Common sense hinders progress

Someone mentioned something that in my opinion is the greatest obstacle to progress:

I must say I agree, asking questions that can never be answered, or making statements that can never be proven, is vanity.

My reply:

If we took your advice, we would have never had the computer or any other current day object, such as the car.

To ask questions we don't know, doesn't mean we won't know one day.

At one time there was an empirical proof humans could never fly. It said any object with an atomic mass higher than oxygen's would not be able to fly without wings.

Thus objects such as helium that have an atomic weight less than that can fly, that's why we use helium in balloons so they float.

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But when people figured out that there was such a thing as lift, and thrust, they took advantage of it and now we can fly anywhere we want on earth.

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Common sense always seems to hinder progress and i think it is one of the most useful and dangerous things in our world.

This epiphany came to me again, years after I had written the above posts, while watching a live play entitled "Nude with Pineapple".

~~Phoenix