common sense is not that common anymore” or that everyone’s common sense is different, but common sense tells us otherwise. Everybody has common sense and while it’s true that there may be some minor differences, for the most part common sense is the same for everyone. Everyone thinks it makes sense to look before you cross the street, everyone thinks you should be polite to people who are bigger than you and everyone thinks you shouldn’t lock the pilot of your airplane in the toilet. And I don’t think anyone believes that just because they can rise from the ashes, it’s perfectly ok to set a phoenix on fire. It’s not nice for the phoenix and it sets a bad example for children.
These kinds of things are universal truths for all people, in all societies and across all of time – provided they have streets, pilots, toilets and phoenixes.
The problem with all this is that if the common sense test is the first analytical process that every piece of information undergoes when it enters your brain, and if everyone has common sense and pretty much the same common sense, how is it that people are so often doing things which are – how to put this as nicely as possible – monumentally stupid?
The answer is that there are times when you can become numb to all the warning signals that are sounded when a piece of information fails to pass the common sense test.
This numbness is caused by your bias.
An example: There’s a girl. She’s gorgeous. For some already explained reason you really really like her. But you happen know that she’s not a good person. All the common sense alarms are sounding loudly, but your bias comes along and presses the mute button and you ask her out anyway.
Sometimes you can even bypass the common sense test altogether. You won’t need to silence its alarms when the common sense filter can be prevented from doing its job in the first place. This happens when bias has told the common sense filter not to analyse any incoming piece of information labelled: ‘idea which if I believe will make me morally superior’. I mean if you feel the need to be morally superior and this is the morally virtuous thing to believe, then who cares about common sense.
The common sense test is not the final word on whether the piece of information is right or wrong. It’s the first test and therefore the first word. If it makes sense it could still be wrong and if it doesn’t it could still be right. A second, more rigorous examination may show the truth to be contrary to what a common sense test would lead you to conclude. This second test is a full-scale critical analysis of every aspect of the information, using external research, objective reasoning and rational thinking. Whether you carry out a second full-scale critical analysis test or not, will depend upon the situation and the importance of the matter in question.
In order to ensure the common sense test is always working to safeguard you from ridiculous blunders you need to have your biases under control. Not easy, but not impossible. In order to ensure the full-scale critical analysis test will give you the most accurate results for those important matters where it’s vital to get it right, you need to activate your higher brain functions and keep them operating at a reasonable level. Sadly, while everyone has these higher brain functions, bias can once again prevent them from operating properly or even, when it comes to ideas which a person thinks will make them morally superior, cause their higher brain functions to shut down entirely.
Which explains why Leftists can believe the colossally stupid ideas that make up their ideology but still be able to get dressed in the morning. They can activate their higher brain functions and even operate them at a very high level – they can be doctors and lawyers and nuclear physicists, they can heal people, protect a person’s rights, create the energy the rest of us use on a daily basis – but at the same time they can believe that there are enough gender identities to have one per person and not realise that’s simply personal identity which by definition will be different for everyone. (Sorry for explaining the whole gender identity nonsense in passing and in half a sentence.) They can be family, friends, or colleagues who otherwise seem like normal, functioning adults and reasonable people, but if you mention Trump’s name, they will erupt in a fit of apoplectic rage in the belief that he is the worst evil ever to have existed.
So there are two tests. We can analyse the claims of Leftist ideology using the full-scale critical analysis test, but even the far less rigorous common sense test will usually expose Leftist ideas as being … how can I put this nicely … the product of a mind that wants to see problems and rebuke the people they think have caused them, so they can have something to do with their miserable lives and feel morally superior as a substitute for any real achievement or success, presumably because they lack the prerequisite talent and ability. Sorry for also explaining the entire motivation of the Left in one sentence.
Using the Common Sense Test on the Opinions of Experts and the Findings of Studies
This is all well and good I hear you say, but what about a situation when an expert tells you something or when someone shows you a study with a specific conclusion. Aren’t the opinions of decades-long experts and the findings of studies conducted within the framework of the scientific method, much more likely to be correct than what you think?
Absolutely.
But only if they pass the common sense test.
And not only do I think that you can use the common sense test on the opinions of experts and the findings of studies, but you think so too!
I’ll prove it to you with an example.
Let’s say you have stomach pains. You go to the doctor and he says that you’ve contracted a rare and deadly disease in your arms and legs which produces the symptoms that you’re experiencing. There’s no cure for this disease and the only way to save your life is to cut off your arms and legs.
Do you:
A: Have your arms and legs cut off as soon as possible because he is the expert and experts are always right.
B: Go home, have a little cry and then have your arms and legs cut off as soon as possible because he is the expert and experts are always right.
