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"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:show more

Steven Pinker

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47,007 views • 8 months ago •via X (Twitter)

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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 views • 9 months ago

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.

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

76,415 views • 11 months ago

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

56,084 views • 9 months 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 • 8 months ago

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 views • 11 months ago

"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 views • 9 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 • 8 months ago

“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 views • 8 months ago

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 views • 1 month ago

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 views • 9 months ago

🎓 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 views • 10 months ago

Steven Pinker (Steven Pinker) returns to Conversations with Tyler with an argument that common knowledge—those infinite loops of "I know that you know that I know"—is the hidden infrastructure that enables human coordination, from accepting paper money to toppling dictators. But tylercowen wonders: can there be too much common knowledge? COWEN: For a while now, we’ve had this thing called anonymous posters on the internet. Do you think, on average, they make the world better or worse? PINKER: Interesting. Probably worse. COWEN: They help make some things common knowledge. If there are things that are not common knowledge, some anonymous poster will say it. There’ll also be misinformation. Is that a clue that maybe at the margin, we have too much common knowledge rather than too little?

Steven Pinker (Steven Pinker) returns to Conversations with Tyler with an argument that common knowledge—those infinite loops of "I know that you know that I know"—is the hidden infrastructure that enables human coordination, from accepting paper money to toppling dictators. But tylercowen wonders: can there be too much common knowledge? COWEN: For a while now, we’ve had this thing called anonymous posters on the internet. Do you think, on average, they make the world better or worse? PINKER: Interesting. Probably worse. COWEN: They help make some things common knowledge. If there are things that are not common knowledge, some anonymous poster will say it. There’ll also be misinformation. Is that a clue that maybe at the margin, we have too much common knowledge rather than too little?

Conversations with Tyler

22,273 views • 10 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 • 7 months ago

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 views • 7 months ago

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 views • 10 months ago

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 views • 11 months ago

"Yes, it’s too soon to tell, but it is interesting that large language models, as opposed to social media, have tended to be much more aligned with what we would consider objective reality and truth. That is, I think it’s not so easy to get a large language model to endorse a ridiculous conspiracy theory, such as that the 2020 U.S. election was stolen or that COVID vaccines are actually microchips that Bill Gates is implanting to surveil us. All of those ideas are very easy to find on social media. And it may indeed be, as you say, that large language models tend to gravitate toward common priors—namely, all the knowledge that’s out there on the web. But, in particular, during pre-training and post-training—the fine-tuning process—they are engineered to be aligned with truth and reality. And that is because the AI companies have a different business model than the social media companies." From an episode of Scaling Theory with Thibault Schrepel: Steven Pinker on Common Knowledge, From Eye Contact to the Super Bowl

"Yes, it’s too soon to tell, but it is interesting that large language models, as opposed to social media, have tended to be much more aligned with what we would consider objective reality and truth. That is, I think it’s not so easy to get a large language model to endorse a ridiculous conspiracy theory, such as that the 2020 U.S. election was stolen or that COVID vaccines are actually microchips that Bill Gates is implanting to surveil us. All of those ideas are very easy to find on social media. And it may indeed be, as you say, that large language models tend to gravitate toward common priors—namely, all the knowledge that’s out there on the web. But, in particular, during pre-training and post-training—the fine-tuning process—they are engineered to be aligned with truth and reality. And that is because the AI companies have a different business model than the social media companies." From an episode of Scaling Theory with Thibault Schrepel: Steven Pinker on Common Knowledge, From Eye Contact to the Super Bowl

Steven Pinker

58,144 views • 1 month ago

Karl Popper on How We Gain Knowledge: ––Karl Popper: "People think, usually, that we acquire knowledge by opening our eyes and our ears and let the sensations stream into us, and they believe then that we record this like a camera. In my opinion, if we wish to get knowledge, we have to have a problem. It has to be knowledge of something. We have to find out something. We don't have to wait for information to stream into us, but we have to be inquisitive if we want to get knowledge. If we were passive, we would gain a confused mass of sensations or something like that, which we would hardly be able to understand and to convert into what one may call knowledge. Quite apart from that, perception is not really, in my opinion, the main source of our knowledge. The role of perception is to inform us about a momentary situation in our environment. But we couldn't really interpret our perceptions without knowing much more about our environment, namely, we know whether we are in a house or whether we are in a glacier. So we have two kinds of knowledge: this wider knowledge of a frame in which we orientate ourselves, and the momentary perception which gives us information about the situation at that particular moment. And it is only this situation in which we can use our perception. So we have theoretical knowledge and, if you like, the momentary practical challenge to our theoretical knowledge. And here comes perception in."

