4 Ways to Use Common Knowledge to be Happier with Steven Pinker

Learn more about your affect profile by taking the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule quiz (PANAS) here https://www.arthurbrooks.com/quiz/panas. So much of life depends not only on what we know, but also on what we know that others know as well. This shared awareness—what social scientists call common knowledge—explains how we cooperate, why markets rise and fall, and why silence in the face of cancel culture is so damaging. In this episode of Office Hours, I’m joined by Dr. Steven Pinker, Harvard psychologist and bestselling author of The Language Instinct and Enlightenment Now. We discuss his new book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows https://www.amazon.com/When-Everyone-Knows-That-Knowledge/dp/1668011573/, and explore how common knowledge influences cooperation, politics, humor, and even happiness, and why using it as a gift, not a weapon, can help us all live better. We cover: • What common knowledge really is and why it matters in everyday life • How nonverbal signals like eye contact or laughter shape our social lives • Why so many Americans hide their true beliefs • 4 principles that can help you live a happier, more meaningful life • How to practice radical honesty with clarity and kindness We’d love to hear any feedback you have. Please email us at [email protected]. And please leave a review on Apple or Spotify. Thanks for listening! — Brought to you by: • AGZ https://drinkag1.com/arthurbrooks—AGZ is a nighttime drink designed to support restful, restorative sleep. Get a free frother with your purchase at drinkag1.com/arthurbrooks.com http://drinkag1.com/arthurbrooks.com⁠⁠ http://thepumpclub.com/ — Where to find Steven Pinker: • Website: https://stevenpinker.com/ • X: https://x.com/sapinker • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Stevenpinkerpage Where to find Arthur Brooks: • Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://arthurbrooks.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://arthurbrooks.com/ • X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/arthurbrooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://x.com/arthurbrooks • Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/arthurcbrooks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/arthurcbrooks/ • Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/ArthurBrooks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/ArthurBrooks/ • YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGuyFRjJQFGCKzfHTBvWM6A⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGuyFRjJQFGCKzfHTBvWM6A • LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-c-brooks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-c-brooks/ • Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ mailto:[email protected] — Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (05:04) What common knowledge means and why it’s tricky (05:50) Evidence of common knowledge beyond humans (07:26) Nonverbal ways that we share common knowledge (08:08) Examples of how common knowledge spreads and is suppressed (10:54) How dictators repress common knowledge through censorship (12:44) Politeness vs. kindness when it comes to common knowledge (14:55) The threat of cancel culture to academic freedom (19:39) What happens when people are afraid to speak up (23:04) Why we fall for misinformation (25:11) Arthur’s 4 big takeaways on common knowledge for wellbeing (29:02) The problem with collective illusion (31:20) What the Populace survey reveals about how groups of Americans really feel (33:39) Bridgewater Capital’s policy of radical honesty (36:15) How the 4 principles from Common Knowledge relate to happiness — Referenced: • Leadership and Happiness course: https://www.hbs.edu/coursecatalog/1885.html • How to Build a Life: https://www.theatlantic.com/projects/how-build-life/ • The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life: https://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Files-Insights-Arthur-Brooks/dp/B0F4MFQ6VN • The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language: https://www.amazon.com/Language-Instinct-Creates-Perennial-Classics/dp/0061336467/ • The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined: https://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence-ebook/dp/B0052REUW0 • ... References continued at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.arthurbrooks.com/office-hours⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.arthurbrooks.com/office-hours⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.theatlantic.com/projects/how-build-life/ — Production and marketing by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://penname.co/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://penname.co/⁠. For inquiries about sponsorship, email [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:29Speaker 01

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• 0:59Arthur Brooks?

  Give me a concise definition of common knowledge.

• 1:01Speaker 03

  Common knowledge is when everyone knows that everyone knows something and everyone knows that ad infinitum.

• 1:06Arthur Brooks?

  Is there a free-floating consciousness that's communal between the species and is it common knowledge?

• 1:11Speaker 03

  It's not literally shared in the sense of telepathy or ESP. But what common knowledge does, though, is it puts us on the same page. When something is out there, when everyone laughs, then it does synchronize your consciousness.

• 1:26Arthur Brooks?

  Are comedians that use observational humor relying very, very largely on common knowledge?

• 1:32Speaker 03

  Yes. What laughter does is it makes private knowledge common.

• 1:37Arthur Brooks?

  It's interesting because self-deprecating humor, of course, is the acknowledgement of common knowledge. So if I said, "Steve, you know what you and I really have in common?" And people are going to say, "Well, you're both social scientists from Harvard University." And I say, "No, it's the magnificent head of hair."

• 1:49Speaker 03

  Yes, right.

• 1:57Arthur Brooks?

  Hi friends, welcome to Office Hours. I'm Arthur Brooks. I'm a professor at Harvard University and a columnist at The Atlantic where I write, "How to Build a Life," a column about how to live better, how to use the science of happiness so that you can be a happier person, and how you can be a teacher of happiness yourself and lift other people up. That's my business, that's what I want to do. That's my goal and my mission with this podcast is to make it easier for you to make a better world, starting with a happier you. So please share this show with other people who need it. And well, it's happiness, so everybody needs it. The next million people you meet, well, if you give them the link, that'll be great. In the meantime, please like and subscribe. Make sure that you're hitting the subscribe button wherever you are listening or watching this.

