I Know that She Knows that I Know that She Knows: Steven Pinker on the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life

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28:43Steven, Brandon, and Bruno, the business owners of SandCloud, reinvested their 2 % cash back to help build the company's retail presence. Capital One, what's in your wallet? Find out more at CapitalOne.com slash Spark Cash Plus Term Supply. so you know the concept of thinking in this i know you've used the word recursive i'm trying to avoid that word but the concept of just because like most people don't think like that this is you know because it could go on forever oh he knows that she knows that he knows that she knows it it could go on forever so that's what people mean when they say this is recursive but like a classic example maybe the most practical example in real life is something like poker where someone's bluffing and you think to yourself, are they bluffing?

29:31Or do they think that I think that they're bluffing? Or do they think that I think that they're bluffing? So now they really are bluffing. And then it can get recursive where it could go on forever where you're trying to determine if the person's bluffing or not, but it depends on how much they're thinking about whether you're thinking about their bluffing. So that's when it can go on forever. And there's no real answer to how to solve that problem other than observation. Like, Is that how this person plays poker? Or the same, you know, even simpler, rock, paper, scissors. If I do rock two times in a row, you could think, is he just doing rock forever?

30:06Or now does he think, I think he's doing rock forever, so now he's going to do paper? Or, you know, whatever. Yeah, I do analyze those, particularly in the previous book called Rationality, where I have a chapter on game theory. I talk about what are called outguessing standoffs. But I talk about them again in this book, because as you note, they do pop up and they do involve, again, to use the fancy schmancy word, recursive mentalizing. That just means trying to get inside someone's head as they're trying to get inside someone's head, maybe yours, maybe someone else's. So that's recursive mentalizing, but it's just getting inside, reading the mind of a mind reader is the way I put it.

30:43And indeed, poker is an example. Rock, paper, scissors is another one. In sports, the penalty kicker wants to know whether the goalie is going to guard left or right, and the goalie wants to know whether the kicker is going to kick left or right. Each one of them is trying to get inside the head of the other one getting inside their head. The solution in those cases is to be random. That is, if you have some predictability, as you noted, or if there's some tell, if you give away your intention by leaning, twitching, then you give your opponent an advantage. That's why we, of course, have the expression a poker face.

31:19That is, you don't give away, even in a micro expression, the kind of hand you're holding. And randomness is essential. So in poker, you can't bluff all the time because then your opponent will call your bluff. You can't bluff none of the time because then you won't be pressing your advantage. And so a skilled poker player bluffs not like mentally flipping a coin. It can't be 50-50. It really does depend on the value of the hand that you have. But depending on the payoff of being wrong in each direction, you randomize. And that's the optimal strategy in an outguessing standoff. And so given that, let's say given your book, given that you wrote this book, how can one take this information and maybe use it in a setting like poker or rock, paper, scissors?

32:09And the reason why I'm asking about those two games is games in general are a safe way to practice life's more difficult situations. So poker might be like a game-like simulation of real-life negotiation, for instance. So that's why these concepts are so important for very important things like two countries negotiating nuclear weapons. So given what you write in this book, how can one use this knowledge and information to better themselves, to deal with life situations? Well, it's not directly a kind of how-to book or a lifestyle. Yeah. But I think every social interaction involves either creating or denying common knowledge.

32:54And just to be aware of how that goes on can give you more insight. I think probably can be parlayed into greater, you know, we have the expression social skill, savoir faire, not being too far along the spectrum, being savvy. And so I like to think that the book gives you a way of thinking about what actually social skill is. A lot of it is either negotiations like the one we talked about in terms of a veiled bribe, the veiled sexual come on, veiled threat. That is, how subtle versus blatant do you make your propositions so that they don't go over the head of someone who really wants to accept them, but they don't offend or insult someone who doesn't want to go along with them.

33:35So, you know, that kind of calibration. And it's a calibration, as we talked about before, not just in terms of concrete rewards and punishments, like being handcuffed or going free without a ticket, but also in terms of the, one of the things that the book tries to explain is what are the non-tangible social outcomes? What is it, why do we sometimes feel awkward? Why do we feel embarrassed? Why do we feel ashamed? Why do we feel guilty? Why do we feel outraged? Those are the rewards and punishments in everyday life that we're constantly negotiating when we calibrate our level of speech. Or it may not be just speech.

