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There is a value to shared knowledge that tends to go unrecognized because it's so ubiquitous. Nonetheless, experimental psychologist Steven Pinker explains in this Social Science Bites podcast, common knowledge underlies things like paper money, governance, and even coral reefs.
And common knowledge, he makes clear to host David Edmonds, "does not have its ordinary sense of conventional wisdom or an open secret or something that everyone knows, but rather something that everyone knows that everyone knows, and everyone knows that, and everyone knows that, and so on, ad infinitum."
Possing that shared knowledge – and the knowledge that others share that knowledge – creates the conditions for coordination, and thus action beyond what an individual could achieve. That's the reason, he says, "that autocrats fear common knowledge of the regime's shortcomings is that no regime has the firepower to intimidate every last citizen."
Pinker, the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, details his understanding of the virtues and vices of common knowledge in his most recent book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life. The book, his 13th, continues his streak as one of the most publicly recognized of public intellectuals, including recognition as one of Foreign Policy's "World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals" and Time's "100 Most Influential People in the World Today." He is also only the second (so far) returning guest to Social Science Bites, having addressed violence and human nature in a 2012 podcast.
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is one of the richest and most complex natural ecosystems on earth, and it’s home to over 600 species of coral – marine animals that are most closely related to jellyfish.
But the coral is under threat, with climate change, ocean acidification and marine heatwaves endangering the reef and the many iconic animals that depend on it. CrowdScience listener Felix, aged 9, wants to know what we’re doing to protect it, and presenter Caroline Steel is on the case.
In this special edition of CrowdScience, we follow scientists from Australia’s Institute of Marine Science as they attempt to restore the reef with baby corals that they’ve nurtured in experimental tanks at their Sea Simulator facility on the country’s northeast coast.
This experiment kicked off in December, as the researchers recreated the annual mass coral spawning event in controlled conditions, manipulating temperature, pH, light, and nutrients to breed coral baby that they can then use to reseed damaged sections of reef.
After loading up a lorry full of corals and waving it goodbye, Caroline heads north for a rendezvous at dawn, as the corals are loaded onto a boat in Cairns. She travels across the coral sea with marine biologists from AIMS, and is on hand as the corals are introduced to their new home in the ocean.
This is just the beginning - a proof of principle. In future years, the scientists are hoping to reseed heat-tolerant corals, and to scale up and automate this work. But even then, is the scale of the problem too big? Can we restore a reef area the size of Japan, or is it too late?
Presenter: Caroline Steel
Producer: Marnie Chesterton
Editor: Ben Motley
(Photo: Orange-lined triggerfish by coral in beautiful blue water - stock photo. Credit: treetstreet/Getty Images)
A dip in global cocoa prices got the Unexpected Elements team wondering about chocolate science.
First, we look at how the microbial communities in cocoa beans fine tune the taste of chocolate. Also, could table sugar help us detect the missing bits of the universe? We look at how three elements in sugar were used in the hunt for dark matter.
We’re then joined by Professor of Experimental Psychology Charles Spence, who explains the myriad ways that taste can be influenced – including the shape and name of chocolate, and even the music we listen to as we eat it. Plus, we hear about the rediscovery of a moth in South Africa that was lost to science for 150 years.
And finally, why we cry when we chop onions and the insects that pollinate the cocoa tree. That’s all on this week’s Unexpected Elements.
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton, with Candice Bailey and Sandy Ong Producers: Sophie Ormiston, with Lucy Davies, Tim Dodd, Imy Harper and Margaret Sessa-Hawkins
A dip in global cocoa prices got the Unexpected Elements team wondering about chocolate science.
First, we look at how the microbial communities in cocoa beans fine tune the taste of chocolate. Also, could table sugar help us detect the missing bits of the universe? We look at how three elements in sugar were used in the hunt for dark matter.
We’re then joined by Professor of Experimental Psychology Charles Spence, who explains the myriad ways that taste can be influenced – including the shape and name of chocolate, and even the music we listen to as we eat it. Plus, we hear about the rediscovery of a moth in South Africa that was lost to science for 150 years.
And finally, why we cry when we chop onions and the insects that pollinate the cocoa tree. That’s all on this week’s Unexpected Elements.
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton, with Candice Bailey and Sandy Ong Producers: Sophie Ormiston, with Lucy Davies, Tim Dodd, Imy Harper and Margaret Sessa-Hawkins