Common Sense Research Articles

Behavior-Based Safety, the Right Long-term approach to address Workplace Safety

Until the present, addressing the behavioral aspects of work-related accidents and occupational diseases in Romania has been very sporadic. Most companies have adopted various programs and initiatives to enhance compliance with Occupational Safety and Health procedures. All these procedures are important for a successful safety process. Done correctly, they contribute to good safety performance. But today, these elements define the average safety effort, representing what everyone else is doing. If a company performs them well, it will achieve an average level of safety for their industry. While the injury rate will be affected by the consistency of these efforts, the result will basically be a normal variation above and below the industry average: some years better than average, some years worse. In this context, the paper presents some tools developed worldwide to improve consistently the safety and health of the employees. The basic objective of this study is to explore the human dynamics of occupational health and safety and to show how these can be managed to significantly improve performance. The principles and practical procedures are not based on common sense or intuition, but rather on reliable scientific investigations. Many recommendations seem different from traditional approaches to occupational safety.

Context, Common Sense, and the Major Questions Doctrine: A Response to Justice Barrett

Context, Common Sense, and the Major Questions Doctrine: A Response to Justice Barrett

A Response Generation Framework Based on Empathy Factors, Common Sense, and Persona

A Response Generation Framework Based on Empathy Factors, Common Sense, and Persona

Learning From Teacher’s Failure: A Reflective Learning Paradigm for Knowledge Distillation

Knowledge Distillation transfers knowledge learned by a teacher network to a student network. A common mode of knowledge transfer is directly using the teacher network’s experience for all samples without differentiating whether the experience of teacher is successful or not. According to common sense, experience varies with its nature. Successful experience is used for guidance, and failed experience is used for correction. Inspired by that, this paper analyzes the failure of teacher and proposes a reflective learning paradigm, which additional uses heuristic knowledge extracted from the teacher’s failure besides following the authority of teacher. Specifically, this paper defines Mutual Error Distance (MED) based on the teacher’s wrong predictions. MED measures the adequacy of the decision boundary learned by teacher, which concretizes the failure of teacher. Then, this paper proposes DCGD (divide-and-conquer grouping distillation) to critically transfer the teacher’s knowledge by grouping the target task into small-scale subtasks and designing multi-branch networks on the basis of MED. Finally, a switchable training mechanism is designed to integrate a regular student which provides an option of student network without parameter addition compared with the multi-branch student network. Extensive experiments on three image classification benchmarks (CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100 and TinyImageNet) show the effectiveness of the proposed paradigm. Especially on CIFAR-100 dataset, the average error of students using DCGD+DKD decreased by 4.28%. In addition, the experiment results show that the paradigm is also applicable to self-distillation.

Long Dialogue Emotion Detection Based on Commonsense Knowledge Graph Guidance

Dialogue emotion detection is always challenging due to human subjectivity and the randomness of dialogue content. In a conversation, the emotion of each person often develops via a cumulative process, which can be influenced by many elements of uncertainty. Much commonsense knowledge influences people's emotions imperceptibly, such as experiential or habitual knowledge. In the process of conversation, this commonsense knowledge information can be used to enrich the semantic information of each utterance and improve the accuracy of emotion recognition. In this paper, we propose a growing graph model for dialogues emotion detection based on retrieval of external knowledge atlas ATOMIC from local and global respectively, which can effectively represent the dialogues as a process variable in a sequence and the correlation among utterances also can be represented by the graph model. In particular, 1) we introduce a common sense knowledge graph for linking the commonsense knowledge retrieved from external knowledge atlas ATOMIC, which can effectively add auxiliary information to improve the performance of each utterance's representation. 2) We propose a novel self-supervised learning method for extracting the latent topic of each dialogue. Based on this design, we also propose an effective optimization mechanism to make the representation (embedding) of latent topic has a better distinction for the next operation. 3) Finally, the cross-attention module is utilized to combine the utterances' features and the latent conversation topic information. The attention mechanism can effectively use topic information to supplement the representation of utterances and improve recognition performance. The model is tested on three popular datasets in dialogue emotion detection and is empirically demonstrated to outperform the state-of-the-art approaches. Meanwhile, to demonstrate the performance of our approach, we also build a long dialogue dataset. The average length of each conversation is over 50 utterances. The final experimental results also demonstrate the superior performance of our approach.

