My guest this week is the esteemed cognitive psychologist and author Steven Pinker, of Harvard University. Steve is the author of more books than I have room to write out here, including The Language Instinct, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Rationality, and, most recently, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows …: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and the Everyday Life. Common knowledge is an issue central to my work on self-censorship, so when I found out that Steve had a book coming out on the subject, I got him on the show as soon as I could.
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Steve whips up compelling examples that bring complex, abstract ideas back down to Earth. After clarifying what psychologists and economists mean by “common knowledge,” he points out that we almost constantly use it in daily life, for acts of seduction, threats, and everything in between. Steve weaves from an old Russian joke about political dissent, to GameStop’s skyrocketing (and subsequently crashing) stock price, to the proliferation of cryptocurrency ads in the 2022 Super Bowl. We get into how the avoidance of common knowledge is useful in stabilizing hierarchies, cultivating strategic ambiguity in foreign relations, spirals of silence, and nuclear policy. So often, the question becomes not who knows what, but who is willing to say aloud what everyone knows to be true.
The U.S. Treasury has begun taking over management and collection of about $180 billion in defaulted federal student loans, citing concerns that the Education Department is unequipped to handle the portfolio. Around 9.2 million borrowers are already in default and 12 million are behind, though borrowers won’t need to take immediate action and will keep their current loan servicers for now. The move is expected to face legal challenges, and those in default could see credit damage or face government collection measures like withheld wages or benefits.
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Links and Readings
Steve’s book, The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
Steve’s book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Steve’s book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity
Steve’s book, Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters
Steve’s book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows …: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life
Charles Darwin’s book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
