What is Common Sense?

Hello World! My name is Paul Hobday and I'm a 28 year old Burlington College student. This blog is part of the Civic Journalism course offered at Burlington.
For this introductory post, I'd like to examine the concept of common sense, it's origin and why it's a misleading idea. To begin with, there is Thomas Paine, the author of a pamphlet appropriately title Common Sense, which sought to break down tough issues in a way everyone, even the common people could understand and make use of.
This is the basic concept of what common sense is. Dictionary.com defines common sense as "sound practical judgment that is independent of specialized knowledge, training, or the like; normal native intelligence". Anyone that can reason out an answer to a complex problem is applying common sense.
But that does not mean that everyone can solve every problem through common sense. Nor does it mean that common sense can be substituted as an answer to problems that have actual solutions. Applying common knowledge to reach reasonable conclusions is a dangerous endeavor, one that should be taken with greater care than it often is. In this blog, I hope to explore the idea of common sense, how it can be used, should be used and when it is best to leave the reasoning to more able thinkers.