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Discussing common knowledge with Bill Maher. Common knowledge is the topic of my new book: When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life.

Steven Pinker

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76,415 görüntüleme • 10 ay önce •via X (Twitter)

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Why is it hard for nervous lovers to say goodbye on the phone? More on this can be found in my new book: When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . . Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life. Out soon:

Why is it hard for nervous lovers to say goodbye on the phone? More on this can be found in my new book: When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . . Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life. Out soon:

Steven Pinker

66,072 görüntüleme • 10 ay önce

"Salience is the more common way that we entertain common knowledge, generated by certain common knowledge generators like direct speech, but also laughter, I argue, tears, blushing. We have nonverbal common knowledge generators and eye contact. With eye contact, you're looking at the part of the person that's looking at the part of you that's looking at the part of them, ad infinitum. Eye contact is a very powerful signal. Eye contact makes something that was private knowledge, common knowledge, which is why we and our primate ancestors are very sensitive to eye contact." Clip on common knowledge, the topic of my new book, from an interview with Robert Contofalsky (Robert Contofalsky) of R-Academy. -- When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life:

"Salience is the more common way that we entertain common knowledge, generated by certain common knowledge generators like direct speech, but also laughter, I argue, tears, blushing. We have nonverbal common knowledge generators and eye contact. With eye contact, you're looking at the part of the person that's looking at the part of you that's looking at the part of them, ad infinitum. Eye contact is a very powerful signal. Eye contact makes something that was private knowledge, common knowledge, which is why we and our primate ancestors are very sensitive to eye contact." Clip on common knowledge, the topic of my new book, from an interview with Robert Contofalsky (Robert Contofalsky) of R-Academy. -- When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life:

Steven Pinker

47,007 görüntüleme • 7 ay önce

On laughter generating common knowledge: "Laughter is--like eye contact, like direct speech--generates common knowledge. When you're laughing, you know it, because your breathing is interrupted. People around you know it, because they can hear the laughter. It interrupts your speech, and so people who are listening to you know that you're laughing, and you know that you're laughing. So it's generally common knowledge of something. What is that common knowledge? It's generally common knowledge of some infirmity, indignity, embarrassment, cause for humility. And the laughter makes that private knowledge of an infirmity common knowledge. There's something that we all knew compromised that person's dignity, stature. Now, we are all acknowledging it commonly, which means that that person's stature has gone down." Clip on laughter and common knowledge, the topic of my new book, from an interview with Robert Contofalsky (Robert Contofalsky) of R-Academy. -- When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life:

On laughter generating common knowledge: "Laughter is--like eye contact, like direct speech--generates common knowledge. When you're laughing, you know it, because your breathing is interrupted. People around you know it, because they can hear the laughter. It interrupts your speech, and so people who are listening to you know that you're laughing, and you know that you're laughing. So it's generally common knowledge of something. What is that common knowledge? It's generally common knowledge of some infirmity, indignity, embarrassment, cause for humility. And the laughter makes that private knowledge of an infirmity common knowledge. There's something that we all knew compromised that person's dignity, stature. Now, we are all acknowledging it commonly, which means that that person's stature has gone down." Clip on laughter and common knowledge, the topic of my new book, from an interview with Robert Contofalsky (Robert Contofalsky) of R-Academy. -- When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life:

Steven Pinker

42,797 görüntüleme • 8 ay önce

Why don't we just cut the crap and say it? And the conclusion that I came to, this is an earlier book, The Stuff of Thought (subtitle is Language is a Window into Human Nature), is that direct speech generates common knowledge, and that common knowledge is the basis of our social relationships. Two people--if they're friends, if they're lovers, if they're transactional partners, if they're in a dominance hierarchy--all of those are equilibria in coordination games, and they're matters of common knowledge. In the case of friends, it's we're equal, we would do anything for each other, we're there for each other, and that's kind of the common knowledge that makes friends friends. Clip on direct speech and common knowledge from an interview with Robert Contofalsky (Robert Contofalsky) of R-Academy. -- My new book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life is available here:

