In "When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows", published today, Steven Pinker examines “common knowledge.”
cartoon about marital relations, a husband tells his wife, “Of course I care about how you imagined I thought you perceived I wanted you to feel.”In its various iterations, ranging from shared information about intentions and actions among family members, friends, and fellow workers to common knowledge in neighborhoods, religious and political communities and nation states, Pinker demonstrates, the phenomenon is an essential tool of social stability, cohesion, and change.
And it is complicated bycan challenge conventions of dominance, status, and prestige. Apparent to everyone in sight, crying can convey feelings of helplessness, abandonment, and also, counterintuitively, joy and compassion.sends a message that one has, albeit involuntarily, been thrust in the spotlight. Most people are mortified when their blush is followed by eye contact and becomes common knowledge.come-ons or bribes, even when the latter pose little or no cost to them, because direct speech generates common knowledge, while denying the implications of an inuendo “doesn’t have to be plausible, only possible.”” – handshakes, hugs, shared meals, vacations, sex, fibs, lies, snubs, face-saving, apologies – are, at least in part, “efforts to generate or avoid the common knowledge that allows people to coordinate their actions.” Avoiding common knowledge, Pinker suggests, also shapes international relations. This insight helps us understand why Israel neither affirms nor denies it produces nuclear weapons and why the United States does not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state.of Freedonia, starts a war with Sylvania because he believes its ambassador refused to shake his hand, Pinker writes, “is all too close to the historical record.” After all, the majority of wars fought between 1648 and 2008 resulted from demands for status or a desire forPinker analyzes the role of common knowledge in the “Prisoner’s Dilemma,” the game of “chicken” immortalized in the moviepandemic. He credits the “Long Peace” following the end of World War II to “conventions and common salience,” especially the doctrine of mutually assured nuclear destruction and norms respecting territorial integrity, which require grandfathering in borders, “however arbitrary or unjust.” A norm that Vladimir Putin, of course, has recently ignored with his unprovoked assault on Ukraine. A prominent advocate of academic freedom, viewpoint diversity and civil discourse, Pinker ends his book with a provocative claim that cancel culture in colleges and universities is grounded in an attempt to prevent certain ideas from becoming common knowledge. And so, academics often “blur the pursuit of objective knowledge with the upholding of moral norms” they approve. In 2022, Pinker notes, a prestigious journal announced it would reject or retract articles portraying a group of people in a flattering light, even if the research was scientifically sound. The motive – a desire not to embolden racists – was laudable, he implies, but the strategy was deeply flawed. For one thing, it faced the polar bear paradox: attempts to prevent people from thinking about a possible relationship betweenoften increases their interest in thinking about it. For another, if the idea is false, documenting that fact reinforces beneficial moral norms.leaves readers – at least this reader – with questions. Pinker’s decision to “gloss over the difference between common knowledge and common belief” is disappointing, for example, especially at a time in which belief is often presented as knowledge in siloed communities embedded in a polarized society. That said, he is right and eminently qualified to remind us that rationality is limitless, even though applications of it are flawed. And rationality, “that cognitive talent that underlies common knowledge,” is “what’s most special about our kind: we not only have thoughts, but thoughts about our thoughts, and thoughts about our thoughts about our thoughts.”Whatever your goals, it’s the struggle to get there that’s most rewarding. It’s almost as if life itself is inviting us to embrace difficulty—not as punishment but as a design feature. It's a robust system for growth.Self Tests are all about you. Are you outgoing or introverted? Are you a narcissist? Does perfectionism hold you back? Find out the answers to these questions and more with Psychology Today.
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