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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?show more

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This week I speak with Steven Pinker (Steven Pinker) about his new book on common knowledge: when we all know that we all know something. We also discuss how we come to believe (often erroneously) that other people believe what we believe.

This week I speak with Steven Pinker (Steven Pinker) about his new book on common knowledge: when we all know that we all know something. We also discuss how we come to believe (often erroneously) that other people believe what we believe.

David Eagleman

11,718 views • 9 months ago

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 • 7 months ago

Why do police states squelch protests, and what does this have to do with common knowledge? Find out this and much more in this week's episode with Steven Pinker (Steven Pinker), wherever you get your podcasts.

Why do police states squelch protests, and what does this have to do with common knowledge? Find out this and much more in this week's episode with Steven Pinker (Steven Pinker), wherever you get your podcasts.

David Eagleman

11,721 views • 9 months ago

"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 views • 7 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

56,074 views • 7 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

Why don't we say what we mean? Find out what this has to do with common knowledge, euphemism, and innuendo in this week's Inner Cosmos with guest Steven Pinker (Steven Pinker), wherever you get your podcasts.

Why don't we say what we mean? Find out what this has to do with common knowledge, euphemism, and innuendo in this week's Inner Cosmos with guest Steven Pinker (Steven Pinker), wherever you get your podcasts.

David Eagleman

15,006 views • 9 months ago

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 views • 8 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 • 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 • 6 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 • 7 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

44,747 views • 11 days ago

"I identify liberalism as a product of the Enlightenment, which I characterize as the idea that we can use knowledge to enhance human flourishing, and that if we try to do it, we can gradually succeed." - Steven Pinker

"I identify liberalism as a product of the Enlightenment, which I characterize as the idea that we can use knowledge to enhance human flourishing, and that if we try to do it, we can gradually succeed." - Steven Pinker

The UnPopulist

129,227 views • 10 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 • 6 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 • 8 months ago

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 views • 1 month ago

The data behind the “common knowledge” that "settler violence" is a huge and growing problem is provided by the UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). But what do they consider violence? Turns out, too much Watch Natasha Hausdorff make sense of nonsense.

The data behind the “common knowledge” that "settler violence" is a huge and growing problem is provided by the UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). But what do they consider violence? Turns out, too much Watch Natasha Hausdorff make sense of nonsense.

Regavim

11,550 views • 3 months ago

For the debut episode of my podcast, I sat down with Prof. Steven Pinker to discuss his latest work on Common Knowledge, why our shared reality is fragmenting, changing international norms, cancel culture and modern dating! Watch here or on:

For the debut episode of my podcast, I sat down with Prof. Steven Pinker to discuss his latest work on Common Knowledge, why our shared reality is fragmenting, changing international norms, cancel culture and modern dating! Watch here or on:

Pooja Arora

28,131 views • 5 months ago

This is supposed to be common knowledge but maybe this breakdown might just help people come to terms with the reality of things…

This is supposed to be common knowledge but maybe this breakdown might just help people come to terms with the reality of things…

Dr. God Abeg ooo

182,571 views • 1 year 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