Why don't we just cut the crap and say it? And the conclusion that I came to, this is an earlier book, The Stuff of Thought (subtitle is Language is a Window into Human Nature), is that direct speech generates common knowledge, and that common knowledge is the basis of our social relationships. Two people--if they're friends, if they're lovers, if they're transactional partners, if they're in a dominance hierarchy--all of those are equilibria in coordination games, and they're matters of common knowledge. In the case of friends, it's we're equal, we would do anything for each other, we're there for each other, and that's kind of the common knowledge that makes friends friends. Clip on direct speech and common knowledge from an interview with Robert Contofalsky (Robert Contofalsky) of R-Academy. -- My new book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life is available here:

Steven Pinker

56,074 görüntüleme • 8 ay önce

Yes, what's happening in the Monty Hall problem is not common knowledge, but it is knowledge about knowledge. To use a fancy term, recursive mentalizing, where mentalizing means getting into someone else's head, trying to figure out what they know. Recursive mentalizing is trying to get inside their head, and when they're trying to get inside your head, as you're trying to get inside their head at an item. So that's common knowledge. In the case of the Monty Hall problem, it's private knowledge, namely, Monty Hall knows You know that he knows, you don't know what he knows. -- When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life

Yes, what's happening in the Monty Hall problem is not common knowledge, but it is knowledge about knowledge. To use a fancy term, recursive mentalizing, where mentalizing means getting into someone else's head, trying to figure out what they know. Recursive mentalizing is trying to get inside their head, and when they're trying to get inside your head, as you're trying to get inside their head at an item. So that's common knowledge. In the case of the Monty Hall problem, it's private knowledge, namely, Monty Hall knows You know that he knows, you don't know what he knows. -- When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life

Steven Pinker

26,462 görüntüleme • 7 ay önce

I'll be giving talks on common knowledge in Australia and New Zealand in February 2026. Tickets : "I begin the book with the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes because it’s the quintessential illustration of common knowledge. When the boy said the Emperor was naked, he wasn’t telling anyone anything they didn’t already know. They could see the Emperor was naked, but he changed the state of their knowledge nonetheless because, by blurting it out within earshot of everyone, now everyone knew that everyone else knew that everyone else knew that everyone else knew that the Emperor was naked. So it shows, first of all, that even though the concept of common knowledge, as I defined it, seems impossible—your head starts to spin after, you know, one or two “I know that she knows,” let alone an infinite number. But what the story shows is that a conspicuous, public, self-evident event—something that you see while you see everyone else seeing it, or you hear when you know everyone else can hear it—can give you common knowledge at a stroke. And the other moral is that it changed the relationship of the people to the Emperor, from obsequious deference to ridicule and scorn. And a major theme of the book is that common knowledge, even though it sounds like this abstruse, recondite academic concept, actually figures into everyday life, figures into our money, and figures into our politics, because it enables coordination and it changes social relationships." Thinkable -- When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life

I'll be giving talks on common knowledge in Australia and New Zealand in February 2026. Tickets : "I begin the book with the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes because it’s the quintessential illustration of common knowledge. When the boy said the Emperor was naked, he wasn’t telling anyone anything they didn’t already know. They could see the Emperor was naked, but he changed the state of their knowledge nonetheless because, by blurting it out within earshot of everyone, now everyone knew that everyone else knew that everyone else knew that everyone else knew that the Emperor was naked. So it shows, first of all, that even though the concept of common knowledge, as I defined it, seems impossible—your head starts to spin after, you know, one or two “I know that she knows,” let alone an infinite number. But what the story shows is that a conspicuous, public, self-evident event—something that you see while you see everyone else seeing it, or you hear when you know everyone else can hear it—can give you common knowledge at a stroke. And the other moral is that it changed the relationship of the people to the Emperor, from obsequious deference to ridicule and scorn. And a major theme of the book is that common knowledge, even though it sounds like this abstruse, recondite academic concept, actually figures into everyday life, figures into our money, and figures into our politics, because it enables coordination and it changes social relationships." Thinkable -- When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life

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22,283 görüntüleme • 7 ay önce

Unherd's @FreddieSayers is joined by renowned cognitive psychologist, author, and Harvard Professor of Psychology @SaPinker to discuss his latest book, 'When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...', exploring how common knowledge shapes our social, political, and economic worlds.

