Even so, we can still hold our common sense statements about them to be true.
"Anyone who thought the N.R.A. was going to come out today and make a common-sense statement about meaningful reform and safety was kidding themselves," said Representative Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat, who has called for new restrictions on assault rifles.
Mr. de Botton also displays an irritating tendency in this book to deliver common-sense statements with an oracular and self-congratulatory air.
And because so many of the ideas laid out in "On Photography" were so shrill and doctrinaire, the refutations in "Regarding the Pain of Others" -- often served up with an air of Delphic wisdom -- tend to feel like belated and common-sense statements of the obvious.
When Nye released a short video in which he made some common-sense statements about creationism and evolution, there was no reason to think it would become especially viral.
"As a matter of elementary common sense," the statement added, "no rational person who thinks his broker might be a fraud would leave such a substantial sum with him".
Law enforcement demonstrated their complete lack of common sense with a statement claiming: "Protesters attacked a helicopter with a drone".
Mathew D. Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel and dean of the Liberty University School of Law, said in a statement, "Common sense and human history underscore the fact that children need a mother and a father".
A first application aims to capture common sense facts: given a candidate statement about the world and a large corpus of known facts, is the statement likely to be true?
"This is a statement of common sense," said Andrea Williams, the director of the Christian Legal Centre.
That would seem a statement of common sense, but not, apparently, in California.
