Office Hours with Arthur Brooks - 4 Ways to Use Common Knowledge to be Happier with Steven Pinker

Starting point is 00:00:00 Give me a concise definition of common knowledge. Common knowledge is when everyone knows that everyone knows something and everyone knows that at infinitum. Is there a free floating consciousness that's communal between the species and is it common knowledge? 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. Are comedians that use observational humor relying very, very largely on common knowledge? Yes. What laughter does is it makes private knowledge common.

Starting point is 00:00:38 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 in Harvard University. And I say, no, it's the magnificent head of hair. Yes, right. Hi, friends. Welcome to office hours. I'm Arthur Brooks. I'm a professor at Harvard University and a columnist of the other.

Starting point is 00:01:04 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, is 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. And also, please don't forget to give us your

Starting point is 00:01:45 comments or criticisms or questions. The email address for this show is office hours at Arthur Brooks.com, 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 Stephen 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. Now, he's at Harvard University. He's, at Harvard University, he's

Starting point is 00:02:27 been here his entire career. He's the Johnstone 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 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.

Starting point is 00:03:20 This goes completely contrary to what activists are telling us all over the political spectrum of how we should, the world is crowsy. 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 he's amassed a huge audience of admirers and people outside of the university who think what he writes is really incredible. Well, today, we get the newest thing off Steve Pinker's pen.

Starting point is 00:03:48 He has a brand new book out 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. 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.

Starting point is 00:04:33 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 my own thoughts. Here's the interview. Hi, Steve. How are you? Fine, thanks. How are you, Arthur? It's great to see you. And congratulations on your new book. It's an incredible achievement.

Starting point is 00:05:11 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 everyone knows. So what would you say in a sentence? You know, how would you describe it to your mom? Oh, common knowledge is when everyone knows that everyone knows something and everyone

Starting point is 00:05:36 knows that at infinitum. 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? So here's the thing about common knowledge. 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.

Starting point is 00:06:11 That's why eye contact is such a potent signal in many species. It can be usually as a threat. And they're also a species that manage to coordinate with some public common signal, even though 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 matter what day it is as long as it's the same day.

Starting point is 00:06:47 and the full moon being a conspicuous public signal is all they need to do it. And so that's a shortcut that 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 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, contact, like laughing, like crying, like blushing, that generate this common knowledge.

Starting point is 00:07:24 It's a fascinating chapter. I love that chapter. And one of the things that I talk about with my classes at HBO 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 really expressing common knowledge is what you're saying. And this is interesting because the point that you're making,

Starting point is 00:07:46 for the audience is that common knowledge doesn't have to be conscious. 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 people think about a lot. I mean, is there a consciousness out there? Is there a free-floating consciousness that's communal between all, all, between the species? And is it common knowledge?

Starting point is 00:08:15 Yeah. 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. So 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

Starting point is 00:08:50 that may be in each of our private consciousness. Are comedians that use observational humor relying very, very largely on common knowledge? Yes. So 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.

Starting point is 00:09:18 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. 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 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. I love that. And it's

Starting point is 00:09:54 interesting because self-deprecating humor, of course, is the acknowledgement of common knowledge and 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 in Harvard University. And I say, no, it's the magnificent head of hair. Yes, right. 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 a 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

Starting point is 00:10:31 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 the better, that we establish friendship and relationships. But there's kind of a dark side to it as well. 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.

Starting point is 00:11:14 But I want to really talk about how you describe this in the book, which is that, you know, 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? Well, you're often in a dictatorial regime, probably always. You know, everyone's disgruntled, but they can't be sure that everyone else's disgruntled because often the regime will try to make it seem as if everyone is happy. Everyone is privately resentful.

Starting point is 00:11:50 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 fire power to intimidate all of 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

Starting point is 00:12:26 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. What is the psychological politics of kindness? Let's unpack that one a little bit. There's a lot in that. And we've talked around it a little bit, but talked a little bit more 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.

Starting point is 00:13:08 in to acknowledge the common knowledge. So what are the rules, or the psychological politics of kindness and an intimate relationship? 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? 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 you value the other person's interests as you value yours. And kindness is where

Starting point is 00:13:51 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. And ultimately, it's opening up the possibility for a relationship of relationships.

Starting point is 00:14:34 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, has 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. 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 it's a 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 on campuses. So, so for our viewers and listeners,

Starting point is 00:15:15 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 of 200 professors at Harvard or something like that. And there's a lot of professors of 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 academic freedom problem on college campuses. It's an intellectual problem that's leading to kind of a mediocrity and an unhappiness on campuses and 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 or at least to propose. a new kind of common knowledge, which is supposed to be the inquiry-based modus operandi of universities.

