Everything is Obvious by Duncan Watt

Everything is obvious Extension
In his book, Everything is Obvious, Duncan Watt starts off reasonably well in explaining how certain beliefs or perceptions influence our way of thinking and decision making. These sets of beliefs are accumulated through past experiences, surrounding environments and cultures in which collectively form the philosophy of common sense. Though common sense is powerful tool that helps us navigate through our life smoothly without encumbering our brains into reflecting on every single detail. The author considers it as a set of fallible mental patterns that are invisible to us, yet have a powerful affect that extends to our way of thinking as well predicting the future of certain things in our life. In the book, Watt exposes the reality of common sense which convinces us that we know more than what we really do. Consequently, we keep making same mistakes and learning less from the past. "Bad things happen not because we forget to use our common sense, but rather because the incredible effectiveness of common sense in solving the problems of everyday life causes us to put more faith in it than it can bear."(Watt 23).
Interestingly, these set of perception or common sense are different among people, what a group of people think it is common sense might not be applied to other group of people. For example, the concept of justice and fairness- which should be thought as universal common sense idea turned out to be an illusion .When Watt applied the ultimatum game with people from different cultures. He found that people behave in strikingly different ways according to their interpretations of what is fair and justice. These interpretations are difficult to articulate because it intertwines with other externa...

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...on the existence of a critical mass of easily influenced people who influence other easy-to-influence people "(Watt 79).
What the majority of people think of success and fame as distinctive qualities that are only attributed to a specific group of “special people”, turned out to be inaccurate. It is as Watt considers it a common sense myth that we embrace. Therefore, the only unequivocal explanation of the outstanding outcome of thousands of nowadays trends is based on a process of social contagion of small influential or “special” group of people.

Bibliography

Watt, Duncan J. 2011. Everything Is Obvious: How Common Sense Fails Us. New York: Crown Business.
“Peer Pressure: Its Influence on Teens and Decision Making.” 2008. Teacher Scholastic Journal. Retrieved 2008. (http://headsup.scholastic.com/articles/peer-pressure-its-influence-on-teens-and-decision-making).