Start the Week Steven Pinker on common knowledge
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Sep 29, 2025 
Join Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist and bestselling author, as he unravels the complexities of common knowledge and its role in human behavior. He explores how social media shapes beliefs and community norms. Aleks Krotoski dives into the ambitions of Silicon Valley's 'immortalists' and their radical life-extension pursuits, revealing the extremes some will go to defy mortality. David Edmonds discusses Peter Singer's moral theories around our obligations to help others, challenging listeners to rethink proximity in altruism. Prepare for a thought-provoking conversation!
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Common Knowledge Enables Social Coordination
- Common knowledge means everyone knows X, everyone knows they know X, ad infinitum, and it enables coordination.
- Conventions like driving sides and currency rely on that shared mutual awareness to function.
Belief Cascades Can Create Real Crises
- Bank runs and panics arise when people believe others believe a bank is unsafe, turning belief into reality.
- Roosevelt's remark 'the only thing we have to fear is fear itself' is presented as a theorem about common knowledge.
Language And Public Signals Create Shared Reality
- Words and meanings spread by common knowledge: a word works because everyone knows others use it the same way.
- Public events and ceremonies create simultaneous mutual awareness that turns facts into common knowledge.
