Steven Pinker Returns (on common knowledge)

Episode overview

Steven Pinker (When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life) is a cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, and author. Steven returns to the Armchair Expert to discuss how in general things have gotten better, that tracking the data can make one more optimistic than reading headlines, and the differences between private knowledge and common knowledge. Steven and Dax talk about how evolved language generates common knowledge, the role of conventions and ritual in human coordination, and the power of Super Bowl advertisements. Steven explains the counterintuitive fact that announcing one’s philanthropy actually does more good, why we have to expose ourselves to a universe of ideas to find out which ones are good, and why he’s not afraid of AI.

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Short transcript highlights

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1. 0:00Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Lily Padman. Hi.
2. 1:06:42other people though. As you say, the poor person is not judging any of this. They want the money and that's it.
3. 2:15:35billion compared to Gates's 75.8 billion in lifetime giving. Whoa.