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When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...

Common Knowledge and the Science of Harmony, Hypocrisy and Outrage
By Steven Pinker
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Brief Description
One of the world's greatest thinkers investigates the logic and psychology of common knowledge As a cognitive scientist, the ultimate subject of Steven Pinker's fascination is how we think about each other's thoughts, ad infinitum. It sounds impossible, but Steven Pinker shows that we do it... Read More
Format: Hardback
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One of the world's greatest thinkers investigates the logic and psychology of common knowledge As a cognitive scientist, the ultimate subject of Steven Pinker's fascination is how we think about each other's thoughts, ad infinitum. It sounds impossible, but Steven Pinker shows that we do it all the time. This awareness, which we experience as something that is public or \"out there,\" is called common knowledge, and it has a momentous impact on our social, political, and economic lives. Common knowledge, Pinker shows, can make sense of many of life's enigmas- financial bubbles and crashes, revolutions that come out of nowhere, the posturing and pretence of diplomacy, the eruption of social media shaming mobs and academic cancel culture, the awkwardness of a first date. 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. In exploring the paradoxes of human behaviour, When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows... invites us to understand the ways we try to get into each other's heads, and the harmonies, hypocrisies, and outrages that result.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780241618820

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 23 September 2025

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Allen Lane

Audience: General / adult, Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 34.0mm

Width: 163.0mm

Height: 242.0mm

Weight: 598g

Pages: 384

Collections

Education & Reference Mindset & Self Help Non-Fiction Penguin Books Personal Development Philosophy & Psychology Science & Nature Self-Help & Personal Development Steven Pinker

About the Author

Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He has won many prizes for his teaching, his research on language, cognition, and social relations, and his twelve books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Enlightenment Now, and Rationality. 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.\"

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