Podcast Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: The Human Upgrade: Biohacking for Longevity & Performance
Host: Dave Asprey
Episode: Steven Pinker: Outsmarting an Irrational World (#1333)
Date: September 23, 2025

World-renowned cognitive psychologist and author Steven Pinker joins Dave Asprey to explore how our minds work, why rationality is so elusive, the foundations of social coordination (common knowledge), the impact of AI on society, changing social norms, and practical advice for thinking clearly in an increasingly irrational world. Pinker also delves into themes from his new book, When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Steven Pinker’s Origins and Intellectual Journey

• Early Influences and Motivation

  • Pinker describes a formative interest in human nature, inspired by the social upheavals and political debates of the 1960s and 70s.
  • He gravitated to psychology for its ability to address big questions with experimental rigor and eventually embraced cognitive science for its cross-disciplinary power.
  • Quote: “Psychology, for me, hit the sweet spot of being about big, deep, interesting questions, but with some promise of actually answering them through experimental studies.” (05:01)

• Academic Path

  • Exposure to various fields (linguistics, AI, philosophy, neuroscience) led Pinker to cognitive science.
  • He found excitement in being part of a burgeoning field and later revisited foundational questions about violence and progress. (05:01–08:26)

2. The Value and Role of Higher Education

• Is College Still Worthwhile?

  • Pinker affirms the multidimensional value of university: intellectual community, skill acquisition, and certified discipline and intelligence—plus the unique access to a broad array of knowledge.
  • Quote: “Harvard is a third of a million dollar IQ and marshmallow test.” (11:36)
  • “You acquire skills by just sheer practice. … The ability to think systematically about problems, break them into parts, express yourself clearly.” (12:10)

• Maintaining Curiosity Over a Lifetime

  • Asserts that his drive to synthesize and explore entirely new fields keeps his work fresh and his mind engaged.
  • Advocates for personal reinvention and exposure to novel ideas to maintain intellectual vitality.
  • Quote: “Once I have put my stamp on something, tied everything together in as coherent and satisfying a package as possible, it’s time to expose myself to something else... I just love immersing myself in some field that I did not know.” (14:44)

3. Human Nature, Government, and Social Coordination

• Designing Government for Flawed Minds
  • Pinker argues that liberal democracy—emphasizing institutional checks, balance, and the consent of the governed—is best suited for humans, given our self-serving biases and cognitive frailties.
  • Quote (citing Madison): “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, no constraints on government would be necessary.” (20:37)
  • "The framers of the American Constitution were, in a sense, students of human nature." (20:44)
  • Uses a Canadian hockey analogy to explain collective action problems and the need for rules that everyone agrees to uphold. (23:01)

4. The Nature and Limits of Artificial Intelligence

• How Pinker Views AI Progress

  • Outlines the two classic AI approaches: logic/propositions (“symbolic”) vs. neural networks (“statistical”).
  • Recent breakthroughs owe more to data scale and hardware (GPUs) than to conceptual leaps.
  • Quote: “What made AI possible... was just sheer scale ... the entire World Wide Web ... combined with GPUs developed mainly for gaming.” (24:57)
  • Points out current AI’s inability to match human cognitive efficiency: a neural net needs far more data to learn than a human child. (28:46)

• AI as a Cognitive Tool and its Faults

  • Pinker primarily uses AI as a semantic search engine and cautions about its “hallucinations” due to lack of true symbolic reasoning.
  • Quote: “They make stuff up, they hallucinate, they blend, they confabulate ... It is not the same as an understanding of who did what to whom, where, and when.” (29:27)

5. AI, Social Media, and Social Norms

• The Problem of Obsequious AI

  • Pinker is concerned about the sycophancy of AI interactions, particularly for young people, but believes humans can compartmentalize these experiences.
  • Discusses the fluid boundaries between different types of relationships—intimacy, hierarchy, reciprocity—and the risks of blurring them in digital contexts. (31:30–33:05)

• The Evolution and Fragmentation of Social Norms

  • Pinker argues that while certain norms are stronger than ever (e.g., racial sensitivity), social media amplifies norm fragmentation and facilitates norm violation, particularly in politics (e.g., Trump’s shattering of norms around open insults and lying).
  • Quote: “Norms are held up by common knowledge ... What Trump showed is that these norms are fragile, that you could blatantly shatter them and get away with it. And once you did, it’s no longer a norm.” (41:17)

• Future of Civility

  • Despite these shocks, Pinker is optimistic that civility will persist in most private and institutional spheres due to our innate capacity for context-specific social skills.
  • Quote: "I'd be surprised if the kind of boorish behavior Trump exhibits ... characterizes ... a corporation or a university." (42:43)

6. The Psychology of Fairness, Tact, and Hypocrisy

• Fairness vs. Reality

  • Pinker explores why humans cling to beliefs in “just world” karma despite evidence to the contrary. Such beliefs, he says, serve personal peace and social deterrence but can be problematic if they lead to passivity about injustice.
  • Quote: “I don’t think it’s optimal to be honest ... If they don’t [get punished], and trust me, they won’t...” (34:49, 34:59)

