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Jordan Peterson explains Hayek’s “knowledge problem” argument “The proposition that central planning will work is the proposition that you can substitute one expert mind for a million distributed expert minds.” “That’s obviously not the case, because each person is going to have knowledge that pertains to their locality that... show more

F. A. Hayek Quotes

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75,580 views • 1 month ago •via X (Twitter)

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Interviewer: The Kremlin is claiming that Ukraine is trying to get a nuclear weapon via Britain and France. Is that the case? Zelensky: I didn’t have proposition… but with pleasure. Interviewer: So we can put that to bed. That’s not happening at all? Zelensky: No. It’s not happening.

Interviewer: The Kremlin is claiming that Ukraine is trying to get a nuclear weapon via Britain and France. Is that the case? Zelensky: I didn’t have proposition… but with pleasure. Interviewer: So we can put that to bed. That’s not happening at all? Zelensky: No. It’s not happening.

Clash Report

153,041 views • 3 months ago

The country is now engaged in a great trial, of the proposition that we are a nation of laws, and the rule of law applies to everyone. Jim Jordan believes that it should not apply to the leader of his party. That is a different proposition. And it is called, dictatorship.

The country is now engaged in a great trial, of the proposition that we are a nation of laws, and the rule of law applies to everyone. Jim Jordan believes that it should not apply to the leader of his party. That is a different proposition. And it is called, dictatorship.

Adam Schiff

448,768 views • 2 years ago

Elon Musk: “You’d think that if you’re going to be appointed as a judge, you have to have proven that you have an excellent knowledge of the law and that you will make your decisions according to the law. That’s what we assume should be a requirement. You’ve got to know what the law is, and then you need to make decisions in accordance with the law. Not vibes. You can’t be just vibing as a judge.”

Elon Musk: “You’d think that if you’re going to be appointed as a judge, you have to have proven that you have an excellent knowledge of the law and that you will make your decisions according to the law. That’s what we assume should be a requirement. You’ve got to know what the law is, and then you need to make decisions in accordance with the law. Not vibes. You can’t be just vibing as a judge.”

Mars University

13,091,818 views • 1 month ago

.Naval: You define wealth in a beautiful way. You talk about wealth as a set of physical transformations that we can affect. So as a society it becomes very clear that knowledge leads directly to wealth creation for everybody. A given individual can obviously affect physical transformations proportional to the resources available to them—but much more proportional to the knowledge available to them. Knowledge is a huge force multiplier. You then define resources as the thing that you combine with knowledge to create wealth. New knowledge allows you to use new things as resources and discard old things that maybe we’re running out of. There are lots of examples of how we’ve done that in the past. For example, in energy we’ve gone from wood to coal to oil to nuclear. But then people say, “Now we’re out of ideas. Now we’re caught up. Now we’re done. There aren’t going to be new ideas, and now we have to freeze the frame and conserve what we have.” The counter to that is, “No, we’ll create new knowledge and have new resources. Don’t worry about the old ones.” Well they say, “If you’re going to have new resources, if you can’t think of them now, it’s not real.” This now gets into the realm of people demanding that if you’re going to claim that new knowledge will be created, you have to name that knowledge now. Otherwise it’s not real. But that seems like a Catch-22. David Deutsch: It does, and it’s a bad argument. I don’t want to claim that the knowledge will be created. We’re fallible; we may not create it. We may destroy ourselves. We may miss the solution that’s right under our nose, so that when the snailiens come from another galaxy and look at us, they’ll say, “How can it possibly be that they failed to do so-and-so when it was right in front of them?” That could happen. I can’t prove or argue that it won’t happen. What I always argue, though, is that we have what it takes. We have everything that it takes to achieve that. If we don’t, it’ll be because of bad choices we have made, not because of constraints imposed on us by the planet or the solar system. Naval: It will be by anti-rational memes that restrict the creation of knowledge and the growth of knowledge. David Deutsch: Maybe. Or maybe it’ll be by well-intentioned errors, which nobody could see why they were errors. Again, it doesn’t take malevolence to make mistakes. Mistakes are the normal condition of humans. All we can do is try to find them. Maybe not destroying the means of correcting errors is the heart of morality; because if there is no way of correcting errors, then sooner or later one of those will get us. Naval: Don’t destroy the means of error correction is the base of morality. I love that. I think about places like North Korea where you can’t have elections and a revolution is very difficult because the gang in charge is armed to the teeth and they’ve destroyed the means of political error correction for a long time. That is a case where humanity is trapped in a local minimum, and it’s very hard to climb out of that hole. If too much of the world falls into that mindset, then we as a species may just stagnate because we’ve lost our biggest advantage. We’ve lost our biggest discovery, which was the ability to make new discoveries.

