About the Book: When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows…: Common Knowledge and
the Science of Harmony, Hypocrisy and Outrage
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