C: Go get a second opinion.
If you need some time to think about it, then you’ve also contracted a deadly disease, albeit one that’s nowhere near as rare. It’s called stupidity and there are only two things you can do to improve matters. Decades of education and instruction or electric shock therapy. The first thing will cure you of your problem; the second thing will cure me of mine.
Back to the example. The doctor’s diagnosis may well be correct, and the prescribed treatment may well be your only course of action, but your first assumption in the above hypothetical scenario provided you have a normally functioning brain, would have been that the doctor has lost his mind. That’s because your first reaction on hearing the prescribed treatment was to carry out a common sense test, where your common sense filter realised the extreme unlikelihood that pains in the stomach are caused by a disease in the arms and legs, and immediately alerted you to the fact that you’d just heard something that made no sense at all.
A second, full-scale critical analysis test may prove the doctor right after all, but the point is, we all run a common sense test first, even on the opinions of experts.
As for an example of how to use the common sense test on the findings of studies, I’m sure that after having read the example of how to use the common sense test on the opinions of experts, you can work it out for yourself. If you can’t, then you too have contracted a deadly, and very common disease.
Besides, there’s an example coming up in a minute.
How to Use the Common Sense Test to Disprove the Claims of Leftist Ideology
Let’s look at two examples of the common sense test disproving the claims of Leftist ideology close up, so that we can see its process step by step.
Two Leftist claims that are possibly the quickest to fail the common sense test are the gender pay gap and rape culture.
The Gender Pay Gap
By now everyone knows why this is ridiculous. You can’t simply average the amount of money men make and the amount of money women make and bitterly complain about the difference. I mean obviously you can, and people do, but that doesn’t turn it into a real problem. You need to consider other factors such as women making different life choices to men. If, for example, there are more women choosing to work part time than men, then of course the average amount of money women make will be lower – they’re working less hours. And if the part time nature of the job indicates a lower skilled and therefore lower paid job, then the average amount of money women make will be lower still. It’s mathematics not sexism.
We know all this because conservative commentators have analysed the studies that claim there’s a gender pay gap and noticed the ridiculously simplistic method used to calculate it, while at the same time they have seen other studies that show the gender pay gap all but disappearing when the differences between men and women are taken into account. But the truth is that not only could we have disproven the gender pay gap by using the common sense test, it would have also led us to the exact same conclusion – in that the method used to calculate the gender pay gap was flawed and would disappear when gender differences are taken into account – without having to do all that research.
Here are the steps of the common sense test that went on in my brain when I first heard about the gender pay gap and the claim that women earn less than men for doing the same job. My common sense filter asked whether this idea made any sense and whether it fit in with my understanding of the world.
And it didn’t.
Because my common sense filter assumed it was illegal for an employer to pay a woman less than a man for doing the same job. Now it only assumed because I didn’t know for certain what the law was, but once again common sense came to the rescue and reminded me that since nowadays people are very much against inequality and have spent decades trying to reduce it, enacting all sorts of equal rights laws including an equal pay law, had in all probability been done by now.
My common sense filter then wondered whether employers were simply ignoring the law and paying women less than men anyway, but that did not seem likely. We would have definitely heard about it. There would have been hundreds if not thousands of highly publicised – we’re not short of Leftist journalists – court cases where female employees would have successfully sued their employers and won obscenely large amounts of money, for paying them less than men.
No, women being paid less than men did not pass the common sense test.
This is not absolute disproof of the gender pay gap, but it does mean that you need to show me either how it’s legal to pay women less than men or how employers get away with breaking the law. Otherwise how do you expect me to believe that women earn less than men for doing the same job without taking leave of my senses. Ah, happily we’ve explained in passing, why the Left do believe in the gender pay gap.
But what about the studies showing that there is a gender pay gap? Well since the common sense test in this instance brought up some very powerful objections, the simplest explanation was poor methodology in calculating the pay gap. My common sense then wondered what the simplest methodological error could have been in a study looking at the difference in the amount of money made by men and women and it was obvious that a failure to factor in the different choices men and women made in relation to work, would produce such a gap, so I had my theory.
Yes, it’s that easy.
The full-scale critical analysis test shows all this too, but my point is proven: you can disprove the claims of Leftist ideology just by using a little bit of common sense.
Rape Culture
Any study that presents the statistic of one in four women on college campuses in America being sexually assaulted and uses it to prove the existence of rape culture, was carried out at best by a dim-witted imbecile and at worst by a liar. Or maybe that should have been at best by a liar and at worst by a dim-witted imbecile. You’re right that choosing to lie is worse than naturally being a dim-witted imbecile morally speaking, but it’s the idiots who are going to destroy us.