34:17It can also be, when do you laugh? When do you make eye contact? Also, in the final chapter of the book, which is called Radical Honesty, Rational Hypocrisy. So I take up the question, which all of us have to deal with, which is, when do we just kind of cut the crap and blurt out what we mean? Would it be good if we did that all the time? Should we dispense with the white lies and the genteel hypocrisy and the politeness and the beating around the bush and the shilly-shallying? and just kind of let it all hang out? And the answer is obviously no, we should not. There's a reason for hypocrisy. And in cases where people have to be brutally honest all the time, life is hell.

35:01There are fictional scenarios in which that's worked out for the amusement of the viewers, like the movie Liar, Liar. There's the case of a hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, where the visionary boss, Ray Dalio, announced that from now on, we're all going to be completely honest with each other. If you think your co-worker is doing a lousy job, just tell them in so many words. If a boss is unhappy with an employee, he'll dress them down in public. It did not work out. People left the company. They had to change the policy. How come? Well, our relationships, as I mentioned, are our relationships of cooperation, of affection, of deference, of transactional exchanges, all depend on common knowledge of certain fictions.

35:49Friends will do anything for each other. Couples are loyal to each other in thought and deed. Bosses have the interests of their employees and of the organization at heart. And these are fictions. They're not true all the time. But if you challenge them too easily, then the basis of the relationship dissolves and you're no longer friends. You no longer have a stable chain of command. And so one always has to calibrate when are the benefits of preserving the relationship worth the costs of the hypocrisy of not saying what's on my mind. Yeah. So again, a lot of it is about negotiating a boundary.

36:30So for instance, you know, let's say the boss in general has the employee's emotions and success at heart. And that could be true part of the time. It's not going to be true all the time because the company is going to have some agenda that the employee might not like. But in general, the basic fiction that creates the relationship should be there maybe 80, 90 % of the time. And then it's a matter of just figuring out where those boundaries are. So you don't overstep. So you don't ask for a salary increase in the middle of a meeting where you're asked to take on more responsibilities. You don't tell the boss that he's an idiot.

37:07Even if he is an idiot, you're best off not saying that out loud. Because poker, you have a goal. In poker, your goal is to win the hand, to make money, or to get out of the hand so as to avoid losing money. And so you need to negotiate the boundary of what a bluff is and how much this person is willing to bluff. And deviating from that norm, from these social norms, like not calling your boss an idiot. If you deviate, it's got to have a purpose as well. Either you're making a joke or you want to get fired or you're creating content for a book or whatever. Yes. So another way of putting it is that communication often works at two levels.

37:46One of them is the actual content. The other is the relationship you have with the person. And since you have to keep both in mind, A lot of verbal communication, even a lot of nonverbal communication, consists of what to do when those are intention. A simple example is just a polite request, like if you could pass the guacamole, that would be awesome. That's kind of a weird thing to amuse about, a hypothetical world in which you would be past the guacamole, and awesome is a little bit of an exaggeration. Nonetheless, it's better than just barking a command at a stranger or a friend, give me the guacamole.

38:25Well, you know, then you're kind of treating them like a servant or an underling. You don't want to do that. So you calibrate the politeness so that what you want can be figured out, but you're not ruining the relationship by seeming to treat them like an employee or a servant. Likewise, with a lot of the requests that we have to make in life. Now, sometimes, you know, as any couples therapist would say, their couples can have a long history of preserving the peace in the home by one person deferring to the other you know some things are not worth fighting about i'll just let her have her way that that's more important it's more important that we be at peace than i get my way in this circumstance but if you um there's a long history where one member of the relationship is always getting their way and the other one is always getting the short end of the stick, that the subordinate always defers because they expect that the other partner will stand their ground and they stand their ground because they can count on their partner always giving way.