.Naval: You define wealth in a beautiful way. You talk about wealth as a set of physical transformations that we can affect. So as a society it becomes very clear that knowledge leads directly to wealth creation for everybody. A given individual can obviously affect physical transformations proportional to the resources available to them—but much more proportional to the knowledge available to them. Knowledge is a huge force multiplier. You then define resources as the thing that you combine with knowledge to create wealth. New knowledge allows you to use new things as resources and discard old things that maybe we’re running out of. There are lots of examples of how we’ve done that in the past. For example, in energy we’ve gone from wood to coal to oil to nuclear. But then people say, “Now we’re out of ideas. Now we’re caught up. Now we’re done. There aren’t going to be new ideas, and now we have to freeze the frame and conserve what we have.” The counter to that is, “No, we’ll create new knowledge and have new resources. Don’t worry about the old ones.” Well they say, “If you’re going to have new resources, if you can’t think of them now, it’s not real.” This now gets into the realm of people demanding that if you’re going to claim that new knowledge will be created, you have to name that knowledge now. Otherwise it’s not real. But that seems like a Catch-22. David Deutsch: It does, and it’s a bad argument. I don’t want to claim that the knowledge will be created. We’re fallible; we may not create it. We may destroy ourselves. We may miss the solution that’s right under our nose, so that when the snailiens come from another galaxy and look at us, they’ll say, “How can it possibly be that they failed to do so-and-so when it was right in front of them?” That could happen. I can’t prove or argue that it won’t happen. What I always argue, though, is that we have what it takes. We have everything that it takes to achieve that. If we don’t, it’ll be because of bad choices we have made, not because of constraints imposed on us by the planet or the solar system. Naval: It will be by anti-rational memes that restrict the creation of knowledge and the growth of knowledge. David Deutsch: Maybe. Or maybe it’ll be by well-intentioned errors, which nobody could see why they were errors. Again, it doesn’t take malevolence to make mistakes. Mistakes are the normal condition of humans. All we can do is try to find them. Maybe not destroying the means of correcting errors is the heart of morality; because if there is no way of correcting errors, then sooner or later one of those will get us. Naval: Don’t destroy the means of error correction is the base of morality. I love that. I think about places like North Korea where you can’t have elections and a revolution is very difficult because the gang in charge is armed to the teeth and they’ve destroyed the means of political error correction for a long time. That is a case where humanity is trapped in a local minimum, and it’s very hard to climb out of that hole. If too much of the world falls into that mindset, then we as a species may just stagnate because we’ve lost our biggest advantage. We’ve lost our biggest discovery, which was the ability to make new discoveries.

