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The Power of Common Knowledge: Steven Pinker on Language, Norms, and Punishment

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Sep 23, 2025

Guest

Steven Pinker

In this engaging conversation, Steven Pinker, a renowned cognitive psychologist and Harvard professor, delves into the intricate world of common knowledge. He discusses how our social interactions rely on nuanced signals like laughter and eye contact. Pinker explores the implications of common knowledge in relationships and societal norms, including the dynamics of cancel culture and the complexities of money's value. He highlights the hidden logic behind everyday life, revealing how common knowledge shapes our understanding of financial systems, political movements, and even personal connections.

01:35:30

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Episode notes

insights

INSIGHT

Common Knowledge Unlocks Coordination

Common knowledge is when everyone knows something and knows that everyone else knows it, enabling coordination.
It differs qualitatively from private or mutual knowledge and explains many social puzzles.

question_answer

ANECDOTE

Innuendo Preserves Relationships

Pinker uses innuendo examples like "come up and see my etchings" to show plausible deniability.
Euphemism carries content while protecting relationships by avoiding common knowledge.

insights

INSIGHT

Focal Points Cut Coordination Knots

Simultaneous, conspicuous signals create common knowledge and solve coordination problems.
Schelling's focal points (e.g., Grand Central clock) cut the knot when direct communication fails.

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Origins of Pinker's common-knowledge research

03:12 • 10min

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Distinguishing private, reciprocal, and common knowledge

12:49 • 2min

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Coordinated attack, rendezvous, and Schelling points

15:12 • 11min

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Common knowledge's role in relationships and rituals

25:50 • 9min

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Cancel culture and public punishment norms

34:41 • 13min

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Money as common knowledge: fiat versus crypto

48:09 • 6min

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Path dependence and standards like QWERTY

53:42 • 5min

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Public displays, propaganda, and blank leaflets

58:43 • 4min

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Censorship, coordination, and anonymous reporting

01:02:56 • 12min

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Humor, rituals, and status signaling

01:15:13 • 9min

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Why radical honesty would undermine relationships

01:24:30 • 4min

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Taboos in research: race, sex, and study priorities

A Sense of Style provides guidance on writing clear and effective prose, advocating for a modern and reader-friendly approach to style based on principles of cognitive science.

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Common knowledge is necessary for coordination, for making arbitrary but complementary choices like driving on the right, using paper currency, and coalescing behind a political leader or movement. It’s also necessary for social coordination. Humans have a sixth sense for common knowledge, and we create it with signals like laughter, tears, blushing, eye contact, and blunt speech.

But people also go to great lengths to avoid common knowledge—to ensure that even if everyone knows something, they can’t know that everyone else knows they know it. And so we get rituals like benign hypocrisy, veiled bribes and threats, sexual innuendo, and pretending not to see the elephant in the room.

Pinker shows how the hidden logic of common knowledge can make sense of many of life’s enigmas: financial bubbles and crashes, revolutions that come out of nowhere, the posturing and pretense of diplomacy, the eruption of social media shaming mobs and academic cancel culture, the awkwardness of a first date.

Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.” He has won many prizes for his teaching, his research on language, cognition, and social relations, and his twelve books. His new book is When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life.

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