Unherd's @FreddieSayers is joined by renowned cognitive psychologist, author, and Harvard Professor of Psychology @SaPinker to discuss his latest book, 'When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...', exploring how common knowledge shapes our social, political, and economic worlds.

UnHerd

27,004 görüntüleme • 9 ay önce

"So what innuendo, euphemism, and indirect speech acts do is prevent the proposition from becoming common knowledge. That is, let’s say he said, “Do you want to come up for Netflix and chill?” She says no. She’s a grown-up; she knows this was a sexual invitation. And he’s a grown-up; he knows it too. But does he know that she knows that he knows it? He can still think, “Well, maybe she thinks I’m dense. Maybe she thinks I don’t know that she knowingly turned down a sexual invitation.” And as far as she’s concerned, he might think she just didn’t want to stay out late. And she could think, “Well, maybe he thinks I’m naïve. Maybe he thinks I just didn’t want to be out late, and he might think I’m just turning down an invitation for Netflix.” Without the common knowledge—the “he knows that I know that he knows that I know”—they can maintain the fiction of a purely platonic friendship without sacrificing their claim to rationality and sanity. If it had been blurted out, “Hey, do you want to have sex?” and she were to say no, then they couldn’t maintain the fiction of a purely platonic friendship, or of colleagues at work, or, even more dangerously, a supervisor and supervisee. And so we use indirect speech, I argue, to keep things out of common knowledge—out of relationship-threatening common knowledge." Clip on innuendo and common knowledge, the topic of my new book, from an interview with Robert Contofalsky (Robert Contofalsky) of R-Academy. -- When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life:

"So what innuendo, euphemism, and indirect speech acts do is prevent the proposition from becoming common knowledge. That is, let’s say he said, “Do you want to come up for Netflix and chill?” She says no. She’s a grown-up; she knows this was a sexual invitation. And he’s a grown-up; he knows it too. But does he know that she knows that he knows it? He can still think, “Well, maybe she thinks I’m dense. Maybe she thinks I don’t know that she knowingly turned down a sexual invitation.” And as far as she’s concerned, he might think she just didn’t want to stay out late. And she could think, “Well, maybe he thinks I’m naïve. Maybe he thinks I just didn’t want to be out late, and he might think I’m just turning down an invitation for Netflix.” Without the common knowledge—the “he knows that I know that he knows that I know”—they can maintain the fiction of a purely platonic friendship without sacrificing their claim to rationality and sanity. If it had been blurted out, “Hey, do you want to have sex?” and she were to say no, then they couldn’t maintain the fiction of a purely platonic friendship, or of colleagues at work, or, even more dangerously, a supervisor and supervisee. And so we use indirect speech, I argue, to keep things out of common knowledge—out of relationship-threatening common knowledge." Clip on innuendo and common knowledge, the topic of my new book, from an interview with Robert Contofalsky (Robert Contofalsky) of R-Academy. -- When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life:

Steven Pinker

65,013 görüntüleme • 8 ay önce

On Putin's invasion of Ukraine: “This really was a stunning breach of the norm since 1945: that borders are grandfathered in; nation-states are immortal. The borders may be irrational; they may be all kinds of grounds for irredentist claims—‘Well, that patch of land on your side of the border really historically and morally ought to be on our side’—which could lead to endless wars. But good fences make good neighbors. There they are, and if you just say, ‘The borders are the borders,’ then you avoid all the endless fighting and irredentist conflicts. So, by invading Ukraine with the intent actually of swallowing it up—that was a big breach of that norm.” For more on how norms and common knowledge function in society, see my new book: When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life Richard Hanania