Deutsch Explains

143,913 views • 1 year ago

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 views • 6 months ago

Me: I discuss in the book—it refers to the state where I know something, you know something, I know that you know it, you know that I know it, I know that you know that I know it, and so on ad infinitum. So it differs a bit from the conventional usage, which just refers to something that everyone knows. Here, everyone has to know that everyone knows. Times Radio Interviewer (Daniel Finkelstein Daniel Finkelstein): Can I use this with reference to the interview that I did yesterday with my brother? My brother’s a professor at City University; he’s president of the university, and there’s a campaign at the moment going on against one of their professors who was in the Israeli Defense Forces in the 1980s. We were having a discussion about how the university was standing up for the free speech of its staff, and I’d begun to wonder, as I went home reading your book on the tube, whether I’d made a big mistake—because the protest against this professor is really just a coordination exercise, isn’t it? And maybe I’d aided it by talking about it. Me: Oh yes—protests are coordination exercises. They’re designed to make private knowledge common knowledge. So, in a repressive regime, everyone may know that they despise the government, but because criticism of the government is punished, people might keep their opinions to themselves, with a result that they really don’t know what their fellow citizens think. Each one might think that they’re the only ones that are disgruntled, and so they can’t fear standing up to—they fear standing up to oppose the regime, because they can be picked off one at a time. If everyone were to protest at once, no government has the firepower to intimidate all its citizens at once. In a public protest, people can see other people there, and they know that the people there see other people there, and that can give them the strength and numbers to oppose the regime—sometimes by literally storming the palace, or sometimes just bringing the machinery of the state to a halt through work stoppages. But the crucial thing is that they are coordinated. They can only be coordinated if everyone knows that everyone knows that they hate the regime. Daniel Finkelstein: I suppose that social media is making people—is increasing the stock of common knowledge. We’re all much more aware of what other people like us, in particular like us, know, and we also know that other people know it, and so on, as you put it, and that makes people have more common knowledge. It’s not making us happier though; maybe we’d be better with less common knowledge? Me: Social media are making us more connected within certain circles—that is, those who are receiving the same texts and feeds that we are. It reduces the pool of, or shrinks the largest pool of common knowledge, namely the whole country, which may have been accessible in a day in which, say, in the United States there were three networks, or in Britain everyone was listening to the BBC. And yes, it probably doesn’t make us as happy, because when everything is public, it means that your reputation is on the line for anything you say or do. It means that since social media allow us to generate common knowledge, not just receive it like in the old days, it means that attacks on people’s reputation can be common knowledge, which means that it’s all the more painful for people on the receiving end of the attack. It may have something to do with the fact that in certain demographics—especially young people whose lives increasingly are online—that there’s that much more social competition, opportunities for gossip and ostracism and demeaning comments, and so on. When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life:

Me: I discuss in the book—it refers to the state where I know something, you know something, I know that you know it, you know that I know it, I know that you know that I know it, and so on ad infinitum. So it differs a bit from the conventional usage, which just refers to something that everyone knows. Here, everyone has to know that everyone knows. Times Radio Interviewer (Daniel Finkelstein Daniel Finkelstein): Can I use this with reference to the interview that I did yesterday with my brother? My brother’s a professor at City University; he’s president of the university, and there’s a campaign at the moment going on against one of their professors who was in the Israeli Defense Forces in the 1980s. We were having a discussion about how the university was standing up for the free speech of its staff, and I’d begun to wonder, as I went home reading your book on the tube, whether I’d made a big mistake—because the protest against this professor is really just a coordination exercise, isn’t it? And maybe I’d aided it by talking about it. Me: Oh yes—protests are coordination exercises. They’re designed to make private knowledge common knowledge. So, in a repressive regime, everyone may know that they despise the government, but because criticism of the government is punished, people might keep their opinions to themselves, with a result that they really don’t know what their fellow citizens think. Each one might think that they’re the only ones that are disgruntled, and so they can’t fear standing up to—they fear standing up to oppose the regime, because they can be picked off one at a time. If everyone were to protest at once, no government has the firepower to intimidate all its citizens at once. In a public protest, people can see other people there, and they know that the people there see other people there, and that can give them the strength and numbers to oppose the regime—sometimes by literally storming the palace, or sometimes just bringing the machinery of the state to a halt through work stoppages. But the crucial thing is that they are coordinated. They can only be coordinated if everyone knows that everyone knows that they hate the regime. Daniel Finkelstein: I suppose that social media is making people—is increasing the stock of common knowledge. We’re all much more aware of what other people like us, in particular like us, know, and we also know that other people know it, and so on, as you put it, and that makes people have more common knowledge. It’s not making us happier though; maybe we’d be better with less common knowledge? Me: Social media are making us more connected within certain circles—that is, those who are receiving the same texts and feeds that we are. It reduces the pool of, or shrinks the largest pool of common knowledge, namely the whole country, which may have been accessible in a day in which, say, in the United States there were three networks, or in Britain everyone was listening to the BBC. And yes, it probably doesn’t make us as happy, because when everything is public, it means that your reputation is on the line for anything you say or do. It means that since social media allow us to generate common knowledge, not just receive it like in the old days, it means that attacks on people’s reputation can be common knowledge, which means that it’s all the more painful for people on the receiving end of the attack. It may have something to do with the fact that in certain demographics—especially young people whose lives increasingly are online—that there’s that much more social competition, opportunities for gossip and ostracism and demeaning comments, and so on. When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life:

Steven Pinker

21,547 views • 5 months ago

The fastest way to make a million dollars is to solve a problem for people. People pay you because you saved them time, money and make their lives more productive. Find a pain point that you know everyone has and then provide a product or service that solves for that.

The fastest way to make a million dollars is to solve a problem for people. People pay you because you saved them time, money and make their lives more productive. Find a pain point that you know everyone has and then provide a product or service that solves for that.

Kevin O'Leary aka Mr. Wonderful

193,077 views • 1 month ago

.Naval: You have a beautiful definition of knowledge, which most people don’t even try to tackle, about how knowledge perpetuates itself in the environment. You gave some really good examples. One was around genes. Successful, highly adapted genes contain a lot of knowledge and can cause themselves to be replicated because they’re survivors. In the same way, knowledge itself is a survivor, in that if you transmit to me the knowledge of how to build a computer, it’s an incredibly useful thing. I’m going to build more and more computers and that knowledge will be passed on. Your underlying point that you repeated here was if you want to understand the physical universe you have to understand knowledge, because it is the thing that over time takes over and changes more and more the universe—more than almost anything else. You have to understand all the explanations behind it. You can’t just say “particle collisions” because that explains everything, so it explains nothing. It’s not a useful level to operate at. Therefore, the things that create knowledge are uniquely influential in the universe. And as far as we know, there are only two systems that create knowledge. There’s evolution and there are humans. But is there a difference even between these two forms of knowledge creation, between evolution and between humans? David Deutsch: Yes. I have argued that the human way of creating knowledge is the ultimate one, that there aren’t any more powerful ones than that. This is the argument against the supernatural. Assuming that there is a form of knowledge creation that’s more powerful than ours is equivalent to invoking the supernatural, which is therefore a bad explanation—as invoking the supernatural always is. The difference between biological evolution and human creative thought is that biological evolution is inherently limited in its range. That’s because biological evolution has no foresight. It can’t see a problem and conjecture a solution. Whenever biological evolution produces a solution to something, it’s always before natural selection has even begun. This is Charles Darwin’s insight. This is the difference between Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and the other theories of evolution that had been around for a century or more before that, including Charles Darwin’s grandfather and Lamarck. The thing they didn’t get is that the creation of knowledge in evolution begins before. That means that biological evolution can’t reach places that are not reachable by successive improvements, each of which allows a viable organism to exist. Creationists say that biological evolution has, in fact, reached things that are not reachable by incremental steps, each of which is a viable organism. They’re factually mistaken. The thing which they have in mind is the idea of a creator who can imagine things that don’t exist and who can create an idea that is not the culmination of a whole load of viable things. A thinking being can create something that’s a culmination of a whole load of non-viable things. Explanatory creativity makes humans unique Out of all the billions and billions of species that have ever existed, none of them has ever made a campfire, even though many of them would’ve been helped by having the genetic capacity to make campfires. The reason it didn’t happen in the biosphere is that there is no such thing as making a partially functional campfire; whereas there is, for example, with making hot water. The bombardier beetles squirt boiling water at their enemies. You can easily see that just squirting cold water at your enemies is not totally unhelpful. Then making it a bit hotter and a bit hotter. Squirting boiling water no doubt required many adaptations to make sure the beetle didn’t boil itself while it was making this boiling water. That happened because there was a sequence of steps in between, all of which were useful. But with campfires, it’s very hard to see how that could happen. Humans have explanatory creativity. Once you have that, you can get to the moon. You can cause asteroids which are heading towards the earth to turn around and go away. Perhaps no other planet in the universe has that power, and it has it only because of the presence of explanatory creativity on it.