39:29You know, that can become pathological. It can lead to resentment and the time may come where you risk the conflict, the unpleasant feelings, you challenge the nature of the relationship if the terms have gotten too unfavorable. You know, it's interesting because you say this is not a self-help book, and obviously it isn't. I just want to repeat, there's so many interesting stories and examples, pieces of knowledge and history that you draw upon when writing this book. It's just a fascinating book to read. But I always wonder with these books, on the danger of being too academic, I always try to extract something where I could use in my life.

40:09And in this case, whether it's intended or not, What this tells me is having a catalog in my head of what the norms are in society, what are the different types of communication of partial information and how to understand those. Having more of a sense of that than the people I'm talking to gives me somewhat of an advantage in life. For instance, if I'm an employee asking for a salary from the boss, I might want to know what types of communication can elicit information from him that I could then make use of to later ask for a salary increase. Yes. So I like to think that people who read my book will just see social life, every aspect of social life in a different light.

40:52Hope that there's just more insight as to what's going on with all the rituals and the role-playing and the games people play. There is a logic to them. They're not just arbitrary rituals. You're not just like an actor assigned a role and you just read the lines. There's constant thinking negotiation. As we've discussed, there are outguessing standoffs where you want to be a little bit unpredictable or you don't want to have a tell that reveals your values. There are cases of calibrating the level of bluntness versus indirectness. There are cases of being aware what nonverbal signals like eye contact and blushing and tears can do.

41:31So I like to think that there's just, you'll never see social life the same way again once you understand the hidden logic behind them. And there is a hidden logic. It's not arbitrary. It's not irrational. I mean, it's irrational if you just write down what's happening. I think if you understand how our relationships depend on common knowledge, often unstated, that our communication either reinforces or challenges the common knowledge that establishes a relationship, then you're not just a spectator. You've got a kind of color commentary on social life in the back of your mind. Yeah, and there's also a certain flexibility in all this.

42:15So if any one of these sort of social norms or when everyone knows that everyone knows is too fixed in society, then it almost becomes useless because like you mentioned about poker, if I know you always bluff, then I'm going to wait to have a good hand and you're going to bluff and then I'll win the game. So there's always this unpredictability is a valuable skill also knowing when to be unpredictable. And we see it playing out right now as we're recording this in the stock market today or yesterday, the, you know, So Friday, Donald Trump said, oh, I'm going to put 100 % tariff on Chinese goods.

42:54And the stock market crashed. And the whole analysis over the weekend was, oh, here's the Donald Trump playbook. He announces some extreme tariff, and then he sees what happens, and then he backs off slightly. The market always falls, and then it goes up. So that's like the playbook. But if he always did that, if any negotiator was totally predictable, then he's useless as a negotiator. So then there's always the fact that, well, Donald Trump's also unpredictable. So is this one of those times when he means it or is he being unpredictable or, you know, there's a lot of analysis of these types of communications and it plays out.

43:33And then the stock market is an example of the world judging, you know, basically voting what it thinks. Is he being predictable or unpredictable? and then the market will go up or down accordingly. So this sort of stuff plays out in everyday real life and having kind of an understanding of how these rules work is very interesting. Yes, indeed. I mean, the stock market is a good example because it's aside from the actual productive value of stocks, namely you own a share of the factory and when the factory sells widgets at a profit, you get that percentage of the profit. That's technically what shares are or stocks are.

44:10But of course, that's not the only reason people invest. They also hope that they can sell it at a profit in the future because they hope that other people might want to buy it and sell it to still other people in the future. Greater fools, as they sometimes call them. And so that's what speculation is. Or commodities like cryptocurrency or real estate. And as you note, in a market, because prices are common knowledge and prices reflect instantaneous supply and demand, it's a game that you can't win on average. Some people win some of the time, but to the extent that the market is efficient, if you think you've got a hot tip on a company that's going to make an insanely great new gadget or some commodity that you predict everyone's going to want more of tomorrow, probably everyone knows that as well.