• 2:42Arthur Brooks?

  And also, please don't forget to give us your comments or criticisms or questions. The email address for this show is [email protected] and you can also leave the comments and we are reading the comments. You'll notice that we take the questions at the end of the show frequently from the comments themselves. This week, I have a special guest, somebody who's got a big new book that's just out. That's Steven Pinker, my colleague at Harvard University. And Steve Pinker is at the very apex of the hierarchy of the top quality academics. These are people that are universally respected at the university because of their high-quality academic work and who are able to translate it for mass audiences.

• 3:24Arthur Brooks?

  Now, he's at Harvard University, he's been here his entire career. He's the John Stone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. And he's written a bunch of books that you, the viewer listener, have probably heard of, The Language Instinct, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Rationality, and my favorite is Enlightenment Now, where he talks about enlightenment values and how they're so easy to abuse, how right and left on the political spectrum are pretty good at...

• 3:53Arthur Brooks?

  At taking for granted what has been so special and so wonderful about success in our society over the past few hundred years. He's also gotten very well known for making this weird counterintuitive case that we should be grateful as opposed to resentful about what's going on around us because we've had so much progress. He's documented with his books how much incredible progress Homo sapiens have made just in the past, well, past few decades. This goes completely contrary to what activists are telling us all over the political spectrum of how we should, the world is crummy and things are getting worse. And Steve Pinker's like, no, no, let's look at the facts. He's a fact-based guy and, and he's, he's amassed a huge audience of admirers and people

• 4:38Arthur Brooks?

  outside of the university who think what he writes is really incredible. Well, today, we get the newest thing off Steve Pinker's pen. He has a brand new book out like right now called When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life. He takes this simple idea that common knowledge, the stuff that you know and I know and everybody knows and we know that we know, and talks about how this is the glue in our society, how it's wonderful and terrible, and how common knowledge is directing a whole lot of what we see around us. After you see this interview, you're not going to see common knowledge in the same way. Who knows? You might actually live a little bit differently.

• 5:22Arthur Brooks?

  The discussion that Steve and I have is, I guess it's kind of like what you'd hear in the faculty lounge at a university. It sounds like two social scientists talking to each other, and I hope you find that really interesting. I did, to be sure. But there's one thing that I want to do after we're done with the interview. I'm going to come back and talk about some of the high points and how it relates to some of the things that we've talked about in this show in the past, some of the other issues. And most importantly, I'm going to come back and sum up what I think of the salient points in the interview for happiness and how you can use it. So stay tuned for that. The interview itself is about 25 minutes long, and then I'm going to come back with some of my own thoughts. Here's the interview. Hi, Steve, how are you?

• 6:04Speaker 03

  Fine, thanks. How are you, Arthur?

• 6:06Arthur Brooks?

  It's great to see you and congratulations on your new book. It's an incredible achievement. I mean, all of your books are great and they have a big impact on others, but this one... It's a little counterintuitive, I have to say. I mean, you wrote a book about common knowledge. Give me a concise definition of common knowledge. I mean, everybody thinks they know. I mean, that's actually the title of the book, but you know, everyone knows. So, so what would you say in a sentence? You know, what, how would you describe it to your mom?

• 6:31Speaker 03

  Oh, common knowledge is when everyone knows that everyone knows something and everyone knows that ad infinitum.

• 6:37Arthur Brooks?

  And it might be wrong and people might be lying and we might be faking. And that's why the conjunction of linguistics and psychology is so incredibly interesting. And so let me start by asking you this. Given the fact that common knowledge is unbelievably nuanced and complex, are Homo sapiens the only species that are equipped to have common knowledge? Or is there common knowledge between dogs and pigeons and other species?

• 7:02Speaker 03

  So here's the thing about common knowledge, you know, your head starts to explode when you think too many layers of I know that he knows that I know that he knows. I think we do see in other animals. That's why eye contact is such a potent signal in many species. It can be a usually as a threat, but and they're also species that manage to coordinate with some public common signal, even though they're they're certainly not thinking anything. So I give the example of coral, which don't even have a brain to think with, but they all release their eggs and sperm into the water on the full moon. The full moon is the equivalent of them all knowing that each of the other knows. They all have to pick one day. It doesn't, doesn't matter what day it is, as long as it's the same day.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  And the full moon being a conspicuous public signal is all they need to do it. And so that's a shortcut that, you know, brainless coral use. It's the shortcut that we use when either something is out there and you can't ignore it, like it's being blurted out, or we make eye contact. And we have other signals that to make it clear that not only do we know something, but we know that the other person knows it. And I have a whole chapter on. Nonverbal signals like eye contact, like laughing, like crying, like blushing, that generate this common knowledge.

• 8:23Arthur Brooks?