On Putin's invasion of Ukraine: “This really was a stunning breach of the norm since 1945: that borders are grandfathered in; nation-states are immortal. The borders may be irrational; they may be all kinds of grounds for irredentist claims—‘Well, that patch of land on your side of the border really historically and morally ought to be on our side’—which could lead to endless wars. But good fences make good neighbors. There they are, and if you just say, ‘The borders are the borders,’ then you avoid all the endless fighting and irredentist conflicts. So, by invading Ukraine with the intent actually of swallowing it up—that was a big breach of that norm.” For more on how norms and common knowledge function in society, see my new book: When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life Richard Hanania

Steven Pinker

38,585 görüntüleme • 6 ay önce

Listen to an excerpt from Steven Pinker audiobook When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows…to understand the ways we use common knowledge to get into each other’s heads. Pick up your copy:

Listen to an excerpt from Steven Pinker audiobook When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows…to understand the ways we use common knowledge to get into each other’s heads. Pick up your copy:

Simon & Schuster Audio

19,439 görüntüleme • 9 ay önce

“Social media now allow any of us to be an executioner or a grand inquisitor—pile on—and our tweet shaming someone could go viral or cause other people to tweet. That can happen in academia, where you can gin up a petition denouncing someone in a few minutes with social media. I have a chapter in When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows..., in particular on academic cancel culture—or cancel culture more generally—why people feel the urge to cancel, even in an arena like academia, which ought to be about ideas, including ideas that are advanced with the point that they be evaluated and falsified. And so you think that what you say might be wrong, but it surely can’t be evil. But in academia, there’s been a temptation to treat certain ideas as evil and to try to punish or censor the person broaching them.” Clip on common knowledge, the topic of my new book, from an interview with Robert Contofalsky (Robert Contofalsky) of R-Academy. -- When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life:

“Social media now allow any of us to be an executioner or a grand inquisitor—pile on—and our tweet shaming someone could go viral or cause other people to tweet. That can happen in academia, where you can gin up a petition denouncing someone in a few minutes with social media. I have a chapter in When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows..., in particular on academic cancel culture—or cancel culture more generally—why people feel the urge to cancel, even in an arena like academia, which ought to be about ideas, including ideas that are advanced with the point that they be evaluated and falsified. And so you think that what you say might be wrong, but it surely can’t be evil. But in academia, there’s been a temptation to treat certain ideas as evil and to try to punish or censor the person broaching them.” Clip on common knowledge, the topic of my new book, from an interview with Robert Contofalsky (Robert Contofalsky) of R-Academy. -- When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life:

Steven Pinker

45,050 görüntüleme • 7 ay önce

🎓 Why can’t rational people just agree to disagree? In this episode, Steven Pinker unpacks how common knowledge shapes truth, trust, and the invisible rules holding civilization together—from markets and morality to AI and belief itself. Timestamp: 00:00 Intro 00:58 When common knowledge is wrong 02:37 The role of common knowledge in social coordination 08:48 Free will and determinism 14:48 Judging a book by its cover 21:08 Government suppression and common knowledge 30:08 The agree to disagree theorem 34:54 Generosity and charity in human affairs 41:12 The role of common knowledge in religious beliefs 48:31 LLMs and common knowledge 50:39 Outro

🎓 Why can’t rational people just agree to disagree? In this episode, Steven Pinker unpacks how common knowledge shapes truth, trust, and the invisible rules holding civilization together—from markets and morality to AI and belief itself. Timestamp: 00:00 Intro 00:58 When common knowledge is wrong 02:37 The role of common knowledge in social coordination 08:48 Free will and determinism 14:48 Judging a book by its cover 21:08 Government suppression and common knowledge 30:08 The agree to disagree theorem 34:54 Generosity and charity in human affairs 41:12 The role of common knowledge in religious beliefs 48:31 LLMs and common knowledge 50:39 Outro

INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast

14,291 görüntüleme • 8 ay önce

Steven Pinker’s new book explores how public life unravels once common knowledge disappears and every fact becomes politically negotiable. From the new episode of The Fifth Column with Steven Pinker.

Steven Pinker’s new book explores how public life unravels once common knowledge disappears and every fact becomes politically negotiable. From the new episode of The Fifth Column with Steven Pinker.