45:04And so the price has already been bid up. If you buy it at that price, you're not going to rationally be able to sell it at a profit in the future. Sometimes you can, but just as often, the bubble will pop when the market starts running out of greater fools. That's why the standard advice for ordinary investors is buy an index fund, just a basket of securities. Don't think you're smarter than the market. Just be content to share in the overall appreciation of the market as productivity improves. Right. So again, I'm curious, like when you were, like I think of some of your books, The Better Angels of Our Nature, that one had such a beautiful and concise impact on me, actually, just this idea that's just so stunning that actually violence has decreased over the past every century, over the past several thousand years.

45:53And exactly at a point where you sort of feel looking at the newspaper, the violence has increased. Like it's a very contradictory kind of conclusion in the book, but it's, it's, it's beautiful and optimistic how you explain it. And I understand this is a message that I've been repeated to many other people and quoted your book and so on. And so with this one, I'm curious, what made you sit down and write this? Where I would say the conclusion from this is basically to become more aware as much as possible of all the hidden signals that exist in this universe of when everyone knows that everyone knows.

46:29Yeah, that would be the main practical goal. It's also, I like to think of it as a kind of mind candy. There's some ideas in there that are kind of mind-boggling when you're exposed to them. One of the privileges that I have as being an academic, a professor, a scientist, is that I just get to learn about these ideas that are sometimes buried in the academic literature. If you read them in the academic literature, you can't understand a word they're saying because it's so, you know, that the prose is so soggy and it's academese. And I often get a sense from the people in the field. Like this is really hot stuff.

47:04This is really a fascinating idea, but it's buried in academia. And what I, my niche is I try to explain them in a way that any curious person can understand. Because often the ideas are not, they're not impossible to understand. They just, it just takes someone to try to, to do the work of explaining them clearly. So that's what I try to do. And there are ideas, the idea of common knowledge itself, how it underlies coordination, how it's not just common sense. There are lots of surprising implications of common knowledge. How there are bits of game theory, which all of a sudden makes it sound like some kind of mathematical, academic, obscure subject that's impossible to understand.

47:45But a lot of it is just explaining the hidden logic of everyday life. And you suddenly, I hope, readers will just have all these aha moments like, ah, so that's why it works the way it does. That's why their Super Bowl ads are so often commented on. That's why people hoard toilet paper in an emergency. That's why the U.S. doesn't officially recognize Taiwan, even though it's a sovereign state. That's why we blush, even if we haven't done anything wrong, just because other people think we've done something wrong. I think there are all these mysteries where there really is a clear logic behind it.

48:21And I do my best to make that comprehensible to my readers. Can you explain your idea on why people hoard toilet paper?

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52:42Oh, yes. It's kind of like a bank run or speculative investing in crypto. That is, it's a matter of common expectation. You expect that other people will expect other people will expect something. So in the case of toilet paper, it turns out, you know, there really wasn't a shortage of toilet paper during the COVID pandemic, at least not at first. People stayed at home, so they were buying more consumer toilet paper instead of the big jumbo rolls of the office school. But the toilet paper companies quickly stepped up production to meet the demand. But what happened was people thought that there might be a shortage.

53:18So they ran out and they bought toilet paper and other people thought that other people were doing that. So they ran out and bought toilet paper and it became self-fulfilling. There really soon became a shortage because everyone was afraid of a shortage, which didn't exist beforehand. And that's what happens during a bank run. People will withdraw their savings from a bank, not necessarily because they think the bank is unsound, but they heard a rumor that other people are withdrawing their savings because they think that still other people are withdrawing their savings. As Roosevelt said, when that actually led to a Great Depression, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

53:55And that was literally true. Often in these cases, there is one public event that gets that ball rolling. In the case of a bank run, it could be just a rumor that the bank is in trouble. Even if the bank isn't in trouble, that could put the bank in trouble as it triggers a bank run. In the case of toilet paper, some popular historians trace it back to a monologue by Johnny Carson in 1973. at a time Johnny Carson had the talk show, The Tonight Show, which I think now is at Jimmy Fallon. Yeah. At the time, there were only three networks and Carson was by far the most popular. So when you're watching Johnny Carson, he generated common knowledge because you knew that a lot of other people in the country were watching him and they knew that still other people were watching it.