  It's a fascinating chapter. I love that chapter. And one of the things that I talk about with my classes at HBS is the fact that 85% of laughter is not correlated with humor. It's more of a social lubricant, which makes your, I mean, 85%, only 15% of laughter is because something's funny. And that's a, it's, it's really expressing common knowledge is what you're saying. And this is interesting because the point that you're making for the audience is that, that common knowledge doesn't have to be conscious. But, but I would love you to relate common knowledge among Homo sapiens to consciousness. So consciousness, of course, is a big philosophical topic. And it's not, it doesn't, it's not prominent in the book, but, but it's something that, that people think about a lot. I mean, is there a consciousness out there? Is, is there

• 9:07Arthur Brooks?

  a free floating consciousness that's communal between all, all, between the species? And is it common knowledge?

• 9:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, you know, it's not literally shared in the sense of, you know, telepathy or, or R S P. But what common knowledge does, though, is it puts us on the same page. So that when there, when something is out there, when everyone laughs, when you're making eye contact, when something is blurted out, then it does synchronize your consciousness, the consciousness of two people, which is what makes it so potent. And conversely, when we use euphemism, when we try to ignore the elephant in the room, what we're doing is trying to keep things out of public consciousness that may be in each of our private consciousness.

• 9:52Arthur Brooks?

  Hmm. Are, are comedians that use observational humor relying very, very largely on, on common knowledge?

• 9:59Speaker 03

  Yes. So they, the, what, what the, what laughter does is it makes private knowledge common. It's suited to do that because laughter is unignorable. It's loud, it's staccato. It also gets in the way of speaking. You can't talk and laugh at the same time. You alternate. And so you know, when everyone is laughing, then everyone is aware of something, including the person who just said whatever makes Evelyn laugh. And what that does is it establishes that something that each one of us may know privately, if people get the joke, what they are acknowledging with their laughter is that they knew it all along.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  And now everyone knows it, everyone else knows it. And again, going back to my original interest, the thing about common knowledge is it is what changes relationships.

• 10:51Arthur Brooks?

  I love that. And it's interesting because self-deprecating humor, of course, is the acknowledgement of common knowledge and a sort of a release. So if I said, Steve, you know what you and I really have in common? And people are going to say, well, you're both social scientists at Harvard University. And I say, no, it's the magnificent head of hair.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  Yes, right.

• 11:07Arthur Brooks?

  And what I've done, of course, is I took you down. And it's interesting because neuropsychologists talk about how humor works is it stimulates a part of the limbic system called the parahippocampal gyrus, which is where you process surprise. And so I know everybody thinks that we're going to talk about what we have in common as academics. And what I say is a surprise because clearly, I mean, you look like Beethoven and I look like a cue ball. There's no similarity follically between the two of us, which actually stimulated that little joke. But it released common knowledge about the fact that I'm bald and you're lucky. This is really the light side of common knowledge. You know, the way that we communicate with each other, the better that we establish friendship and relationships. But there's kind of a dark side to it as well.

• 11:50Arthur Brooks?

  And I want to get into that because this is real early in the book, where you talk about the fact that people don't resist dictators because of common knowledge. And I'm going to pull on that string a lot because I'm going to take that where you and I reside, which is on university campuses where there's a lot of problems with common knowledge with respect to cancel culture and fear and all that later. But I want to really talk about how you describe this in the book, which is that people... People will live under dictatorships for a super long time. You know, people are living under the Castro regime or whatever it happens to be. How does common knowledge make people resistant to resist, I guess?

• 12:31Speaker 03

  Well, you're often in a dictatorial regime, probably always. You know, everyone's disgruntled, but they can't be sure that everyone else is disgruntled because often the regime will try to make it seem as if everyone is happy. Everyone is privately resentful. Everyone might even know that everyone is privately resentful, but not know that everyone knows. And the thing is that that common knowledge is what's necessary for people to kind of rise up en masse. One person opposing the regime can be picked off, but if everyone resists at the same time, then even the most powerful regime doesn't have enough firepower to intimidate all of

• 13:13Speaker 03

  their citizens at once, which is why dictators are terrified of common knowledge. It's why they engage in censorship. Because you might think, well, you know, let the people bitch and moan all they want. We've got the guns. But that's not the way dictatorships work. They don't want people to bitch and moan publicly because collectively there's a lot of power. So that's why public demonstrations, where everyone shows up and everyone can see everyone else, then you realize, hey, I'm not the only one. And everyone knows that they're not the only one and they can overpower the regime.

• 13:44Arthur Brooks?

  What is the psychological politics of kindness? I just let's unpack that one a little bit. There's a lot in that. And we've kind of, we've talked around it a little bit, but talked a little bit more about, about how do you, and the reason I say this is because there's a lot of psychological politics of kindness within marriages themselves. I mean, it might be true that somebody has a fat butt. And yet, there is no reason to acknowledge the common knowledge. So what are the rules, what are the psychological politics of kindness in an intimate relationship?

