Take banker who said that money is all about "revenue minus expenses"...if the expenses go over the revenue, it can't be done. Seems basic, but how many people these days are going into bankruptcy? How huge is credit card usage? For common sense, it sure seems to be ignored.
I liked the fact that some of these things were made clear. Like the historian who said that the importance is not learning the facts of history, it was learning how to look at the past and make use of that knowledge. Facts are easy to find, if you do the research. The importance is knowing how to use the knowledge you find.
In the end, though, the one that stood out to me the most was the first to come up. I the initial discussion, one amongst them stated that the most important thing people should know and learn was the scientific model of proof, meaning the ability to take any claim and prove or disprove it by using the scientific method. How simple, how easy, how relevant! Every day, you are bombarded with claims and statements, each vying for your attention and each asserting it's own validity...and yet, how often do you accept them, versus how often you check them out. From as simple as believing someone's story about something that happened, and therefore you should watch out because it could happen to you and it's oh-so-evil, to the commercials that you are bombarded with every day about products bigger and better and shinier and faster and more succulent than others, all the way up to the statements handed down to you by government and big business about why things are the way they are.
Simple fact-checking. It's not enough to say "that makes sense", because lots of things make sense that are later proven wrong...and plenty of other things made NO sense, but were proven right. PROOF. That's what is important in the end. If more people were taught to look for proof and not accept what they are spoon-fed, we'd be a lot better off, I feel.
Oxymoronic as that statement may be. ;)