54:45So anything he said, you could kind of assume was common knowledge. One night he just made a joke about, He was in the middle of the oil crisis, and he said, oh, there's shortages of everything these days. There's shortages of oil. There's shortages of meat. Have you heard the latest? I read it in the papers. There's a shortage of toilet paper. Kind of got a laugh. It turned out it wasn't true at the time, but it actually became true after he made that joke, because everyone ran out to get toilet paper, because they thought everyone else was running out. And ever since then, there's been a public legend, a rumor, that toilet paper becomes scarce in an emergency.

55:18If it's a hurricane, if it's a blizzard. And so that just lodged it in popular consciousness. And the thing about common knowledge is if something is common knowledge, that makes it a reality. It becomes a reality if everyone believes that it's a reality. Right. So almost the rational thing to do is to go out and buy toilet paper. Because you know everyone's going to be scared about a toilet paper shortage. Well, that's the problem. And that's why stores would then post a sign that says, limit three packages per customer, not just because then no one could buy more than three packages, but because the sign was public, everyone knew that other shoppers saw the sign and they didn't have to worry about other shoppers stripping the shelves bare, which is why Roosevelt, in the midst of the Great Depression, declared a bank holiday.

56:10All the banks were shut for a period of time so that it didn't just prevent people from withdrawing their savings, but they knew that other people couldn't withdraw their savings. Now what we have is federal deposit insurance, where there's a big gold seal at the entrance of every bank or on the window, says that deposits are insured up to some cap. And so you don't have to worry about the bank running out of the ability to redeem its deposits because the federal government will bail it out. And so people don't withdraw their money. And that's why federal deposit insurance is almost never needed.

56:45But, you know, it's interesting when a store says only, you know, limit of three packages of toilet paper per customer. That actually makes me get more worried that there's going to be a panic, right? If you didn't know, yes, true. If you didn't know beforehand. So the point of posting those notices would be if it's become a common belief that there is a shortage. But yes, you're right. If there isn't that belief to begin with, that could generate the belief. Because what the store is basically signaling is that, look, we're having a problem right now. Yeah. So that's where we're doing this limit.

57:15So then the rational response is to get everyone in your family to come to the store and then each person buys three things. So it gets into that when everyone knows recursion. Yeah. So that goes back to kind of the central, I don't want to call it a conundrum or a paradox in the book. When you said, what are the lessons for everyday life? there isn't like kind of a guideline that you could write down a piece of paper and keep in your wallet exactly because other people are always kind of outguessing you and you're outguessing them and so any bit of any advice that you consistently follow will be kind of self-negating because other people will factor that in so that's why they kind of resisted giving someone a lesson well this is the way this is this is the takeaway because there can't be one takeaway because then other people will know that you're following that takeaway.

58:06So it's more like know the rules of the game that you're in. You know, one funny example you bring up that made me think was the Netflix policy. You mentioned there was a Netflix policy at one point that no employee is allowed to make eye contact with another employee for more than five seconds because that might constitute sexual harassment. And that's like a weird one where you're trying to legislate the social norm, essentially, which can't be legislated. I mean, there's so many things wrong with making a policy like that, it seems, that, for instance, what happens then if somebody stares for four seconds?

58:40Is that not sexual harassment or in six seconds they should get fired? So I didn't even believe that that was really a true thing, but I'm just assuming it is since you wrote it in the book. But do they still have that policy? This I don't know. Well, it's a case where Another example is when I think it was Antioch College gave their students a set of mandatory questions that they had to ask when escalating sexual intimacy. You have to actually say, can I unbutton your shirt? Can I loosen your belt? Can I put my hand on this body part? It was to make sure there couldn't be misunderstandings that could then later be used as charges of sexual assault or rape.

59:27The reason that it strikes a lot of people as violating common sense is that intimate relationships are not the kind of thing that we usually negotiate in so many words because our communal relationships, friendship, family, romance, sexuality, are things that we have to kind of feel in our bones. that they're a fusion of interests and values that if you have to say them out loud, then you're kind of not getting what a romance is or what a friendship is or what family consists of. It's got to be something you just feel. And if you have to say it, that means you don't get it. As with any kind of informal relationship, there is the possibility of exploitation.

