When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...

史迪芬．平克（Steven Pinker）是全球最偉大的思想家之一，也是《當代啟蒙》、《人性中的善良天使》與《語言本能》等暢銷書的作者，他在本書中揭示了「想法一致」所帶來的力量與危機。

作為一名認知科學家，最讓史迪芬．平克著迷的終極主題，是我們如何思考彼此的想法，如此循環往復、以至無窮。這聽起來似乎不可能，但史迪芬．平克展示出我們其實時刻都在這麼做。這種被我們體驗為公開或「昭然若揭」的意識，被稱為「共同知識」（common knowledge），它對我們的社會、政治與經濟生活產生了舉足輕重的影響。

平克指出，共同知識可以解釋許多生活中的謎團：金融泡沫與崩盤、無預警爆發的革命、外交手段中的裝模作樣與偽裝、社群媒體公審熱潮與學術取消文化的爆發，以及第一次約會的尷尬。然而，人們也會想方設法去避免形成共同知識——以確保即使所有人都知道某件事，他們也無法確定其他人都知道自己知道這件事。因此，我們演化出了善意的偽善、隱晦的賄賂與威脅、性暗示，以及假裝沒看到「房間裡的大象」等社交儀式。

透過探索人類行為的種種悖論，《共同知識》（When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows…）邀請我們去理解人們試圖看透彼此心思的方式，以及由此產生的和諧、偽善與憤怒。

Steven Pinker, one of the world's greatest thinkers and bestselling author of Enlightenment Now, The Better Angels of Our Nature and The Language Instinct, reveals the power and perils of thinking alike

As a cognitive scientist, the ultimate subject of Steven Pinker’s fascination is how we think about each other’s thoughts, ad infinitum. It sounds impossible, but Steven Pinker shows that we do it all the time. This awareness, which we experience as something that is public or “out there,” is called common knowledge, and it has a momentous impact on our social, political, and economic lives.

Common knowledge, Pinker shows, can make sense of many of life’s enigmas: financial bubbles and crashes, revolutions that come out of nowhere, the posturing and pretence of diplomacy, the eruption of social media shaming mobs and academic cancel culture, the awkwardness of a first date. But people also go to great lengths to avoid common knowledge?to ensure that even if everyone knows something, they can’t know that everyone else knows they know it. And so we get rituals like benign hypocrisy, veiled bribes and threats, sexual innuendo, and pretending not to see the elephant in the room.

In exploring the paradoxes of human behaviour, When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows… invites us to understand the ways we try to get into each other’s heads, and the harmonies, hypocrisies, and outrages that result.