• 14:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the basis of civility, of politeness is, at least one kind of politeness is the other, you value the other person's interests as much as you value your own, or at least you value the other person's. That's why the formulas for politeness, like, you know, how are you? You know, even if you're not genuinely interested in the other person's state of health, that kind of symbolizes that politeness is concern for the other person's welfare. And the basis of a communal relationship, most intensely in romance, is

• 14:45Speaker 03

  You value the other person's interests as you value yours. And kindness is where you make some sacrifice in order to enhance the well-being of someone else is an expression of it when it's symbolic and it's the real thing when you do it. And we are motivated to be kind, even in cases where we aren't already in a loving relationship. We all take pleasure from little acts of kindness. If someone asks me for, a stranger asks me for directions and I can successfully guide them to where they want to go, you know, that really feels good. You know, what an evolutionary biologist would say is you start off with a baseline kindness.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  Ultimately, it's opening up the possibility for a relationship of reciprocity, which in the future could benefit both of you. It's the first move. And even in game theory, cooperate on the first move. Before anything happens, as a feeler, do someone else a favor because there's a possibility that it'll be reciprocated. That's deeply built into any cooperating species.

• 15:51Arthur Brooks?

  I want to talk a little bit about something that you and I have a more than passing interest in, and you've got a chapter in the book. I think this is chapter eight on the book, which is, and again, this might sound esoteric to a lot of our listeners, but it isn't because we're talking about, this is a major, major battlefront in what's going on in American culture today, which is what's going on in campuses. So for our viewers and listeners, Steve and I belong to the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard. Steve's the president of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard. I'm a member of this thing. And this is a group of, I don't know, how many, 200 professors at Harvard or something like that? And there's a lot of professors at Harvard, so this is not the majority of us. But nonetheless, these are people who are publicly willing to say that we have a big

• 16:34Arthur Brooks?

  academic freedom problem on college campuses. It's an intellectual problem that's leading to a kind of a mediocrity and an unhappiness on campuses in a place that should be so, the most intellectually robust places in society and the happiest places in society, or at least among them. And this is what's inhibiting it is our inability to actually acknowledge common knowledge, or at least to propose a new kind of common knowledge, which is supposed to be the inquiry-based modus operandi of universities. And we've gotten away from that. Talk a little bit about. Cancel culture and academic freedom and how it all relates to common knowledge. And I got a couple of questions for you relating to some research that's come in more recently

• 17:19Arthur Brooks?

  about this.

• 17:21Speaker 00

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• 17:49Speaker 01

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• 18:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, so here I have two interests. One of them is as an academic, as a social scientist, as someone who deals with many controversies or controversial issues, I just feel that we can't do our jobs as researchers if we constantly have to worry about being punished, censored, ostracized, demonized, fired, which happens. That it's just pointless to try to understand what makes us tick if you constantly have to worry, oh, you can't say that. And the reason is that reality doesn't conform to our sensibilities sometimes. And so to be an honest social scientist, you've got to be able to

• 19:04Speaker 03

  Say what the data are suggesting. And a regime where there are certain dogmas that have to be ratified is not a system in which you can figure out the truth. Then, as a psychologist, kind of a meta-frame of mind, and that's why it's a topic in this book, I have to ask, why is there an urge to censor, to cancel, to demonize? Why, since the truth will set you free, why isn't everyone interested in the truth? Why are there shaming mobs? Of course, there's shaming mobs outside of academia, but academia ought to be the place where we get away from that.

• 19:47Speaker 03

  And so, in the book, in the chapter called "The Canceling Instinct," I suggest it's because there are, you know, we all live by social and moral norms, things that are rules that aren't enforced by any police, but that exist because everyone knows they exist. And, you know, and they can change. When I was younger, you could tell ethnic jokes on television, and that was perfectly fine, or jokes about, you know, men ogling teenage girls. These are now deeply uncomfortable, almost taboo. Not because they're against the law, but because you just don't do that anymore. The whole set of social norms, and the thing is that sometimes, social science can challenge

• 20:32Speaker 03

  some of these norms, and there is an urge, if something is expressed publicly, that is, if it's common knowledge, that threatens to unravel the norm. Because the norm only exists because everyone knows that it exists. If it is publicly challenged, that sets up an urge to publicly punish the challenger in order to reinforce the norm. And so, if we have norms against racism, against sexism, against exploitation of children, the sense is that something might challenge that norm, you know, even if it doesn't literally, but it just intrudes on that territory, that's what... Triggers the the the urge to punish.

• 21:13Arthur Brooks?

  Hmm. So you and I. So if I'm hearing you correctly, and I think I am. The point of getting involved in the academic freedom movement is to make sure that there's not a a similarity with respect to common knowledge between academia and the Soviet Union. Right. Where we're pretending that there's, you know, common knowledge that actually doesn't exist. We enforce it through fear. And then we employ a technique that, you know, Todd Rose's work, right? On collective illusion. So Todd Rose, he's got this populace, he's a think tank of populace. He was one of our colleagues in the in the education school until pretty recently. And he talks about the fact that he does these big surveys. Where people, they say what they say publicly, and then they say what they think privately.

• 21:55Arthur Brooks?

  These are anonymous surveys, and there's massive differences between the two. This is related, it's similar to a survey that you and I on a listserv inside Harvard were commenting on. About a new survey of students at a bunch of universities that said, and it showed that eighty eight percent of students at a bunch of fancy universities actually express more progressive political views than they actually feel. Because they feel like they have to. Now, it's collective illusion where you think that you believe something, but everybody else believes something else. And so you're afraid to say you actually think. This is a common knowledge problem, right?