Karl Popper on How We Gain Knowledge: ––Karl Popper: "People think, usually, that we acquire knowledge by opening our eyes and our ears and let the sensations stream into us, and they believe then that we record this like a camera. In my opinion, if we wish to get knowledge, we have to have a problem. It has to be knowledge of something. We have to find out something. We don't have to wait for information to stream into us, but we have to be inquisitive if we want to get knowledge. If we were passive, we would gain a confused mass of sensations or something like that, which we would hardly be able to understand and to convert into what one may call knowledge. Quite apart from that, perception is not really, in my opinion, the main source of our knowledge. The role of perception is to inform us about a momentary situation in our environment. But we couldn't really interpret our perceptions without knowing much more about our environment, namely, we know whether we are in a house or whether we are in a glacier. So we have two kinds of knowledge: this wider knowledge of a frame in which we orientate ourselves, and the momentary perception which gives us information about the situation at that particular moment. And it is only this situation in which we can use our perception. So we have theoretical knowledge and, if you like, the momentary practical challenge to our theoretical knowledge. And here comes perception in."

Karl Popper Quotes

115,160 views • 3 months ago

Dr P Arora (Pooja Arora) and I spoke about cancel culture and common knowledge, the topic of my new book: When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . . Me: Yeah, so cancel culture is one of the phenomena that has surrounded what’s sometimes called the Great Awokening. It’s a humorous term based on the Great Awakening, which was an era in American history where there was a huge multiplication of Protestant churches and of religious fervor in the 19th century. That was the Great Awakening, and so the joke is it’s the Great Awokening, probably starting maybe around 2014, but then it really exploded in 2020 in the United States with the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But anyway, cancel culture, which is not restricted to the left, to wokeism—and in fact, in the United States in the last year, we’ve seen an eruption of cancel culture from the populist MAGA Trumpian right, especially after the killing of Charlie Kirk—where the same things that were happening in woke culture, namely someone would have a tweet or a comment that seemed disrespectful of the dominant ideology, and they would get threatened, they would get censored, they would get fired. So in my book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows, one of the chapters is called The Cancelling Instinct. It’s a bit of a play on my book, The Language Instinct. It just asks the question: since it is not only the woke left, but it can also be the MAGA right—and to say nothing of the fascist right or the Nazi right—to repress speech, the question is why? Why do we feel the urge to shut up people we disagree with? Particularly since one of the principles of the Enlightenment, and of science and democracy, is that you need to have free speech, because none of us is infallible. The only way we make progress is that people—everyone—express an opinion; other people are free to criticize those opinions; and it is in the crucible of debate and criticism that we see which ideas are good, which ones are true, which ones are errors that we should discard. I suggest the reason that there is such an urge to cancel is that we all are—we live by moral norms, not just by laws where the police will arrest you and put you on trial and put you in jail if you break a law. And that happens. But we have many more norms of how we live our lives, where people don’t do something because, you know, everyone knows you don’t do it. Why does everyone know? Well, everyone knows that everyone else knows you don’t do it. You don’t walk around naked. You don’t eat mashed potatoes with your hands. You don’t insult people to their faces. You don’t point out—if someone is overweight or has a speech impediment—there are dozens of these norms. And some of the norms are: you don’t make racist comments. You don’t make comments that demean women or gay people. What upholds these norms? Common knowledge. They exist because everyone knows they exist, which means that if it appears that a norm is threatened—crucially, in a public arena where it could be common knowledge—then there is an urge to punish that person, but also publicly. That is, in an arena of common knowledge. That is where everyone can see the punishment, and everyone can see everyone else seeing the punishment. That’s what’s necessary to prop up a norm, and that, I think, gives rise to the urge to censor and cancel, often in highly public ways. Now, in the old days, it used to be that there were public hangings and public crucifixions and burnings at the stake. The electronic equivalent is the internet petition with 600 signatures or the social media shaming mob, but I think the underlying psychology is the same. Now, in some cases, this could be positive. That is, it really is good that we don’t insult each other to our faces, that we don’t tell racist jokes, which were very common when I grew up. On the other hand, in arenas like science, democracy, the rule of law, the truth is more important than social harmony, and the whole point of scholarship, academia, of science is that you find the truth even when the truth seems uncomfortable. And so cancel culture can get in the way of our collective effort to acquire knowledge.

