The everyday meaning of “common knowledge” is knowledge held in common, often as an open secret. For example, it is common knowledge that publishers like books that seek, via quirky examples, to ...

I don’t know about you, but ever since I can remember – from my early teens – I have been bemused about the endless rituals we humans perform; and even more so about what can and can’t be said about ...

Steven Pinker’s new book perfectly encapsulates what a contradictory figure he has become. Much of it is a clear, fascinating explanation of a major psychological phenomenon. But then he starts ...

We laugh at the same jokes (usually for the same reasons), blush at innuendo, bow to dictators (at least temporarily), all because of a sense of implicit understanding: ie, common knowledge. We ...

Before boarding a flight to South Africa in 2013, Justine Sacco sent a sardonic joke to her 170 Twitter followers: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding—I’m white!” By the time her ...

From using words to overthrowing regimes, shared awareness is necessary for people to coordinate. The cognitive scientist explains to Nature how it works. When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...: ...

Let us begin with a few simple propositions: (1) I know that the Harvard cognitive scientist and noted anti-wokeness crusader Steven Pinker has written a wan and blinkered book about the nature of ...

Source: Scribner / Used with permission. In a New Yorker cartoon about marital relations, a husband tells his wife, “Of course I care about how you imagined I thought you perceived I wanted you to ...