• 22:29Speaker 03

  Yes, it's it is a it's sometimes called pluralistic ignorance, or a spiral of silence, or in the technical literature, the Abilene paradox.

• 22:38Arthur Brooks?

  Yeah.

• 22:38Speaker 03

  And it's a case of a common misconception together with private knowledge. So it's what's here, it's not technically common knowledge, because it's false. Namely, that everyone believes something. But it's while privately known, everyone believes that everyone else thinks something. While no one thinks it. And indeed, it's a it it often happens in dictatorial regimes.

• 23:06Arthur Brooks?

  Right.

• 23:07Speaker 03

  Through the falsification of preferences, no one feels comfortable saying what they really think because they're afraid they'll be punished for it. And spirals of silence or pluralistic ignorance are often implemented when there is punishment for expressing some belief. Or even when there's punishment for failure to punish. That can lock it in.

• 23:27Arthur Brooks?

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• 24:11Arthur Brooks?

  That's drinkag1.com/Arthur. So radical activists are in a very precarious position because they're faking common knowledge and they're afraid of true common knowledge.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  In this particular kind of activism of, say, of the kind of woke leftism that students feel compelled to publicly aver, even if privately they have their doubts.

• 24:37Arthur Brooks?

  And the fact that you're an Enlightenment guy and you're fundamentally a truth guy, that's the moral basis of your objection to this, right?

• 24:45Speaker 03

  Well, so I would say yes.

• 24:49Arthur Brooks?

  I admire the heck out of that, see, I completely admire that. I mean, that's.

• 24:53Speaker 03

  I mean, it is, it does actually speak to a feature of human nature that I discuss in my previous book, Rationality. Of why a species that obviously has the capacity for rationality, I mean, we invented vaccines, we sent people to the moon, we invented smartphones, transformed the planet. But how come we're so susceptible to wacky quack cures and conspiracy theories and fake news and so on? And I think it's because we're very rational when it comes to our own line of work, our daily existence. I mean, you kind of have to be because reality is reality and it obeys the laws of logic.

• 25:36Speaker 03

  You can't keep food in the fridge if you believe in too much in magic. But when it comes to things that are outside our realm of immediate experience, when it comes to.

• 25:49Speaker 03

  Big cosmic and scientific and grand historical questions. What is the cause of disease and misfortune? And why do wars start? And why are there depressions and booms? We academics like to think, well, yeah, we can get to the bottom of that. That's what academia is for. That's what government agencies are for. We got experts, we got data sets, we got experiments, we've got analytic tools. But all of these are really recent in human history. And I think human intuition doesn't really accept the idea that anyone can know the answers to these big questions about, you know, human well being.

• 26:29Speaker 03

  And so the default human attitude is when it comes to these big questions, you know, no one knows, you can't find out. So you should believe the most uplifting story, the most edifying story, the one that makes our side look good, the one that teaches kids the right morals. And the idea that there's actually a truer, a correct answer, and you could, in theory, find out, it's deeply unintuitive, even though as academics, that's what we devote our lives to.

• 26:58Arthur Brooks?

  I would like to, if you don't mind, given the fact that this is a podcast about the science of human happiness, I took from your book and from our conversation, but mostly from the book, kind of four lessons about common knowledge for human well being. How to understand and use common knowledge in your own life for well being. Can I run them past you and you see if you agree that these are good rules?

• 27:20Speaker 03

  Please.

• 27:21Arthur Brooks?

  How to live better, right? Number one, common knowledge is at the basis of mutual love. Use it to deepen your intimacy with the most important people in your life. Is that fair?

• 27:36Speaker 03

  Absolutely. So signals, and going back to, since we don't literally think, I know that she knows that I know that she knows, your head explodes. It is done by public conspicuous signals, like, you know, starting with, I love you, I love you, but also the favors, the rituals, the things that, you know, kind of constantly reinforce the basis of the relationship. So, yes.

• 28:01Arthur Brooks?

  Make common knowledge, the beautiful common knowledge, explicit with your beloved. I guess that's the first one. Second. You can use common knowledge as a gift, or you can use it as a weapon. If you want to have a happier life, stay in column one. Use common knowledge as a gift.

• 28:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, know when to, you know, that given that the common understanding of an intimate relationship is, you know, in part affection. Um, you know, there's no such thing as two people whose interests are completely interchangeable. Um, but that's the basis of the relationship. So in cases where, you know, where it isn't, you can keep that out of common knowledge, even if both of you privately realize it.

• 28:44Arthur Brooks?

  Beautiful. Number three, now we're going to go on a little bit on the, on the opposite side of this. Don't be a sheep. You can be deceived by what looks like common knowledge. Question everything. Fair?

• 28:57Speaker 03

  Yeah. You know, realize being aware of what are the kind of sacred myths? The, uh, the, the, the values that everyone believes that everyone else believes, or at least everyone holds that, or everyone pretends that everyone else pretends. You might be challenging that, and if so, just know what you're doing.

• 29:21Arthur Brooks?

