{"product_id":"when-everyone-knows-that-everyone-knows-common-knowledge-and-the-mysteries-of-money-power-and-everyday-life-1","title":"When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life","description":"\u003cb\u003e**Selected by Bill Gates as One of Five Books to Read This Winter**\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom one of the world's most celebrated intellectuals, a brilliantly insightful work that explains how we think about each other's thoughts 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 \u003ci\u003ecommon knowledge\u003c\/i\u003e, and it has a momentous \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eimpact on our social, political, and economic lives\u003c\/b\u003e.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eCommon knowledge is necessary for \u003ci\u003ecoordination\u003c\/i\u003e, for making arbitrary but complementary choices like driving on the right, using paper currency, and coalescing behind a political leader or movement. It's also necessary for \u003ci\u003esocial \u003c\/i\u003ecoordination: everything from rendezvousing at a time and place to speaking the same language to forming enduring relationships of friendship, romance, or authority. Humans have a sixth sense for common knowledge, and we create it with signals like laughter, tears, blushing, eye contact, and blunt speech. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBut people also go to great lengths to \u003ci\u003eavoid \u003c\/i\u003ecommon 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePinker shows how the hidden logic of common knowledge can make sense of many of life's enigmas: financial bubbles and crashes, revolutions that come out of nowhere, the posturing and pretense of diplomacy, the eruption of social media shaming mobs and academic cancel culture, the awkwardness of a first date. Artists and humorists have long mined the intrigues of common knowledge, and Pinker liberally uses their novels, jokes, cartoons, films, and sitcom dialogues to illuminate social life's tragedies and comedies. Along the way he answers questions like: \u003cbr\u003e \u003cul\u003e \u003cli\u003eWhy do people hoard toilet paper at the first sign of an emergency?\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eWhy are Super Bowl ads filled with ads for crypto?\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eWhy, in American presidential primary voting, do citizens typically select the candidate they believe is preferred by \u003ci\u003eothers\u003c\/i\u003e rather than their favorite?\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eWhy did Russian authorities arrest a protester who carried a blank sign?\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eWhy is it so hard for nervous lovers to say goodbye at the end of a phone call?\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eWhy does everyone agree that if we were completely honest all the time, life would be unbearable?\u003c\/li\u003e \u003c\/ul\u003e \u003cbr\u003eConsistently riveting in explaining the paradoxes of human behavior, \u003ci\u003eWhen Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...\u003c\/i\u003e invites us to understand the ways we try to get into each other's heads and the harmonies, hypocrisies, and outrages that result.\u003cdiv style=\"display:none\"\u003eISBN-10: 1668011573\u003cbr\u003eISBN-13: 9781668011577\u003cbr\u003eAuthor: Pinker, Steven\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Scribner Book Company\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Scribner Book Company","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover (Sep 2025)","offer_id":46080711295173,"sku":"9781668011577","price":28.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0708\/6414\/2533\/files\/9781668011577.jpg?v=1776039527","url":"https:\/\/www.inveni.store\/products\/when-everyone-knows-that-everyone-knows-common-knowledge-and-the-mysteries-of-money-power-and-everyday-life-1","provider":"Inveni","version":"1.0","type":"link"}