1:00:10In a couple, one could do all the taking and the other, all the giving. in a sexual encounter, it can cross the line into assault. So sometimes there's a reason why you might want to or have to make it explicit. But when you do, it really goes against the deep-seated basis of that kind of relationship. You just don't negotiate things like a friendship or a romance. Again, that can lead to its own problems, which is why we have prenuptial agreements, while we have Netflix policies, Antioch College policies. There always is a tension. There's always a feeling that those things are ham-fisted, heavy-handed, can go against human nature.

1:00:53I think this is part of the point of the book, really, is to look at these extremes. Because a lot of these cases, they're interesting because they're extremes at either end of what you're discussing. And to look at these extremes and understand why they are extremes. and this helps to, again, further understand what these social norms are, why they exist, why something is an extreme. I think that does have practical use in life to understand what you just said, that, look, intimacy is not something that could be legislated. It's something that we've been doing for billions of years or millions of years and it is what it is.

1:01:28But then you have to kind of know your boundaries and all of this stuff is important for real living. Yeah, it's a case where there can't be a hard and fast rule. So in the case of, say, a relationship that's starting to get exploitative, there may come a time when the deference that the weaker party extends to the stronger party. It staves off constant fighting and bickering, and that's a good thing. But sometimes it gets to an extreme and you really have to bring it out into the open, whether we're a couples counselor or one of them just screws up the courage and says, we need to talk. In the case where the unstated rules, the unstated kind of logic of intimacy can then be exploited so that unless the one party screams no, they might be submitting to unwanted sexual advance.

1:02:18That could be very serious. So sometimes there are things that are uncomfortable that have to be said, and there's no hard and fast rule as to where that line is. but knowing that there is such a line, that there are trade-offs. Life is about trade-offs, which is why I often resist giving across-the-board advice. It's more, be aware of what the trade-offs are. More of this means less of that. And there's no rule that says you have to have all of this and none of that. But be aware of what you're trading off and realize when you're trading off too much of one thing for another thing. Now, let me ask you, in academia, it's often an unstated rule that academics should be as academic and scientific as possible and not write consumer, you know, academic psychology books or books oriented towards the consumer.

1:03:11And obviously you've made a career of writing very popular, very great, best-selling consumer books based on your knowledge in academia. Have any of your colleagues ever pushed back on you for doing this? Definitely not explicitly. I mean, they might get their digs in when they review one of my manuscripts or write a book review. There might be some resentment. But no department chair, no dean, no president. They've been completely supportive over a span now of more than 35 years, starting at MIT and now at Harvard. There used to be something called the Sagan curse, that Carl Sagan, brilliant astronomer, and in his time, probably the most famous scientist in the world.

1:03:52He had a TV series called Cosmos, watched enough that Johnny Carson, the talk show host, could regularly do an impression of Sagan that everyone would recognize. And there are even expressions like billions and billions of galaxies that Carson would make fun of Sagan for saying. And people would laugh because they all saw it. And Sagan, he wrote a column in Parade Magazine, which was the color insert to Sunday papers. He appeared as a guest on the Johnny Carson show constantly. So he was a popularizer and for good stuff, for scientific literacy, for evolution, for international cooperation, for climate change.

1:04:39He was one of the first for the threat of nuclear winter. So he was a really good guy and he was blackballed from the National Academy of Sciences, the prestigious national organization that sciences are elected to. And it was almost certainly because of jealousy and resentment. People warned me when I wrote my first popular book, The Language Instinct, after having been exclusively a good academic and written highly technical books that weren't sold in stores. They said, oh, look what happened to Carl Sagan. I think that has lessened. Not to boast, but I actually have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

1:05:17And I'm nowhere near as important a scientist as Sagan was in his day. So I think that taboo has weakened. I think I probably suffer it in less obvious ways. You know, who knows what happens when a manuscript is rejected or someone writes a nasty review. Are they motivated by jealousy? It's kind of, I'll never know. You know, how come people, it's one of the hardest things to recognize you're jealous as opposed to recognizing like, oh, you're in love or you're other emotions. Maybe because it's something shameful, so you don't want to admit something shameful about yourself. But why do you think jealousy is such a hard thing to recognize in yourself?