  Good. And last but not least, don't live in fear. Live in the light. Don't be afraid of true common knowledge. You might not have to say everything all the time, but don't be afraid of it.

• 29:32Speaker 03

  Or at least be, you know, be aware of what you're. I, I would, I would slightly modify that.

• 29:37Arthur Brooks?

  Yeah.

• 29:38Speaker 03

  Probably if you're utterly fearless, you know, there's a reason that fear evolved.

• 29:44Arthur Brooks?

  Yeah, I know. You, you make, you make that point in your book.

• 29:46Speaker 03

  You know, there are, you don't have to say everything you, you believe. Uh, sometimes discretion is the better part of valor, precisely because, you know, it can challenge the common beliefs that allow everyone to get along. So you have to wait, but of course, if it's leading to disaster, if it's leading to, you know, dangerous falsehoods, then it should be challenged. You know, realize that if you don't, you could be the boy who says the emperor is, is naked. That can work. Uh, it can, you know, it can also get you killed.

• 30:18Arthur Brooks?

  Yeah. So let me, let me modify. At least don't lie to yourself. Well, yes. Right. Steve Pinker, what a wonderful book. What a wonderful addition to our knowledge. You've enriched me today and all of our listeners as well. Thank you for doing it and thanks for joining us on Offizars. Thanks for having me. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. There was a lot in it, of course. He was discussing a lot of pretty big ideas that are in the book. And I recommend that you go ahead and read the book. It's a terrific book, like all of Steve Pinker's stuff. But there are a few things that I want to talk about that I want to underline that we didn't have a chance to talk about in this, but should be really interesting and useful for you in your own life. We talked about common knowledge and dictatorship.

• 31:01Arthur Brooks?

  How dictators all throughout history, all around the world, they want to limit common knowledge. And it's pretty interesting because I had an experience of this that I talked about a little bit, or I touched on this when I was teaching at Moscow State University in the early 2000s. And one of the guys I was working with said that everybody knew what everybody knew. And when they started to actually realize that everybody knew it and started making jokes about it, that the regime was cooked. They were just finished. And it made me think a little bit more about how people behave before they get to that point in any situation of dictatorship. Now dictatorship can be a country and it can be a police state and all the things that we typically talk about.

• 31:46Arthur Brooks?

  But there are minor forms of dictatorship as well. I mean, you can be working in a situation in which you're just really afraid to say something. That's a minor form of authoritarianism or even totalitarianism over thought. I mean, a lot of people have talked about this and Steve and I touched on it in the context of academic freedom, of freedom of thought at universities. A lot of people have been super afraid to say what they think, even if they're pretty mainstream opinions over the past few years because of cancel culture and everything else. So I want to talk about that in the context of one concept that I brought up that I want you to know a little bit more about. And that's that work from the former professor at Harvard, Todd Rose, who has that think tank called Populous.

• 32:28Arthur Brooks?

  And his work is just the best in the world on that thing called collective illusion. You'll remember I mentioned that, but I want to dig into that a little bit more. Collective illusion is when people are suppressing their own true opinions because they're not sure of the common knowledge. So they're not getting to the Steve Pinker point of everybody knows what everybody knows. This is what everybody knows, but not everybody knows it. And collective illusion is one, actually more specifically, when you have an opinion, but you're afraid that it's such a minoritarian opinion that it could be dangerous for you to express it. So, and he's got some really interesting examples of this. And I recommend that you go to the website of Populace, P-O-P-U-L-A-C-E. I'm putting it in the show notes.

• 33:13Arthur Brooks?

  Populace, the think tank, and this report that they did just very recently on the difference between what people say they think and what they actually think. And it cuts across the ideology. It crosses, I mean, there's some stuff that progressives are not going to like, and there's some stuff that conservatives are not going to like in this, which makes it pretty reliable and pretty good, as far as I'm concerned. For example, let's talk about how Gen Z actually thinks about gender and diversity quotas in the workplace, in government, and in academia. Gen Z is traditionally thought of as the cohort of people that are most sympathetic. And indeed, 48% of people who are in their mid-20s and younger, they say that they believe in actually setting aside places and universities and work for people with particular gender

• 33:58Arthur Brooks?

  and diversity identities. That's what they say. Todd Rose shows with his work that when you dig in a little bit and ask them what they really think, and this is, you have to do this really carefully, because they have to make sure they're not going to get in trouble for telling you what they really think versus what they say they say publicly, it's a really different story. So 48% say they publicly believe this, but 15% actually believe this. This is Gen Z, folks. This goes down when you look at older cohorts. So Gen Z is the most sympathetic, and they're not sympathetic at all to these things. And that explains some of the dynamics of, you know, what people say and how they're voting and the political dynamics of our time. But it's not limited to issues that might be not so great from a progressive point of view.

• 34:43Arthur Brooks?

  On the conservative side, we see equally some things just like this. So for example, if you ask people, "Do you believe that the United States is a fair society? Do you believe it's a mostly fair society?" That means socially, culturally, economically.

• 34:58Arthur Brooks?