The Fifth Column 🖐

10,476 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce

Galen Druke (Galen Druke) interviewed me about common knowledge, the topic of my new book (link in thread): Me: What common knowledge does in informal interactions is it ratifies social relationships. So if two people are friends, if they’re lovers, if one of them is dominant and the other is subordinate—that is, one always gets it this way—these exist because each party knows the other one knows they exist. And they survive by being common knowledge. Sometimes we don’t want to destroy a relationship, and so we keep things out of common knowledge by using euphemism or innuendo or genteel hypocrisy. Druke: What’s an example of this? Me: At the end of a date, you’ve got a couple of friends and one says, “Hey, do you want to kind of come up for coffee—or Netflix and chill?” That’s very different from, “Do you want to have sex?” even though if they’re both grownups, they both know that it’s having sex. So there’s a denial of common knowledge, which would allow them—if the overture is not reciprocated—to go back to being platonic friends or workplace colleagues.

Galen Druke (Galen Druke) interviewed me about common knowledge, the topic of my new book (link in thread): Me: What common knowledge does in informal interactions is it ratifies social relationships. So if two people are friends, if they’re lovers, if one of them is dominant and the other is subordinate—that is, one always gets it this way—these exist because each party knows the other one knows they exist. And they survive by being common knowledge. Sometimes we don’t want to destroy a relationship, and so we keep things out of common knowledge by using euphemism or innuendo or genteel hypocrisy. Druke: What’s an example of this? Me: At the end of a date, you’ve got a couple of friends and one says, “Hey, do you want to kind of come up for coffee—or Netflix and chill?” That’s very different from, “Do you want to have sex?” even though if they’re both grownups, they both know that it’s having sex. So there’s a denial of common knowledge, which would allow them—if the overture is not reciprocated—to go back to being platonic friends or workplace colleagues.

Steven Pinker

22,350 görüntüleme • 8 ay önce

Dodge Charger ~ You know, cops know, everyone knows—exactly what's coming next (text unneeded). It's never a mystery, and to be frank, very shameful that it's common knowledge.

Dodge Charger ~ You know, cops know, everyone knows—exactly what's coming next (text unneeded). It's never a mystery, and to be frank, very shameful that it's common knowledge.

Dane

24,999 görüntüleme • 6 ay önce

Tribal knowledge beats common knowledge.

Tribal knowledge beats common knowledge.

Palantir

80,923 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce

Professor Shaykh Muhammad Sani Umar Rijiyar Lemo. His welcoming remarks in English and Arabic. When you have the True Knowledge (Knowledge of Allah & His messenger), and you have the common one (Knowledge of this world).

Professor Shaykh Muhammad Sani Umar Rijiyar Lemo. His welcoming remarks in English and Arabic. When you have the True Knowledge (Knowledge of Allah & His messenger), and you have the common one (Knowledge of this world).

𝐇𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐦𝐚, 𝐏𝐡.𝐃.

61,040 görüntüleme • 2 yıl önce

With The Fifth Column 🖐 talking about common knowledge: “Common knowledge can be generated at a stroke when something is witnessed in a forum where you can witness other people witnessing it. So if something just happens in public and you can see everyone else seeing it, that gives you an instant intuition that there’s common knowledge. Humor, I suggest in one of the chapters, is a common-knowledge generator, usually of some infirmity or indignity or weakness in someone or something. And the laughter, which is conspicuous—you can hear it when someone is laughing; it interrupts their speech and breathing—at the moment of laughter, suddenly becomes common knowledge. Everyone who gets the joke suddenly realizes that someone has been taken down, and they realize that everyone else realizes it. And that’s why freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are suppressed in autocracies. The joke from the Soviet era is about the man handing out leaflets in Red Square. Of course, the KGB arrest him, take him down to headquarters, only to discover that the leaflets are blank sheets of paper. They say, ‘What is the meaning of this?’ And he says, ‘What’s there to say? It’s so obvious.’ And the reason that it was subversive is that he was generating common knowledge. Just the mere fact of trying to make something public, even if you don’t have to stipulate what it is, can generate the coordination—everyone acting together to bring down a regime.”

