329 | Steven Pinker on Rationality and Common Knowledge
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
Sean Carroll
4.7 • 4.7K Ratings
🗓️ 22 September 2025
⏱️ 78 minutes
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Summary
Getting along in society requires that we mostly adhere to certainly shared norms and customs. Often it's not enough that we all know what the rules are, but also that everyone else knows the rules, and that they know that we know the rules, and so on. Philosophers and game theorists refer to this as common knowledge. In Steven Pinker's new book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows..., he explores how common knowledge (or its absence) explains money, power, and a wide variety of subtextual human interactions.
Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/09/22/329-steven-pinker-on-rationality-and-common-knowledge/
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Steven Pinker received his Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University. He is currently the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He is the author of several best-selling books and recipient of several honorary doctoral degrees. Among his awards are Humanist of the Year (two different organizations) and the William James Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Psychological Science.
Transcript
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| 1:06.4 | Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Minescape Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. A few years ago, |
| 1:11.6 | back where we still lived in L.A., we had a summer project, my wife Jennifer and I. We took boating |
| 1:17.1 | lessons, climbing on a powerboat back in Marina del Rey and spend a few hours tootling around, |
| 1:24.8 | learning to like park the boat, tie it to the dock, all these |
| 1:29.0 | things. I've forgotten everything by now. I don't know any of the nautical terms anymore, |
| 1:32.7 | but there was a moment when if there was a disaster on the boat, I could help you bring it |
| 1:39.0 | back to shore and tie it up to the dock. One of the interesting things was, of course, what you |
| 1:43.7 | do when you're out there |
| 1:45.1 | on the water, and there's another boat that is on a collision course with you, right? Typically, |
| 1:51.4 | you don't have direct communication with the other boat. You're not on the radio. You can't just |
| 1:56.2 | say, hey, I'm going to do this. You need to have some rules about how to behave in such a way that the two boats don't hit each other. |
| 2:06.1 | Okay? |
| 2:06.8 | And there are such rules. |
| 2:08.3 | You know, if you're literally coming right on, then you're supposed to turn to the right. |
... |
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