Steven Pinker on Coordination, Common Knowledge, and the Retreat of Liberal Enlightenment

Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. Learn more at Mercatus.org. For a full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with helpful links, visit conversationswithtyler.com. Hello everyone and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.

Today I'm delighted to be chatting with Stephen Pinker. Stephen needs no introduction per se, but I will point out he has a new and excellent book, called When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows dot dot dot. The subtitle is Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power and Everyday Life. Stephen, welcome. Thank you.

How important is the reasoning behind common knowledge? So say you get a bunch of men in the room and at the end of some thinking, one of them concludes that he has spinach on his teeth using common knowledge. Let's say that mode of reasoning was somehow not allowed to us. How much lower would GDP be? It would tank.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (46 minutes, 8,412 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 5 episodes for $3.49, and monthly plans are cheaper still.