Not the phony kind of common sense that so many conservatives and libertarians are trying to substitute for knowledge because they've spent so much time convincing themselves they don't need to know anything - they just need to adopt a radical skepticism that allows them to feel smart without having to do any real work.
I can take myself as a fair example.
I'm a generalist. A generalist is someone who knows less and less about more and more until he knows practically nothing about almost everything.
After 73 years, I'm the intellectual equivalent of the Platte River - my knowledge base is a mile wide and an inch deep. Too thick to drink and too thin to plow.
But because I actually know quite a bit about a few things, and because I'm a good salesman, I can spin it all into giving people the impression that I'm smarter than I actually am.
If I'm not careful, my ego gets in the way - sometimes to the point where I can flop all the way over into Cliff Clavin territory. Fake lord forgive me my sins.
So I have to be careful not to overstep my limitations. I have to look for - and listen for - people who carry real bona fides on a given subject, and shift my conversation from declaring what I know (or think I know) to a more inquisitive thing where I can put what I think on the table, and ask if there's something I've missed, or I've gotten wrong, or if there's something new I can learn.
So anyway, the main point is to remember what's supposed to help us maintain a certain humility:
The more we learn, the more we have to understand how much more there is for us to learn.
