把常识当成信仰

Treat Common Sense as Faith

> By Li Xiaolai · 2011-06-05 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20111009204948/http://www.lixiaolai.com:80/archives/10622.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

When communicating with students and their parents, I often run into this kind of puzzlement:

> What you say is different from what they say! I don't know whom to believe?

Or,

> But they all say so...

For example, I tell students:

> - Dictation isn't much use; better practise shadowing (跟读)...
> - Extracurricular experience doesn't play that big a role in applications, unless your experience is extraordinarily impressive, one in a hundred like a TOEFL score of 118...
> - Reading the questions first and then reading only "the parts you should read" in the reading-test passages: this claim is pure nonsense. A test like the SAT is a logic test; the Official Guide says it very clearly: Every word counts...
> - Take the TOEFL and SAT as many times as you like. A test designed because they know "doing badly once is normal," and also because they know "nobody can design a test that accurately measures a person's ability in one sitting," actually holding that "taking it many times is bad": isn't that self-contradictory?

In fact, this is nothing new: most people have no power of judgment, even though having the power of judgment actually isn't hard.

There's a saying in English, "**Nothing could be further from the truth.**"—"**nothing can be detached from the facts**" [Translator's note: the Chinese gloss here, 没有什么可以脱离事实, is Li Xiaolai's own rendering; the English idiom actually means "that is completely untrue." Kept as written]. Firmly believing this saying is the foundation of having judgment.

Note the wording above: "**firmly believing**." In fact, this principle should simply be a normal person's **faith**.

This principle is also basic common sense.

I always feel that the vast majority of things in life don't require any "specialist knowledge"; you only need to have some basic common sense, and [Translator's note: the original writes 可, literally "but"; 和 ("and") is likely meant; translated by the intended sense] a brain willing to run on its own, and that's enough. Many people aren't willing to use their own brains, so they can only follow blindly, and people who follow blindly often involuntarily abandon common sense without knowing it.

Once, chatting with friends, I mentioned that I don't believe in Chen Guangbiao. They asked me why. I said, it's simple: I'm a common-sense-ist. Common sense tells me that people who can donate money must be able to make money; people who can donate lots and lots of money must be able to make even more and more money. Isn't this common sense? Why don't I have any doubt when Bill Gates donates money? Because everyone in the world knows how he makes money and how he's able to make it. Likewise, I have no way to doubt Buffett, Li Ka-shing, Jackie Chan, Jet Li and so on. But after so many reports, you know who Chen Guangbiao is; do you know how Chen Guangbiao makes money? I googled carefully and found that this person's sources of income have always been very vague. So I have no way to believe him. [[1](#footnote_0_10622 "I know many people will disagree with me. But one day the truth will come out—nothing can be detached from the facts. If by then the facts prove I'm wrong, I'll admit my mistake at once.")]

Taking back the judgment you should have had in the first place isn't hard—it's just building one faith for yourself: "nothing can be detached from the facts," and then collecting some useful basic common sense, for example "no pain, no gain" (this one is very "basic"; it's not much different from the law of conservation of energy, is it?), "the placebo effect is pervasive" (this one a bit more "advanced"?). Then many problems will be solved easily. In fact, more often even such principles are too "advanced"; thinking in the simplest way can solve the problem:

> - Dictation isn't much use; better practise shadowing... (If you can't understand it, what the hell are you writing! Conversely, if you can understand it, what the hell do you need to write it for!)
> - Extracurricular experience doesn't play that big a role in applications, unless your experience is extraordinarily impressive, one in a hundred like a TOEFL score of 118... (1. Universities admit students, not "only activists"; 2. university applicants are high-school students, and it's perfectly normal for high-school students' experience to be ordinary; 3. if universities only admitted activists, where would the expansion of enrollment every year come from?)
> - Reading the questions first and then reading only "the parts you should read" in the reading-test passages: this claim is pure nonsense. A test like the SAT is a logic test; the Official Guide says it very clearly: Every word counts... (Not reading carefully yourself the official guide written in black and white, and insisting on listening to people's nonsense: this is a typical lack of common sense.)
> - Take the TOEFL and SAT as many times as you like. A test designed because they know "doing badly once is normal," and also because they know "nobody can design a test that accurately measures a person's ability in one sitting," actually holding that "taking it many times is bad": isn't that self-contradictory? (The reasoning is so simple it doesn't even need any common sense...)

Footnotes:

1. I know many people will disagree with me. But one day the truth will come out—nothing can be detached from the facts. If by then the facts prove I'm wrong, I'll admit my mistake at once. [[↩](#identifier_0_10622)]

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