1:06:00I don't know if it's that hard. I mean, I think, you know, I kind of know when I'm jealous and, you know, it's a very unpleasant feeling. Sometimes it's necessary to safeguard a romantic relationship. to, you know, it's not okay for your partner to sleep with someone else, or even to divert attention and affection from you and lavish it on someone else. Signaling that isn't a bad thing, but of course, jealousy can become pathological. And there are causes who control every movement, every communication of their partner, making them prisoners. As with everything in life, there's kind of an optimal amount, and it's good to be aware of it, including in yourself.

1:06:39As you say, sometimes you're not aware maybe that you're motivated by jealousy. I think most often people are, but still you have to know when to control it, when to express it. If your partner laughs at someone else's joke, are you suddenly jealous? Because, well, maybe they'll end up sleeping together. And so I'm going to make sure that she or he is never in a social situation like that again. I mean, that could be suffocating. Again, it's a matter of calibration. Yeah, but it seems like when you inflict negative consequences on someone else because of that jealousy, but you rationalize it by saying, oh, this academic paper, for instance, is no good, so we're going to reject it.

1:07:19I feel like in those cases, if they recognize they're jealous, they'll say, oh, this academic paper is good, and so I shouldn't just let my jealousy reject it. I think those are more subtle examples of jealousy. No, that's a great example, and it is an important point. It gets to a whole phenomenon of self-deception, that you've got a motive that you don't want to confess to because you can't defend it. So you hide it maybe even from yourself. So first of all, so they know you don't give off any tells. Other people can't tell that you're acting out of an inappropriate motive, but you don't inhibit yourself either.

1:07:57And you're right that from the point of view of, you know, if I really am jealous of someone who's getting, you know, all the fame, all the attention, all the money, I have their anonymous manuscript to review. If I don't acknowledge, yeah, I'm jealous of that bastard, I might think, yeah, this paper is a piece of junk and not realize that that judgment is actually being contaminated by my jealous feelings. So you're absolutely right. Being aware of your own emotions so you can discount them when they contradict your values is just an important skill in being a mature, competent, effective adult.

1:08:33But a lot of people seem to not realize that is an important skill. And how do you practice that skill? No, it's true. And that's a lot of what goes into wisdom is what we call wisdom is acknowledging your own self-deception, trying to overcome it, trying to realize things about yourself and other people that were previously hidden from you that you may not be able to avoid altogether, but you can reflect on, you can take into account, you can compensate for. I think that's what goes into social skill when we deal with each other and it's what goes into wisdom when we deal with ourselves. Well, Steven Pinker, once again, such a great pleasure to have you on the podcast.

1:09:16This was such a fascinating book when everyone knows that everyone knows and the subtitles common knowledge and the mysteries of money, power, and everyday life. Who doesn't want to know the mysteries of money, power, and everyday life? If you're interested in the mysteries of money, power, and everyday life, you absolutely have to buy this book. What a great book. So thank you once again, Steven Pinker. And of course, you've written many great books, Enlightenment Now, Rationality, The Better Angels of Our Nature, on and on and on. These books are like 6 ,000 pages long each one. So you must spend all your time writing.

1:09:49I'm exaggerating. I'm exaggerating. But they're all great. I meant it in a very positive way. Each page is filled with so much knowledge. I really appreciate it. It's a fountain of knowledge for me. And once again, being able to ask you these questions and have you answer them in person is great for me. So, and hopefully for the listeners. So thanks once again, Stephen Baker. Been a pleasure, James. Thanks for having me on.

1:10:21This October, Fear is Free on Pluto TV with horror movie collections from Paranormal Activity, The Ring. You will die in seven days. Scream. And from dusk till dawn. This is my kind of place. And don't miss the man-made nightmares in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Or the world-ending chaos in 28 Days Later. There's something in the blood. All the scares. All for free. Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never.