Foreign Relations Law as a Method of Private International Law's Theoretical Self-Reflection and Critique

In this essay, I think with Karen Knop about the heuristic and critical potential of the framework of Foreign Relations Law (FRL) for Private International Law (PrIL). I apply the framework of FRL to the recognition of foreign marriages in Denmark to study how PrIL is operationalized by domestic authorities. FRL helps us see how PrIL's operationalization engages a wide array of legal fields, including Public International Law (PIL), domestic administrative law, and immigration law, as well as the domains of foreign service and foreign policy. In doing so, PrIL in this context draws upon all these fields’ rationales and implicit assumptions. I argue that a FRL perspective not only contributes to PrIL's theoretical self-reflection, but also enhances PrIL's capacity for subversiveness—“its ability to unsettle by showing a given legal system's assumptions and approaches to be a matter of choice rather than simply common sense.”1

Literary Theory for LLMs

Recent criticism of large language models (LLM) and generative AI have focused on the way that these applications are little more than Stochostic Parrots' technological devices that generate seemingly intelligible statements but do not know and cannot understand a word of what they say. If the terms of these evaluations sound familiar, they should. They are rooted in foundational concepts regarding language and technology that have been definitive of Western systems of knowing since the time of Plato. The current crop of critical correctives and well-intended LLM hype-reduction efforts reproduce—or one might be tempted to say "parrot" this ancient wisdom. And it works, precisely because it just sounds like good common sense. But that's the problem. This presentation takes aim at this largely unquestioned theoretical framework, identifies its inherent limitations and inabilities to accurately understanding the opportunities and challenges of LLMs, and conclude by providing a more robust method for responding to and taking responsibility for these technological innovations.

The Press and the Intelligence Community: The Construction of OTRAG and Cóndor as Global Threats

This article studies the way the US government through the Central Intelligence Agency, the Washington Post and the New York Times approached in tandem the development of rockets in Argentina and in two African countries (Zaire and Libya) during the last stretch of the Cold War. A qualitative analysis is carried out from primary government and journalistic sources, looking at how the media acted alongside the government and the intelligence community, providing the same information and a very similar interpretation of the facts, building common sense and a geopolitical imaginary. This is a geopolitical analysis of the construction of imagery of the dangerous identity of the OTRAG and the Cóndor II in the 1970s and 1980s. The conclusions show that both cases were construed as a geopolitical identity on non-core countries that ended in pressures, the projects be terminated, managing to build a sense by which the economic and political interests of the United States were projected hegemonically as universal interests.

The diversity of French society

The barometer method for observing French society is based on the observation of programs and the indexing of people who speak on air. It is carried out per person and per broadcast. Consequently, a person is indexed once, and once only, when he or she speaks. The indexing of each criterion is carried out taking into account the supposed common sense categories, that is to say, according to the perception that most viewers would have. This perception is formed throughout the program, based on numerous elements that can be visible on the screen, said, written or even induced. Seven criteria are currently retained: Perceived origin (perceived as “white”, perceived as “black”, perceived as “Arab”, perceived as “Asian”, “other”) gender (“masculine”, “feminine”) Socio-professional category (“CSP+”, “CSP–”, “inactive” and “marginal or illegal activities”) Disability (“yes”, “no”) age (“under 20 years”, “20 - 34 years”, “35 – 49 years”, “50 – 64 years” and “65 years and over”) The precarious situation (“yes”, “no”) The place of residence (“city center”, “peripheral neighborhoods of houses and small buildings”, “large groups of popular suburbs”, “villages”, “DOM-TOM”). (Sources: https://www.csa.fr/Informer/Collections-du-CSA/Observatoire-de-la-diversite/Barometre-de-la-representation-de-la-societe-francaise-resultats-de-la -wave-2020) French society is thus multicultural, multi-religious, and multi-cultural; this diversity must be considered as strength if we want to build a society of equality, understanding and acceptance of the Other as different, certainly, but as being having the same rights, the same duties and the same obligations. Certain groups or associations campaign for this type of society and for interbelief. We will simply cite the G3i group (International, Intercultural and Interconvictional); this group is currently chaired by Professor F. Becker; it brings together Muslims, Buddhists, people of the Jewish tradition, and even atheists.

A Review of Alex Blanchette, Porkopolis: American Animality, Standardized Life, and the Factory Farm. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020, 320 pp.

The book depicts a dynamic experiment in industrializing the pork industry in the post-industrial United States. The author demonstrates how in the heart of the Global North corporations seek to create and maintain the life of a standardized industrial pig which serves as a source material for more than a thousand commodities. “Porkopolis” introduces the reader to the workplaces of a factory farm that changes the daily lives of workers and the hierarchy of humans and non-humans. Thereby it opens the possibility of reimagining life shared with other species. A rich ethnography, equally sensitive to both phenomenology and the political economy of labor, challenges some aspects of contemporary Euro-American common sense. Industrialization as a basic feature of the capitalist mode of production still plays a fundamental role in agriculture, and changing the basis of industrial food production is not possible by transforming individual consumption practices.

