When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...

A world-renowned cognitive scientist explores the logic and psychology of common knowledge.

Steven Pinker finds the way humans think about the thoughts of others to be endlessly fascinating. What is more, he demonstrates that we do it constantly. This awareness that takes hold of us when something is public or appears to be universally known is called common knowledge, and it exerts a profound influence on our social, political, and economic lives.

According to Pinker, this common knowledge can explain many of life's puzzles: financial bubbles and crashes; revolutions that erupt out of nowhere; posturing and pretense in diplomacy; cancel culture on social media and in academia; and the awkwardness of a first date. Yet people go to great lengths to ensure that even if everyone knows something, they still do not know that everyone else knows it too. This brings us to rituals such as polite hypocrisy, veiled bribes and threats, sexual innuendos—all the way to pretending we do not notice the elephant in the room.

By examining the paradoxes of human behavior, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows invites us to understand the ways we attempt to get inside one another's heads, as well as the consequences that follow.