Steven Pinker

No.

It's a terrible joke.

The point is that everyone who laughed, first of all, knew that Trump, despite his boasts of being a business genius, had a string of failures, which made it all the more painful for Trump for that to be brought out into the open.

According to some stories, that's what led him to run in the first place.

Yeah, for revenge.

So there's some viral fads and phenomena which can be really significant.

So common knowledge is a kind of virulent property.

It can be, yes, exactly.

So in the case of, say, a bank run...

where a rumor starts that the bank might be in trouble.

Now, of course, banks don't have enough cash on hand to redeem all their deposits.

But if you worry that other people worry that still other people worry that other people worry that the bank might be insolvent, then everyone rushes to the bank to withdraw their savings, which can actually cause the bank to fail, even if it was sound.

And that can bring down an entire economy.

That was in part the cause of the Great Depression.

And so when Roosevelt said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, this was a theorem of common knowledge.

It wasn't just a feel-good bromide, but he was accurately diagnosing the situation, which is why financial leaders- That's Roosevelt speaking to flat earthers.

His spirits.

It's so bad, I'm laughing at it.

Oh, dear.

You got your dad joke out, haven't you?