When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows.: Common Knowledge and the Science of Harmony, Hypocrisy and Outrage ~ UK SIGNED FIRST/FIRST

Pinker, Steven

ISBN 10: 0241618827 / ISBN 13: 9780241618820

Edité par Allen Lane, 2025

A propos de cet article

SCARCE SIGNED! FIRST EDITION, first printing. Book is brand new and unread. Personally hand signed by one of our greatest living intellectuals, Steven Pinker, directly to the full title page. NOT inscribed to anyone. NOT a tip in. NOT a bookplate. Dust jacket hand covered in protective archival grade Mylar for many worry free years of reading/collecting! From 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 common knowledge, and it has a momentous impact on our social, political, and economic lives. Common knowledge is necessary for coordination, 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 social coordination: 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. But people also go to great lengths to avoid common 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. Pinker 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: Why do people hoard toilet paper at the first sign of an emergency? Why are Super Bowl ads filled with ads for crypto? Why, in American presidential primary voting, do citizens typically select the candidate they believe is preferred by others rather than their favorite? Why did Russian authorities arrest a protester who carried a blank sign? Why is it so hard for nervous lovers to say goodbye at the end of a phone call? Why does everyone agree that if we were completely honest all the time, life would be unbearable? Consistently riveting in explaining the paradoxes of human behavior, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows… invites us to understand the ways we try to get into each other s heads and the harmonies, hypocrisies, and outrages that result.

N° de réf. du vendeur ABE-1759427896583

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows.: Common Knowledge and the Science of Harmony, Hypocrisy and Outrage ~ UK SIGNED FIRST/FIRST
• Éditeur: Allen Lane
• Date de parution: 2025
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 0241618827
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9780241618820
• Reliure: Hardcover
• Édition: 1st Edition
• Impression: 1er tirage
• État de l'article: New
• État de la jaquette: New
• Signé: Signed by Author(s)

A propos de ce titre

Synopsis

'One of the most insightful books I’ve read about what makes us human and how we understand each other' Bill Gates

Steven Pinker, one of the world's greatest thinkers and bestselling author of Enlightenment Now, The Better Angels of Our Nature and The Language Instinct, reveals the power and perils of thinking alike

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 of nowhere, the posturing and pretence of diplomacy, the eruption of social media shaming mobs and academic cancel culture, the awkwardness of a first date. But people also go to great lengths to avoid common 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.

In exploring the paradoxes of human behaviour, When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows… invites us to understand the ways we try to get into each other’s heads, and the harmonies, hypocrisies, and outrages that result.

À propos de l?auteur

Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He has won many prizes for his teaching, his research on language, cognition, and social relations, and his twelve books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Enlightenment Now, and Rationality. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.”