  And then let's just look at Republicans. Republicans, 50% say, "Yeah." You know, because Republicans would tend to say that, right? What do they really think? 11% think that. 50% to 11%, that's a big difference. And once again, that explains some, you know, weird things that happen in politics from time to time. And so, common knowledge is one thing, collective illusion is another. Are you saying what you really think? Why not? What does it mean? There's another point that I wanted to bring up, where we touched in the conversation on Ray Dalio and Bridgewater Capital, which is his famous hedge fund, one of the most successful hedge funds, financial institutions in the history of the United States. And Ray Dalio, I mean, I know him a little bit. He's a visionary across so many different areas.

• 35:43Arthur Brooks?

  It's amazing how he talks about history. He's just a polymath. And he has a policy of radical honesty inside his company. And I wanted to dig in a little bit more about what that means and how that can actually be maintained. What that does not mean inside Bridgewater Capital, I mean, looking into it a little bit more, it does not mean being a jerk. It does not mean, you know, throwing around insults, even if you think them. Because that's not a form of honesty that's very productive. You know, once again, being honest doesn't mean saying everything that you think at every given moment to the point that you're driven out of polite society. What he means by radical honesty, Ray Dalio, inside Bridgewater, and I tell you this so that you can consider it for your own community, your own family, your own company,

• 36:27Arthur Brooks?

  is number one, always seeking the truth. Now, this is important as a form of honesty, because most people think of honesty on the supply side, being more honest. It's a lot more valuable on the demand side. If you want to be honest, the way to do it is seeking the truth, as opposed to just blah all the time. Seeking truth is the fundamental in honesty. And that's one of the reasons that Bridgewater's so incredibly successful is because everybody's seeking the truth. They're demanding the truth more than they're supplying it spontaneously. The second is challenging everything. It doesn't mean you don't believe it, but it means looking for the truth, even if you can't see it. Maybe there's something more than we see. That's the spirit of investigation. That's the spirit of the scientist, by the way.

• 37:10Arthur Brooks?

  As a behavioral scientist, I truly believe in this. I just love this point of view, where I'm always looking for something that I don't believe necessarily yet. I'm always looking for something, looking, looking. And this is what blows my mind about my own field is where I thought something, but it turns out not to be true because I'm seeking, I'm challenging all the time. And the last is transparency. You don't have to call people out constantly. What you need to do as you're seeking truth is being really transparent about what you, about what you're doing and what you're thinking and what your business practices are and what your values are. And of course, that requires a lot of trust, doesn't it? You have to feel safe under that circumstance. And that gets us back a little bit to common knowledge and collective illusion

• 37:54Arthur Brooks?

  and dictatorship and everything else. So those are the three points. Then, and we'll list them here on the screen of radical honesty is seeking what is true, challenging everything and transparency. Okay, now there was four principles that we had in the end that I proposed to Steve about, you know, what are the lessons for all of us? And I want to relate them all to happiness and common knowledge just really quickly as we finish. Number one was always using common knowledge and truth and information as a gift and never as a weapon. But that's true for all hard things. You know, it's, we want decency in our society, but we also don't want to lie. How do you balance what you think, what you do, the criticisms that you have, the opinions that you hold, the truth that you hold dear?

• 38:40Arthur Brooks?

  How do you make it a form of glue for our society as opposed to solvent for our society? And the answer is always thinking, how is this a gift? How am I offering this up in love? Not how am I making this a weapon? How am I using this to gain points on another person? And using that as the first line of judgment in the way that you're thinking about these areas of information that you're bringing. Bring that to everything, gift or weapon. That's the first test. Maybe that's the only test. The second is humor, and we talked about this a little bit in the conversation. And, and there's a big literature on this. My friend Jennifer Acker with her colleague at the, at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford,

• 39:22Arthur Brooks?

  Naomi Bagdonas, they wrote a really nice book called Humor Seriously, on how you can use humor more seriously in business and use it strategically. It's, it's really funny book and it's a really good book. And I recommend that you use this because humor is the best way to be engaged in common knowledge and using it for, for the public good, or at least it's a good way to do it. As I briefly mentioned, there's a lot of neuroscience on this, that humor, what it does is it, it stimulates conflict in what's called the parahippocampal gyrus of the brain. And that when that humor, when that, when that conflict is resolved, it makes you laugh. And it's a pleasurable experience. It actually gives you a little, a little bit of pleasure, you know? Anything that, that sorts that out, you know, makes you think.

• 40:07Arthur Brooks?

  And it's so funny when you start to see little kids get their parahippocampal gyrus flicked. They laugh like crazy. And so when you, when you say, you know, when you're playing peekaboo with a little baby, what you're doing is you're stimulating, you're flicking their parahippocampal gyrus. And that's why they laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh. They have a very rudimentary limbic system and, and it's not fully wired. And so you can get them to be surprised again and again and again. You wouldn't be surprised because you know, I'm not, you know, I'm still here. The baby doesn't. And when you're, when you say, he's gone, he's here. That's super funny in the same way that a really funny joke discombobulates you. Now, there are a couple of ways to use humor in the course of, of knowledge and truth

• 40:51Arthur Brooks?

  that, that bring more happiness. One other thing that's really important to keep in mind is that it's a lot more important in anything to laugh as opposed to being funny. Sense of humor has two aspects to it. There's a bunch of literature. I've written about this. We'll put, I've written a column in The Atlantic about the social science of humor. We'll put that in the show notes as well. That there's two kinds of sense of humor. One is finding things funny and the other is being funny. Being funny is actually not associated with happiness. Finding things funny is incredibly highly associated with happiness. And so work on the skill of laughing at stuff, laughing at yourself, laughing at the world, laughing at truth, laugh more, as opposed to simply trying to be funny.