Studies are meant to be written by academics. Surely they can tell the difference between the broad, general category of sexual assault and the specific crime of rape. I suppose ‘sexual assault culture’ is not as sexy a label as ‘rape culture’.
The idea of rape (meaning sexual assault) culture does not pass the common sense test, but the idea that Leftists would include almost anything (like a man blowing his nose in the presence of a woman) in the term sexual assault, does.
The first question my common sense filter asked was what’s the mood on American college campuses? Are one in four women having the type of reactions that survivors of sexual assault have, for example trouble sleeping and eating, or psychological issues such as anxiety or depression? Have they developed a fear of leaving their homes or a discomfort around other people? Or are they just working themselves up into a righteous anger when a man opens the door for them, so they can claim it unequivocally proves his innate sexism, as by that action he is subconsciously declaring that women are incapable of opening doors? Did a man dare to openly find a woman attractive, so unequivocally proving his sexual perversion (though this will be true if his attraction continues after he realises that she’s a Leftist)?
Surely there would be far more misery coming from a quarter of all the women on campus. And I don’t mean the fake misery of Leftists who complain that they’re victims of this oppression or that oppression, even as they enjoy every benefit known to man. I mean the kind of misery that comes from someone who is actually suffering as a result of an actually horrific occurrence.
The second question my common sense filter asked was if it’s so bad, why are they there?
I know I’m saying that these people have no common sense, but this level of stupidity is ridiculous. Surely, despite the deranged inner workings of what we shall call inaccurately but for the sake of simplicity their mind, they still have some instincts for self-preservation. How can they declare college campuses a hotbed of rapists and sexual predators and still decide to spend four years living there? What kind of parent allows their daughter to go somewhere where they would have a one in four chance of being sexually assaulted?
Once again common sense has disproven another Leftist claim.
The Advantages of Using the Common Sense Test
Now I’m not against a full-scale critical analysis of any claims made by the Left. Researching, reading, facts, statistics, studies – all very good things in the grand scheme of things. It’s just that the natural order of things is to do a common sense test first, so it makes sense that your initial disproof should come from there if possible.
Also, there are a number of advantages in using an easy, three-second common sense test to disprove the claims of the left, that don’t exist in an intense, five-week, full-scale critical analysis test – apart from the ones just mentioned.
The first is that it means you understand exactly what’s going on.
As explained earlier, unless bias gets in the way, the first analytical process everyone performs on every piece of information they hear is a common sense test. Since everyone’s common sense is basically the same, if there is a disagreement about something it won’t be at the common sense level and it will take a critical analysis test to be resolved. It’s therefore only natural to immediately argue with whatever evidence your critical analysis test discovers and assume that common sense has nothing to say. Conservative commentators have failed to realise that the Left’s bias for moral superiority have made them bypass their common sense test, and that all they need to do to disprove their claims is to point out they lack common sense.
Secondly, if you don’t always start by asking whether something passes the common sense test or not, you’ll be in a weaker position when a Leftist makes a claim you haven’t heard before and therefore haven’t had the opportunity to research. When this happens, some conservative commentators either ignore the point or change the subject to something they are prepared for. But if you always start with a common sense test, then whenever you hear a claim you haven’t heard before, you’ll be able to use its results to respond properly. In the likely event that their claim fails the common sense test, you’ll be able to demonstrate your basis for disagreement, by presenting the question(s) asked by your common sense filter.
The Power of Using the Common Sense Test to Disprove Leftist Ideology
Not only have conservative commentators failed to realise that Leftists bypass their common sense test so all they need to do to disprove their claims is to point out they lack common sense, they have also failed to realise the power of the common sense test to disprove the claims of Leftist ideology.
Presenting a counter claim or evidence as a disproof is very powerful, but not nearly as powerful as pointing out that the claims can’t even satisfy the most basic standard of common sense. Now neither will make a true Leftist change their mind, but only one will send them into an apoplectic rage.
You see, if bias instructs a person’s common sense filter not to carry out the most basic analysis on certain types of information, that’s an implicit admission the information would not pass that test. This means a Leftist is someone who believes in something that their own common sense test would reject were such a test to be carried out.
They failed to carry out a common sense test but imagine for a second what would happen if you carried it out for them.
This explains the level of mental breakdown they have when you use the common sense test to disprove the claims of Leftist ideology. They lose their minds not because you’ve disproven something they believe, but because they can’t cope with knowing that their own common sense tells them it’s stupid. When you use counter claims or other pieces of evidence as disproof, you’re proving them wrong. When you use the common sense test you’re proving that they agreed all along.
That’s the power of the common sense test to disprove the claims of Leftist ideology.