‘입시위주 교육’에 전제된 ‘교육’ 개념의 비판적 검토 -한국교육개발원 종합보고서 <입시위주 교육의 실상과 대책>을 중심으로-

This study, as the first phase of the “Educational Concept Analysis Project for countering ‘education for the entrance examination’”, critically examined the concept of ‘education’ presumed in the Korean Educational Development Institute(KEDI) research report that dealt with the current situation and countermeasures of education for the entrance examination. The problematic issues associated with the concepts of education can be classified into four separate categories. First, the concept of education assumed in the KEDI report was revealed to consider education as merely a means for school entrance or preparation for school entrance and have a distorted perspective on the subject of education, based on the common sense that all aspects within schools constitute education. Second, the KEDI report, by reducing education to the external contexts, specifically within the realms of psychology and sociology, concealed educational phenomena, inevitably resulting in confusing the context. Third, in this report, issues were identified where education was defined only in relation to the results that education is expected to bring out. This approach defers the construction of the conceptual system and the value of education and leads to the divergence in causality and contradictions between concepts. Fourth, while the report emphasized the importance of the “essence of education” and its “intrinsic value” as an alternative to overcome the shortcomings of education for the entrance examination, it paradoxically renders the argument empty due to the neglect of a clear understanding of the conceptual system of education. The issues outlined above originate from the confusion between entrance-centric schooling and education. While entrance assessments and educational phenomena should be distinctly demarcated within the school context, the report is deficient in establishing the requisite conceptual boundaries and theoretical underpinnings necessary for their coexistence. Addressing these limitations is a challenge that must be overcome through the supplementation of appropriate theories distinguishing education from entrance examinations.

Movimento come prassi immanente. L’anti teoria nei "Quaderni del carcere"

A modern classic, Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks represents today a point of reference in diverse fields, from anthropolo-gy to history, from political theory to literary studies and so-ciology. In order to understand how Gramsci’s methodology functions, one needs to focus on movements between ‘high’ and ‘low’, aristocratic and popular, war of strategy and war of position, dominant and subaltern. Gramsci rediscovers young Marx’s revolutionary writings and adopts a radical stance in which Marxism coincides with an immanent – that is, mo-bile – critique of humanity in which institutions and common sense are stripped of any metaphysical residuals. Grams-ci called it philosophy of praxis and singled out philology as its instrument. This contribution aims at reconstructing the context in which this highly dynamic, anti-dogmatic concep-tion develops, eschewing determinism and the hidden teleol-ogy of positivism. Mobility as a theory of social change looms large in the Prison Notebooks, whereas passive revolution reflects the fixity of state centrism related to uneven social conditions. But above all the philosophy of praxis’ strength consists in its self-reflective faculty, what Said defines as “Traveling theory”, ideas and theories that move from one culture to another, involving processes of representation and institutionalization different from those of the point of origin, thus spreading critical consciousness through movement.

Life, Subjectivity and Creativity: Alfred North Whitehead’s Metaphysical Understanding of Evolutionism

The theory of evolution has had a well-known complex and tumultuous public journey, from its beginning as a shocking and bold hypothesis about animal life on Earth, until its present status almost as common ground and, as some may argue, an almost (scientific) common sense framework for interpreting the metamorphoses of life as a general phenomenon. Although the biological and environmental mechanisms of evolution have been thoroughly described and structurally analyzed during the past century and a half, the metaphysical possibility, grounding and implications of Charles Darwin’s ideas were rarely accounted for in a philosophically satisfying manner. In my paper, I will argue that Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy has at its core exactly such an attempt of deducing, coherently expressing and conceptually understanding the inner metaphysical significance of speaking about ‘life’ in evolutionary terms. This attempt is not the only source of Whitehead’s groundbreaking metaphysics (as cosmology), but is among the most important because is directly related to his famous formulation of the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness, to his description of an ‘actual occasion’ inspired by the ‘vibratory organism’, to his non-Cartesian insights on ‘subjectivity’ as embedded by ‘feelings’ and a ‘subjective aim’ and, finally, is related to his rendering of Creativity as the Category of the Ultimate, the driving force of existence. Especially regarding creativity, the theory of evolution has been of invaluable support, yet, according to Whitehead himself, the scientific mind is leaning towards neglecting this beautiful and optimistic side of evolution, concentrating more on its destructive and brutal side: ‘The other side of the evolutionary machinery, the neglected side, is expressed by the word creativeness’ (Science and the Modern World).