Starting point is 00:16:08 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 about this. 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 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.

Starting point is 00:17:01 sometimes. And so to be an honest social scientist, you've got to be able to say what the data are suggesting. And a regime where there's 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 in 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. You know, why is the truth will set you free? Why isn't everyone interested in the truth? You know, why are there shaming mobs?

Starting point is 00:17:41 Of course, there's shaming mobs outside of academia. But academia ought to be the place where, you know, we get away from that. 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 they can change. When I was younger, you could tell ethnic jokes on television,

Starting point is 00:18:14 and that was perfectly fine or jokes about, you know, ogling men-oggling teenage girls. These are now, you know, 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 some of these norms. And there is an urge if something is expressed publicly, that is, if it's common knowledge,

Starting point is 00:18:40 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, even if it doesn't literally, but it just intrudes on that territory, that's what triggers the urge to punish.

Starting point is 00:19:15 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 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.

Starting point is 00:19:40 So Todd Rose, he's got this populace. He's a think tank of populace. He was one of our colleagues 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. 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 list serve inside

Starting point is 00:20:05 Harvard were commenting on about a new survey of students at a bunch of universities that said, and it showed that 88% 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 a 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? Yes, it's sometimes called pluralistic ignorance or a spiral of silence or in the technical literature, the Abilene paradox.

Starting point is 00:20:39 Yeah. And it's a case of 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 often happens in dictatorial regimes through the falsification of preferences. No one feels comfortable saying what they really think is they're afraid they'll be punished

Starting point is 00:21:14 for it. And the 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. Hey friends. As you probably know, I've been using AG1 in the mornings for a while now, and I was really excited that they've added a new product for the lineup, AGZ. It's not what I use in the morning. It's what I use 60 minutes before I go to bed. This is a melatonin-free drink with magnesium and some calming herbs, nothing over the top, but it helps me fall asleep a little bit faster. It helps me get a little bit more rest.

Starting point is 00:21:50 Sleep is not my strong suit. I can use all the help I can get. And AGZ is before bed, honestly, something that I value really highly. I recommend it to you. Give it a try. If you're ready to turn down the stress and focus on the rest, head on over to drinkag1.com slash Arthur. And you know what they'll do? They'll give you a free frother. So my friends, froth it up with your first purchase of AGZ. That's drinkag1.com slash Arthur. So radical activists are in a very precarious position because they're faking common knowledge and they're afraid of true common knowledge. In this particular kind of activism of, say, of the kind of woke leftism that students feel compelled

Starting point is 00:22:34 to publicly, even if privately they have their doubts. 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? Well, so I would say, yes. I admire the heck out of that, see. I completely admire that. I mean, that's... I mean, it does actually speak to a feature of human nature that I discuss in my

Starting point is 00:23:00 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 loss of logic. You can't keep food in the fridge if you believe too much in magic. But when it comes to things that are outside our realm of immediate experience,

Starting point is 00:23:47 When it comes to 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, you know, academia is for. That's what government agencies are for. We've got experts. We've got data sets.

Starting point is 00:24:14 We've 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. And so the default human attitude is when it comes to these big questions, no one knows, you can't find out. So you should believe the most uplifting story, the most edifying story, the one that makes

Starting point is 00:24:44 our side look good, the one that teaches kids the right more. morals and the idea that there's actually a true or 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. 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.

Starting point is 00:25:19 Can I run them past you and you see if you agree that these are good rules? Please. 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? Absolutely. So signals and going back there to come, since we don't literally think, I know that she knows

Starting point is 00:25:43 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, constantly reinforce the basis of the relationship. So yes. 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.

Starting point is 00:26:14 if you want to have a happier life, stay in column one. Use common knowledge as a gift. Yeah, yeah, know when to, you know, that given that the common understanding of an intimate relationship is, you know, in part affection, you know, there's no such thing as two people whose interests are completely interchangeable. 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.