.Naval: You have a beautiful definition of knowledge, which most people don’t even try to tackle, about how knowledge perpetuates itself in the environment. You gave some really good examples. One was around genes. Successful, highly adapted genes contain a lot of knowledge and can cause themselves to be replicated because they’re survivors. In the same way, knowledge itself is a survivor, in that if you transmit to me the knowledge of how to build a computer, it’s an incredibly useful thing. I’m going to build more and more computers and that knowledge will be passed on. Your underlying point that you repeated here was if you want to understand the physical universe you have to understand knowledge, because it is the thing that over time takes over and changes more and more the universe—more than almost anything else. You have to understand all the explanations behind it. You can’t just say “particle collisions” because that explains everything, so it explains nothing. It’s not a useful level to operate at. Therefore, the things that create knowledge are uniquely influential in the universe. And as far as we know, there are only two systems that create knowledge. There’s evolution and there are humans. But is there a difference even between these two forms of knowledge creation, between evolution and between humans? David Deutsch: Yes. I have argued that the human way of creating knowledge is the ultimate one, that there aren’t any more powerful ones than that. This is the argument against the supernatural. Assuming that there is a form of knowledge creation that’s more powerful than ours is equivalent to invoking the supernatural, which is therefore a bad explanation—as invoking the supernatural always is. The difference between biological evolution and human creative thought is that biological evolution is inherently limited in its range. That’s because biological evolution has no foresight. It can’t see a problem and conjecture a solution. Whenever biological evolution produces a solution to something, it’s always before natural selection has even begun. This is Charles Darwin’s insight. This is the difference between Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and the other theories of evolution that had been around for a century or more before that, including Charles Darwin’s grandfather and Lamarck. The thing they didn’t get is that the creation of knowledge in evolution begins before. That means that biological evolution can’t reach places that are not reachable by successive improvements, each of which allows a viable organism to exist. Creationists say that biological evolution has, in fact, reached things that are not reachable by incremental steps, each of which is a viable organism. They’re factually mistaken. The thing which they have in mind is the idea of a creator who can imagine things that don’t exist and who can create an idea that is not the culmination of a whole load of viable things. A thinking being can create something that’s a culmination of a whole load of non-viable things. Explanatory creativity makes humans unique Out of all the billions and billions of species that have ever existed, none of them has ever made a campfire, even though many of them would’ve been helped by having the genetic capacity to make campfires. The reason it didn’t happen in the biosphere is that there is no such thing as making a partially functional campfire; whereas there is, for example, with making hot water. The bombardier beetles squirt boiling water at their enemies. You can easily see that just squirting cold water at your enemies is not totally unhelpful. Then making it a bit hotter and a bit hotter. Squirting boiling water no doubt required many adaptations to make sure the beetle didn’t boil itself while it was making this boiling water. That happened because there was a sequence of steps in between, all of which were useful. But with campfires, it’s very hard to see how that could happen. Humans have explanatory creativity. Once you have that, you can get to the moon. You can cause asteroids which are heading towards the earth to turn around and go away. Perhaps no other planet in the universe has that power, and it has it only because of the presence of explanatory creativity on it.

Deutsch Explains

186,102 views • 1 year ago

The best way to make money today is to take advantage of the knowledge gap between the young and the old. Once that gap is filled. Once EVERYONE is using A.I. to solve their own problems? It’s over.

The best way to make money today is to take advantage of the knowledge gap between the young and the old. Once that gap is filled. Once EVERYONE is using A.I. to solve their own problems? It’s over.