Dr P Arora (Pooja Arora) and I spoke about cancel culture and common knowledge, the topic of my new book: When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . . Me: Yeah, so cancel culture is one of the phenomena that has surrounded what’s sometimes called the Great Awokening. It’s a humorous term based on the Great Awakening, which was an era in American history where there was a huge multiplication of Protestant churches and of religious fervor in the 19th century. That was the Great Awakening, and so the joke is it’s the Great Awokening, probably starting maybe around 2014, but then it really exploded in 2020 in the United States with the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But anyway, cancel culture, which is not restricted to the left, to wokeism—and in fact, in the United States in the last year, we’ve seen an eruption of cancel culture from the populist MAGA Trumpian right, especially after the killing of Charlie Kirk—where the same things that were happening in woke culture, namely someone would have a tweet or a comment that seemed disrespectful of the dominant ideology, and they would get threatened, they would get censored, they would get fired. So in my book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows, one of the chapters is called The Cancelling Instinct. It’s a bit of a play on my book, The Language Instinct. It just asks the question: since it is not only the woke left, but it can also be the MAGA right—and to say nothing of the fascist right or the Nazi right—to repress speech, the question is why? Why do we feel the urge to shut up people we disagree with? Particularly since one of the principles of the Enlightenment, and of science and democracy, is that you need to have free speech, because none of us is infallible. The only way we make progress is that people—everyone—express an opinion; other people are free to criticize those opinions; and it is in the crucible of debate and criticism that we see which ideas are good, which ones are true, which ones are errors that we should discard. I suggest the reason that there is such an urge to cancel is that we all are—we live by moral norms, not just by laws where the police will arrest you and put you on trial and put you in jail if you break a law. And that happens. But we have many more norms of how we live our lives, where people don’t do something because, you know, everyone knows you don’t do it. Why does everyone know? Well, everyone knows that everyone else knows you don’t do it. You don’t walk around naked. You don’t eat mashed potatoes with your hands. You don’t insult people to their faces. You don’t point out—if someone is overweight or has a speech impediment—there are dozens of these norms. And some of the norms are: you don’t make racist comments. You don’t make comments that demean women or gay people. What upholds these norms? Common knowledge. They exist because everyone knows they exist, which means that if it appears that a norm is threatened—crucially, in a public arena where it could be common knowledge—then there is an urge to punish that person, but also publicly. That is, in an arena of common knowledge. That is where everyone can see the punishment, and everyone can see everyone else seeing the punishment. That’s what’s necessary to prop up a norm, and that, I think, gives rise to the urge to censor and cancel, often in highly public ways. Now, in the old days, it used to be that there were public hangings and public crucifixions and burnings at the stake. The electronic equivalent is the internet petition with 600 signatures or the social media shaming mob, but I think the underlying psychology is the same. Now, in some cases, this could be positive. That is, it really is good that we don’t insult each other to our faces, that we don’t tell racist jokes, which were very common when I grew up. On the other hand, in arenas like science, democracy, the rule of law, the truth is more important than social harmony, and the whole point of scholarship, academia, of science is that you find the truth even when the truth seems uncomfortable. And so cancel culture can get in the way of our collective effort to acquire knowledge.

Steven Pinker

63,515 views • 6 months ago