Steven Pinker: belief

Transcript context

…Doesn’t differential knowledge play a big role in helping us understand what will happen? Say I’m part of an oligarchic elite, and we all decide the actual lead dictator is about to fall. That becomes common knowledge within the oligarchic elite. That’s not enough. Someone has to move first. Someone has to have differential knowledge that maybe they can take over, or maybe they’re the more courageous one, or maybe they know who in the armed forces will support them. The actual model of cooperation is this optimal blend of differential and common rather than just common knowledge. No? Yes, I think that’s right. Often, once they make their move, they generate the common knowledge that allows everyone to coordinate, but there has to be some kind of either private knowledge or private initiative that launches the proliferation of common knowledge. I start off with the story of the emperor’s new clothes. Why did that little boy blurt out that the emperor was naked, which then generated the common knowledge? Now everyone knows that everyone knows. Why him? Why then? I think part of the understanding of the story is that children, being naive and innocent about certain conventions and norms that govern adult life, often do blurt out truths; they don’t have the same internal payoff structure that adults do. They don’t have the fear of ostracism or condemnation that adults do. For a while now, we’ve had this thing called anonymous posters on the internet. Do you think, on average, they make the world better or worse?…

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