Israel – In Search of Constitutional Common Sense

The Israeli radical judicial overhaul program, aiming to seriously weaken the judiciary, has led the country to the brink of chaos and violence, with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in the streets, society tearing itself apart and numerous sectors of society, such as medical service or reservists of IDF, announcing a suspension of their service to a nation they fear will no longer be a democracy. Despite the strong social protest, Knesset – representing an extremely right-wing coalition – adopted on the July 24, 2023 the amendment to Basic Law: The Judiciary to bar the judiciary from striking down decisions of the government and its ministers on the grounds of such decisions being unreasonable. The measure known as the reasonableness clause (standard) is rooted in English and American case law and it is frequently used in Israel to control administrative activity. It allows the courts to strike down governmental and administrative decisions and their regulations seen as having not taken into account all the relevant considerations of a particular issue, or not given the correct weight to those considerations – even if they do not violate any particular law or administrative rulings. The current right-wing coalition, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, argues that the clause as it stands gives too much power to the judiciary, especially the Supreme Court sitting as a High Court of Justice, to interfere with the actions of the executive, and that the powers of judges, who are not elected by the public, remain out of control in this procedure. Opponents of the government’s amendment argue that this standard is crucial in helping to protect civil rights that are not fully defined in Israeli law. Eliminating the standard of reasonableness will be another step towards giving the government unlimited power. It violates not only the separation of powers principle and the rule of law but it also harms the right to good administration. Irrespective of the Supreme Court’s decision on the constitutionality of the government’s amendment, the struggle to maintain the democratic principles of the Israeli system will continue. Despite the strong social protest, Knesset – representing extremely right-wing coalition –adopted on the 24th of July 2023 the amendment to Basic Law: Judiciary to bar the judiciary from striking down decisions of the government and its ministers on the basis of being unreasonable. The measure known as the reasonableness clause (standard) is rooted in English and American case law bless and it is frequently used in Israel to control the administrative activity. It allows the courts to strike down governmental and administrative decisions and their regulations seen as having not taken into account all the relevant considerations of a particular issue, or not given the correct weight to those considerations – even if they do not violate and particular law or administrative rulings. The current right-wing coalition, led by Beniamin Netanyahu, argues that the clause as it stands gives too much scope to the judiciary, especially the Supreme Court sitting as a High Court of Justice, to interfere with the actions of the executive, and that the powers of judges, who are not elected by the public, remain out of control in this procedure. Opponents to the government’s amendment argue that this standard is crucial in helping to protect civil rights that are not fully defined in Israeli law. Eliminating the standard of reasonableness will be another step towards giving the government unlimited power. It violates not only the separation of powers principle and rule of law but it also harms the right to good administration. Irrespectively of the Supreme Court's decision on the constitutionality of the government's amendment, the struggle to maintain the democratic principles of the Israeli system will continue.

Analyzing the Evolution of a Rural Construction Community in China from the Perspective of Cultural Landscape

The rural construction community embodies a confluence of social dynamics within rural areas, constituting an organic self-organization with hierarchical relationships. Over a specific period, the amalgamation of various roles and relationships within the rural construction community shapes the prevalent culture, distinctive image, and production techniques within villages. This study examines the structural composition of village communities and endeavors to establish a linkage mechanism among different elements within the construction framework. Focusing on villages and their inhabitants, this research traces the temporal evolution along the following axes: (1) Traditional Agricultural Civilization Age; (2) Collective Economy Age; (3) Rural Industrialization Age; (4) Rural Differentiation Age; and (5) Rural Revitalization Age. This paper primarily observes the evolution through the cultural foundation and manifestation of rural communities, emphasizing that the communities represent cooperative, autonomous, and transformative constructs. From the perspective of cultural landscapes, this article elucidates the interconnected trajectory of ecology–institution–livelihood in the creation of rural communities. It interprets the interplay among the resource patterns, social structure, and economic forms of villages across five distinct periods, fostering a comprehensive understanding of rural community development amidst changing circumstances. Recent years have seen a concerning decline in rural areas, where rural community culture faces a significant impact from modern industrial civilization, resulting in the disintegration of the social fabric within community construction. Nevertheless, the resilient common sense and self-organization capabilities of villagers persist. This study seeks to offer theoretical guidance and decision-making support to advance innovative social governance in rural locales. Moving forward, China’s rural revitalization demands a more adaptive sustainable assessment within rural construction communities.