• 41:35Arthur Brooks?

  And the second point about that is that staying light as opposed to being dark in sense of humor is really, is really important. One of the things that we see traditionally with millennials and Gen Z is there's a lot of really darks. It's, it's, it's, it's humor at one's own expense. Like, I wish I were dead right now. I get it, I get it. But there's a kind of an overuse of that. And there's some good papers, there's some good research that shows that that is actually not a happiness inducing. And so staying light as opposed to being dark is an important principle on that as well. So as you use information, you use truth, as you use common knowledge, number one, laugh more and stay light. And, and, and humor can be on your own side. Okay, third big point is about fear.

• 42:19Arthur Brooks?

  We talked about fear in this conversation an awful lot. Fear is a basic emotion. And, you know, it's interesting because in most philosophical and religious traditions, there's this idea that fear and love are opposite from each other. And that's a very robust idea. Love and hate are not opposites. Hate is downstream from fear. Hate is a product of fear. And, you know, in the Bible, in the Christian Bible, in, in John, uh, St. John's first letter, he says that perfect love drives out fear. That's also 500 years before St. John Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching in China said the same thing, that, that, that, that love eradicates fear. But it's also true that perfect fear drives out love. And when there's fear in your life, love is impossible. And so it's a very important thing that we understand this.

• 43:04Arthur Brooks?

  And in the context of being accepted, in the context of being socially in the right crowd, which is all part of collective illusion and most especially common knowledge and all the stuff that Steve is talking about, there's just really a ton of social fear that goes into that. And if you suffer from fear, a lot of social fear, saying the wrong thing, thinking the wrong thing, believe you're thinking the wrong thing, that's going to block love in your life. It just is, as a matter of basic neuroscience. So you need to fix that.

• 43:39Arthur Brooks?

  How? I got one thing that I'm going to recommend that you read. I'm going to throw this into the show notes. And by the way, this is my favorite philosopher. I mean, I got a favorite philosopher, it's true. You know, okay, there's lots of great philosophers. I should say the philosopher, you know, Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. But the one who really moves me, who sends me every single time is Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American transcendentalist from the 1840s, 50s, 60s. He also, by the way, is the founder of the magazine that I write for, The Atlantic. Believe it or not, The Atlantic was founded by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Longfellow, and they brought their old friend Thoreau along for the ride. These are the greats that actually founded The Atlantic. But Emerson's finest essay is about fear, is about social fear and truth.

• 44:23Arthur Brooks?

  And it's called Self-Reliance. It's crazy. If you read this thing, it's like a tall glass of water on a summer's day. Read this thing. He talks about how you can rebel against the opinions of the world. That's where he had that famous phrase, the hobgoblins of little minds. You've heard of that expression before. That actually came from Self-Reliance. Read the whole thing. Find a time when you've got an afternoon. Man, you're gonna, it's a page turner. It's so great. But it's going to free you. It freed me. I've written columns about it as well, and I strongly recommend that because you need to be free of fear when it comes to truth and knowledge and common knowledge. Last but not least is when we're talking about honesty, is self-honesty. We touched on that in the conversation with Steve, but I want to come back to that.

• 45:06Arthur Brooks?

  I'm very much a proponent of being radically honest with yourself. There's nothing good that comes from lying to yourself. It just doesn't. And, and for those of you who've been in 12 step programs and recovery from addiction, which many of you have been, what they all have in common is self honesty is to not lie to yourself anymore. And there's something so freeing about not lying to yourself. You know, what does it actually mean to be radically self honest? For, for good and for bad, by the way, there are a lot of people who lie to themselves constantly and say, I'm so stupid. I'm so, you know, I'm so ugly. I'm so worthless. That's completely wrong. That is a lie. And by the way, you know, that's a lie. The problem is you start to believe it the more that you reinforce it. But it's also the case that I don't want to hear anybody else's opinions that might

• 45:51Arthur Brooks?

  be critical of me, that somebody else's speech or criticism is a form of violence against me. All that is just lying to yourself is what it comes down to. And you can free yourself with radical self knowledge and radical self honesty. Stop sparing your feelings. My friends, you can handle it. How do I know you can handle it? Cause you're watching office hours. This show is actually for you because you want to learn more about yourself and more about other people. And, and this is where a lot of these ideas start. So those are the four big ideas that we finished the conversation with Steve with, and I wanted to reinforce for your happiness journey. Thank you for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed the conversation. Come back next week for another thrilling episode of Office Hours where you will learn a lot more. We're going to have some more conversations in the coming weeks and it's not going to be the same if you're not here. See you later.

• 46:45Speaker 00

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