Jonathan Berk

speaker

579 appearances 6 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 13 Aug

Jonathan Berk’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.

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All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions · Rerun: Ep69 “The Science Behind Why We Don’t Just Say What We Mean” with Psychologist Steven Pinker - Part 1 · 15 Jul 2026 podcast

I was talking with somebody recently and asking, you know, who today is the equivalent of Carl Sagan, somebody who explains science to non-scientists.

And I think we agreed that the closest person is Steve Pinko.

And his series of books has so many interesting scientific theories that he's these books have brought.

Brought down to a level that almost anybody can read.

So today we're he's here because he's written a new book, which Jules and I read and we think is just fascinating, called When Everybody Knows That Everyone Knows.

And it's about the idea of common knowledge.

So with that in mind, Steve, welcome to the show.

But on that subject, Stephen, one of the very interesting points of your book is you have these coordination games that there are two equilibrium, and that you talk about focal points that you use to choose the equilibrium we're in.

Some of the examples you give there are moral issues associated with, like, you know, a group that wants to signal that they're all have a common belief and then they scapegoat in an individual

To signal that.

Do you think there are moral issues that this brings up and that we should think about a society?

Stephen, one of the things that struck me about the book is you have a lot of emphasis on the desire to keep things out of common knowledge, less so on the advantages of making stuff common knowledge.

And so one thing I was thinking about is the marriage contract.

And I think the marriage contract was crucial in the development of human beings because it allowed both men and women to raise kids.

But obviously that wasn't there was no writing at the time.

So what did you do?

You had a huge party and made it common knowledge that this marriage would occur.

Right.

So don't you think that's also an important part?

Well, you know, having grown up in a repressive regime, I can tell you for sure that they don't.

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