The Next Big Idea COMMON KNOWLEDGE: Steven Pinker on Awkward Dates, Cancel Culture and the Necessity of Norms
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Oct 23, 2025 
In this engaging conversation, Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist and bestselling author, dives into his latest work on common knowledge. He explains how awkward social moments, like the uncertainty of ordering coffee, stem from our complex mental processes. Pinker discusses the role of blushing and laughter in signaling social norms, and explores how common knowledge fuels advertising strategies, especially during major events like the Super Bowl. He also critiques cancel culture, linking it to the enforcement of societal norms and warns about the implications of norm erosion on civil discourse.
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What Common Knowledge Really Means
- Common knowledge means everyone knows something and everyone knows that everyone knows it, recursively ad infinitum.
- Steven Pinker argues this recursive mutual awareness underpins much social coordination and norms.
Language And Institutions Create Shared Reality
- Language evolved as a cheap, easy generator of common knowledge to coordinate group action.
- Pinker says institutions like money and corporations exist because everyone knows they exist and knows that others know.
Blushing As A Social Signal
- Blushing is a two-way signal perceived from inside and outside that generates common knowledge of a social faux pas.
- Pinker suggests blushing signals you accept the group's norms and aren't claiming special status.