With The Fifth Column 🖐 talking about common knowledge: “Common knowledge can be generated at a stroke when something is witnessed in a forum where you can witness other people witnessing it. So if something just happens in public and you can see everyone else seeing it, that gives you an instant intuition that there’s common knowledge. Humor, I suggest in one of the chapters, is a common-knowledge generator, usually of some infirmity or indignity or weakness in someone or something. And the laughter, which is conspicuous—you can hear it when someone is laughing; it interrupts their speech and breathing—at the moment of laughter, suddenly becomes common knowledge. Everyone who gets the joke suddenly realizes that someone has been taken down, and they realize that everyone else realizes it. And that’s why freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are suppressed in autocracies. The joke from the Soviet era is about the man handing out leaflets in Red Square. Of course, the KGB arrest him, take him down to headquarters, only to discover that the leaflets are blank sheets of paper. They say, ‘What is the meaning of this?’ And he says, ‘What’s there to say? It’s so obvious.’ And the reason that it was subversive is that he was generating common knowledge. Just the mere fact of trying to make something public, even if you don’t have to stipulate what it is, can generate the coordination—everyone acting together to bring down a regime.”

Steven Pinker

44,931 görüntüleme • 28 gün önce

Common knowledge

Common knowledge

Meidas_Charise Lee

131,624 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce

On Friday, Bill Maher asked me if what happened with Biden at the disastrous debate with Trump was the same story as the Emperor's New Clothes. Me: The story of the Emperor's New Clothes is a story about common knowledge, because when the kid blurted it out, he actually wasn't telling anyone anything they didn't already know. They could see the Emperor was naked. But he still changed their knowledge, because by blurting it out with an earshot of the others, now everyone knew that everyone else knew that everyone else knew that everyone else knew. And what that allowed them to do is change their relationship with the Emperor, from obsequious deference to ridicule and scorn. And the thing about common knowledge in the social realm is that it's what props up our social relationships. And so when something is blurted out, then it can change everything. It changes the nature of your relationship with someone. Maher: And we do have sort of a modern version of the Emperor parable, which is Joe Biden. I mean, he was the Emperor who everyone wouldn't say had lost his marbles. I mean, is that not really the same story? Me: It is the same story, because opinion polls showed that after that disastrous debate with Trump, the number of people who thought that he was cognitively impaired didn't go up by that much. It went up by a few percentage points. But before, a majority of people thought that he was cognitively impaired. The difference is, when it's on TV, where you're watching it, you know that the rest of the country is watching it, you know the rest of the country knows the rest of the country, it's no longer private. It's common. And that's when he was challenged. That was the end. Bill Maher Real Time with Bill Maher

On Friday, Bill Maher asked me if what happened with Biden at the disastrous debate with Trump was the same story as the Emperor's New Clothes. Me: The story of the Emperor's New Clothes is a story about common knowledge, because when the kid blurted it out, he actually wasn't telling anyone anything they didn't already know. They could see the Emperor was naked. But he still changed their knowledge, because by blurting it out with an earshot of the others, now everyone knew that everyone else knew that everyone else knew that everyone else knew. And what that allowed them to do is change their relationship with the Emperor, from obsequious deference to ridicule and scorn. And the thing about common knowledge in the social realm is that it's what props up our social relationships. And so when something is blurted out, then it can change everything. It changes the nature of your relationship with someone. Maher: And we do have sort of a modern version of the Emperor parable, which is Joe Biden. I mean, he was the Emperor who everyone wouldn't say had lost his marbles. I mean, is that not really the same story? Me: It is the same story, because opinion polls showed that after that disastrous debate with Trump, the number of people who thought that he was cognitively impaired didn't go up by that much. It went up by a few percentage points. But before, a majority of people thought that he was cognitively impaired. The difference is, when it's on TV, where you're watching it, you know that the rest of the country is watching it, you know the rest of the country knows the rest of the country, it's no longer private. It's common. And that's when he was challenged. That was the end. Bill Maher Real Time with Bill Maher

Steven Pinker

272,948 görüntüleme • 10 ay önce