Group differences and factors influencing obesity -- based on CFPS2020 data analysis

To understand the current status of obesity prevalence among Chinese adults and to target high-risk groups for obesity, in order to provide guidance for obesity prevention and intervention. The required data were extracted from the China Family Panel Studies 2020 (CFPS 2020) and statistically processed using SPSS 29.0 statistical software. Group differences in obesity were tested using Mann-Whitney U test for ranking variables and the chi-square test for dichotomous variables. The test of factors influencing obesity was performed using multifactorial logistic regression. In the study sample of 2613 cases, the percentage of obesity was 32.57%. The innovation of this paper is the use of the most recent data, the CFPS2020 database has not been used to do a study before. In addition, another novelty of this study is the discovery of the current influence of obesity on the internet usage, in addition to gender, which is a common sense understanding of obesity. New findings were also made on how different incomes and different marital status affect the prevalence of obesity. The prevalence of obesity was statistically significant in the group distribution across gender (P<0.001), age (P<0.001), current marital status (P<0.001), internet usage (P<0.001), and annual income from work (P<0.001). Accurate and effective obesity interventions should: (1) Adapt health and fitness programs to address different metabolic, hormonal, and social influences on diet and exercise for men and women. (2) Provide affordable or subsidized weight management programs for low-income groups to ensure that low-income groups can participate. (3) Implement nutrition counseling and fitness programs for couples or families to create a supportive environment that recognizes the impact of marital status on eating and activity habits.

Common caregiver illness representations in the context of family-based treatment: Commentary on Marchetti and Sawrikar (2023).

In their systematic review on parent illness representations in their children with anorexia nervosa (AN), Marchetti and Sawrikar (International Journal of Eating Disorders, 2023) integrate past research on the parental experience of the illness, investigating whether the Common Sense Model of Self-Regulation (CSM) is a useful framework for understanding parental responses to AN. Given that family-based treatment (FBT) is a first-line treatment for adolescents with eating disorders and is based upon integrating parents into the treatment process, it is especially relevant to explore how parent illness representations may impact FBT. In this commentary, we describe how FBT is designed to support parents and address many of the common unhelpful beliefs and emotions associated with parenting an adolescent with AN. We include specific examples of how parents can be supported within FBT as manualized. We also examine parental representations that may not be addressed by FBT, and how these may impact treatment outcomes in FBT, possibly via the impact of expressed emotion. Future research is needed to determine if modifications to FBT are required to address parental representations of the illness. We end by expanding upon Marchetti and Sawrikar's suggestions on how treatment could be extended to better support parents as necessary.

Common sense, populism, and reactionary politics on Twitter: An analysis of populist far-right common sense narratives between 2008 and 2022

Far-right parties often depict their ideas as ‘common sense’ and as self-evident, natural, just, and proper. This article examines the extent to which there is a uniform ‘far-right common sense’. Using a mixed-methods computational approach, we analysed Twitter posts mentioning ‘common sense’ from the accounts of far-right parties in the UK, France, Italy, and the USA between 2008 and 2022. Results from our comparative study suggest that uniformity in far-right constructions of common sense is limited by varying socio-economic/political contexts. Meanwhile, our analysis also opens the door for future research on the role of mainstream actors in the legitimisation of reactionary common sense narratives.

What explains collective action: The impact of social capital, incentive structures and economic benefits

AbstractThis study focuses in testing the power of reciprocity and leadership as collective action incentive structures and cooperation economic benefits in explaining collective action initiation in the context of a post‐communist transition economy. The paper is based on a structured survey targeting Albanian export‐oriented farmers. Different from most previous studies, this paper uses both regression analysis and machine learning procedure which is better suited for analysing non‐linear relationships. The empirical findings are at odds with common sense that non‐cooperation is the dominant strategy, because the presence of tolerant reciprocators and leadership resources provide promising incentive structures for collective action development.

The Compromised Strongman: Interrelationship of Strongman Politics, Radical Rights, and Nationalism in Contemporary Bangladesh

The strongman is the single key approach to studying the democratic status, the rise of radical rights, and the questions on nationalism in present-day Bangladesh. Occupying the office since 2008, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina took a sharp turn in 2014 to become a strongman leader of the country, and a successful strongman regime has been created in the process. Since then, the strongman government has made quite a few populist compromises with the radical right groups, which then, in turn, gave birth to a distinct kind of strongmanship: the compromised strongman. This historical research through secondary data analyses finds that a nationalist identity split between a linguistic and a religious, national consciousness has played the role of the major catalyst in the political outcome of the country, and an apparent compromise between the two groups representing the secular and the religious blocks, contrary to common sense, paved the way for the strongman politics in Bangladesh.