Andrew Tate

209,179 views • 4 months ago

“You start to realize that if you make it all about winning and losing for your players, then that means that the only thing that matters in their life is winning and losing. There’s so much to win at, so much to learn. It’s fun coming to work everyday because it’s not work,” Geno Auriemma

“You start to realize that if you make it all about winning and losing for your players, then that means that the only thing that matters in their life is winning and losing. There’s so much to win at, so much to learn. It’s fun coming to work everyday because it’s not work,” Geno Auriemma

The Winning Difference

19,905 views • 3 months ago

.@seckennedy: "We're going to drive that knowledge and that system across the country, so that every American can get affordable, high quality food accessible."

.@seckennedy: "We're going to drive that knowledge and that system across the country, so that every American can get affordable, high quality food accessible."

HHS Rapid Response

29,903 views • 3 months ago

I’m sure everyone who stats-trolled Aella over the years will be happy to see that she now seems to have a much better grasp of how science and the growth of knowledge work than the average redpill guy. The hypothetico-deductive method and it’s consequences

I’m sure everyone who stats-trolled Aella over the years will be happy to see that she now seems to have a much better grasp of how science and the growth of knowledge work than the average redpill guy. The hypothetico-deductive method and it’s consequences

Rota

5,912,714 views • 1 year ago

Kim Goeun: “I don’t think this job is something that I can do alone. That's why I believe the most important thing right now is to have mindset that I’m working on the set together with everyone, not just me. Each person has their own role and being expert in their own field, and their contribution should be respected. I want to continue to cherish the job that I’ve chosen to do with the mindset that we are all part of the work”

Kim Goeun: “I don’t think this job is something that I can do alone. That's why I believe the most important thing right now is to have mindset that I’m working on the set together with everyone, not just me. Each person has their own role and being expert in their own field, and their contribution should be respected. I want to continue to cherish the job that I’ve chosen to do with the mindset that we are all part of the work”

tan🫐

38,381 views • 9 months ago

The mental aspect of football shouldn’t be forgotten. To win, you have to believe you can win. Use your mind, remember your coaching and bring that to the field. At QB Collective, football minds like Brian Baldinger provide trusted knowledge and a passion to share that knowledge.

The mental aspect of football shouldn’t be forgotten. To win, you have to believe you can win. Use your mind, remember your coaching and bring that to the field. At QB Collective, football minds like Brian Baldinger provide trusted knowledge and a passion to share that knowledge.

COLLECTIVE FOOTBALL

32,656 views • 9 months ago

Douglas Murray isn’t calling for censorship—just standards. "Much of the expert class let us down in many areas, but that doesn't mean that it should be a free for all. Everyone is free to air their views, but that doesn't mean that everyone has an equally valid point of view."

Douglas Murray isn’t calling for censorship—just standards. "Much of the expert class let us down in many areas, but that doesn't mean that it should be a free for all. Everyone is free to air their views, but that doesn't mean that everyone has an equally valid point of view."

Eyal Yakoby

168,405 views • 1 year ago

CIA Director Ratcliffe credits President Trump’s leadership: "I know that the confidence of CIA's officers is boosted by the knowledge that their work is informing a president who’s not afraid to make the hardest decisions when the stakes are highest."

CIA Director Ratcliffe credits President Trump’s leadership: "I know that the confidence of CIA's officers is boosted by the knowledge that their work is informing a president who’s not afraid to make the hardest decisions when the stakes are highest."

Trump War Room

39,327 views • 2 months ago

Antifa is an amorphous organization that doesn’t have any legitimate standing. The President making them his target will only empower him to subjectively chose who to and not to prosecute. That’s a dangerous proposition.

Antifa is an amorphous organization that doesn’t have any legitimate standing. The President making them his target will only empower him to subjectively chose who to and not to prosecute. That’s a dangerous proposition.

Meghan Hays

488,783 views • 8 months ago

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

Steven Pinker

22,283 views • 6 months ago