Starting point is 00:26:46 Beautiful. Number three. Now we're going to go on a little bit on the opposite side of this. Don't be a sheep. You can be deceived by what looks like common knowledge. Question everything. Fair? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:27:00 You know, being aware of what are the kind of sacred myths, the values that everyone believes that everyone else believes. or at least everyone holds, that Evelyn pretends that everyone else pretends. You might be challenging that, and if so, just know what you're doing. Good. And last but not least,

Starting point is 00:27:25 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. Or at least be, you know, be aware of what you're, I would slightly modify that. Yeah. Probably if you're utterly fearless,

Starting point is 00:27:43 There's a reason that fear evolved. Yeah, no, you make that point in your book. You don't have to say everything you believe. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor precisely because 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 dangerous falsehoods, that it should be challenged, you know, realize that if you don't, you could be

Starting point is 00:28:13 the boy who says the emperor is naked. That can work. It can, you know, it can also get killed. So let me modify. At least don't lie to yourself. Well, yes. Right.

Starting point is 00:28:28 Steve Finker, 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.

Starting point is 00:28:42 He was discussing a lot. 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 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, 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

Starting point is 00:29:20 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, 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

Starting point is 00:30:02 about this and Steve and I touched on it in the context of academic freedom, of, 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 or the past few years because of council 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 populace. And his work is just the best in the world on that thing called collective illusion. You 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

Starting point is 00:30:43 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 minority 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 Populus, P-O-P-U-L-A-C-E. I'm putting it in the show notes. Populis, the think tank in this report that they did just very recently on the difference between what people say they think and what they actually think.

Starting point is 00:31:21 And it cuts across the ideology. It cross, 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 and diversity identities. that's what they say. Todd Rose shows with his work that when you dig in a little bit

Starting point is 00:32:08 and ask them what they really think, and 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,

Starting point is 00:32:22 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 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. 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. And then let's just look at Republicans. And then let's just look at Republicans. 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?

Starting point is 00:33:26 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. It's amazing how he talks about history. It's just a polymath. And he has a policy of radical honesty inside his company.

Starting point is 00:33:53 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 at a polite society.

Starting point is 00:34:20 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, 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,

Starting point is 00:34:43 the way to do it is seeking the truth as opposed to just blah all the time. Seeking truth is the fundamental and honesty, and that's one of the reasons that Bridgewater is 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,

Starting point is 00:35:03 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. 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, 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.

Starting point is 00:35:36 What you need to do as you're seeking truth is being really transparent 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 and dictatorship. and everything else. So those are the three points, 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,

Starting point is 00:36:14 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 hearts. things. You know, 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? 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?

Starting point is 00:36:57 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 there's a big literature on this.

Starting point is 00:37:18 My friend Jennifer Ocker with her colleague at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford, 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 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 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 stimulates conflict in what's called the parahepicampal gyrus of the brain. And that when that humor, when that conflict is resolved, it makes you laugh. And it's a pleasurable experience. It actually gives you a little bit of pleasure. You know, anything that sorts that out, you know,

Starting point is 00:38:08 makes you think. 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, we're playing peekaboo with a little baby, what you're doing is you're stimulating. You're flicking their parahepicampal gyrus. And that's why they laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh. They have a very rudimentary limit. system 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

Starting point is 00:38:50 knowledge and truth that, um, that bring more happiness. One of the things is 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. I've wrote a column in the Atlantic about the social science of humor. We'll put that in the show notes as well. 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

Starting point is 00:39:36 trying to be funny. And the second point about that is that staying light as opposed to being dark in sense of humor 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 humor at one's own expense. Like, I wish I were dead right now. I get it. I get it. But there's kind of an overuse of that. And there's some good papers.

Starting point is 00:39:59 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 humor can be on your own side. Okay. Third big point is about fear. We talked about fear in this conversation.

Starting point is 00:40:22 an awful lot. Fear is a basic emotion. And, you know, it's interesting because in most philosophical 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 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 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. And in the context of being accepted and the context of being

Starting point is 00:41:11 socially in the right crowd, which is all part of collective illusion and the 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 there's, 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. 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.

Starting point is 00:41:51 great philosophers. I should say the philosopher, you know, Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas, they're wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. But the one who really moves me, who sends me me every single time is, 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.

Starting point is 00:42:25 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 that that expression before.

Starting point is 00:42:42 That actually came from self-reliance. Read the whole thing. Find a time when you've got an afternoon. Man, you're going to, it's a page turner. It's so great. But it's going to free you. It freed me. me. I've written columns about it as well, and I strongly recommend that because you need to be

Starting point is 00:42:56 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. 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 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?

Starting point is 00:43:32 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.

Starting point is 00:43:49 But it's also the case that I don't want to hear. anybody else's opinions that might 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? Because 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 this is where a lot of these ideas start. So those are the four big ideas that we finished the conversation with Steve with,

Starting point is 00:44:21 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.

Office Hours with Arthur Brooks - 4 Ways to Use Common Knowledge to be Happier with Steven Pinker

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