• Enforcing Norms: The Power of Common Knowledge

  • Laws and norms often function because they are common knowledge, not because of omnipresent enforcement. Example: Smoking bans relied on visible signage to empower individuals to act. (36:28)
  • Quote: “A lot of laws actually, actually work by in practice even though they are enforceable ... It depended on people being on the common knowledge.” (38:16)

• Tact, Euphemism, and Indirect Communication

  • Pinker explains the role of indirect speech, politeness, and “weasel words” in maintaining social harmony and avoiding overt harm to relationships.
  • Quote: “So much of language consists of people not saying what they mean ... people are always reading between the lines and connecting the dots...”(46:57)

• The Cognitive Skill of Calibration

  • Successful social navigation requires adjusting the bluntness or subtlety of one’s communication based on context, risk, and desired outcomes—a point Pinker formalizes with models in his research.
  • Quote: “It’s a calibrated model and, you know, life is calibration … it very much depends on the context, on the person.” (54:19)

7. The Digital Age and Social Connection

• Virtual Communication: Gains and Losses

  • Pinker and Asprey discuss the challenges technology poses for social skills, intimacy, and mental health.
  • Face-to-face interaction provides irreplaceable feedback (body language, eye contact), and deficit can create loneliness, poor emotional learning, and social anxiety among youth.
  • Quote: “The difference between face to face contact and all the various digital equivalents ... face to face contact really makes people happier, healthier, lengthens their lives...” (58:25)

• Potential for Social Course Correction

  • Pinker is cautiously optimistic that society will adapt to digital challenges, citing humanity’s historical knack for correction when trends threaten wellbeing. (59:32)

8. Cognitive Biases, Rationality, and Personal Wisdom

• Deepest Cognitive Trap: The My-Side Bias

  • Pinker identifies the tendency to favor our own group or tribe (the “my-side bias”) as the most pervasive error, and one that intelligence does not protect against.
  • Quote: “Probably the my-side bias. That is the assumption that you and your tribe ... are smarter and wiser and more moral than a rival group.” (62:10)
  • “My-side bias is not correlated with intelligence.” (63:17)

• The Value of Epistemic Humility

  • Pinker argues for focusing less on “being right” and more on “getting it right,” advocating for humility, betting, and steel-manning opponents' arguments.
  • Quote: “The goal is not to be right. The goal is to get it right.” (66:20)
  • “A bet is a tax on bullshit, so you’re really putting your money where your mouth is.” (67:43)

• Why Hypocrisy is Sometimes Rational

  • We all have thoughts we wisely do not share: “Some degree of hypocrisy is good, indispensable ... There’s a good case to be made for not saying everything that’s on your mind.” (61:31)

9. The Core Theme: Common Knowledge

• What Common Knowledge Explains

  • Pinker’s new book explores how widespread mutual awareness is necessary for social coordination, norm enforcement, and social harmony.
  • Quote: “A lot of things that seem utterly baffling, puzzling, irrational, I think fall into place when you understand the role of common knowledge in facilitating human coordination.” (63:38)
  • Sometimes it’s crucial that “everyone knows,” but sometimes it’s equally vital that “everyone doesn’t know that everyone knows”—to maintain harmony and relationships. (63:38–64:41)

• How to Think Better

  • Seek out diverse ideas, combine them into personal wisdom, and understand your own limitations.
  • Quote: “None of us is smart enough to figure it all out by ourselves. But if you sample ideas from enough people, you find an idea here, an idea there, that turns out to explain a lot.” (64:59)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On democracy and human bias:
  “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, no constraints on government would be necessary.” (20:37, quoting Madison)

• On academic curiosity:
  “Once I have put my stamp on something, tied everything together in as coherent and satisfying a package as possible, it’s time to expose myself to something else.” (14:44, Pinker)

• On the persistence of social skills:
  “Life is calibration. The reason I can’t give advice is ... it very much depends on the context, on the person.” (54:19, Pinker)

• On communicating in the digital age:
  “Face to face contact really makes people happier, healthier, lengthens their lives and other benefits.” (58:25, Pinker)

• On the most stubborn cognitive trap:
  "My-side bias is not correlated with intelligence." (63:17, Pinker)

Timestamps for Major Segments

• Pinker's Early Influences and Academic Path: 04:18–08:26
• Value of Higher Education: 11:15–14:34
• Curiosity, Synthesis, and Intellectual Life: 14:34–17:41
• Government and Human Bias: 20:37–24:36
• AI vs. Human Intelligence: 24:57–29:17
• AI’s Social Impact & Sycophancy: 31:14–34:49
• Enforcing Social Norms and Common Knowledge: 36:28–41:17
• Norms, Trump, and the Shattering of Civility: 41:17–44:52
• Tact, Indirect Speech, and Social Calibration: 45:47–54:19
• Virtual Relationships and Social Skills: 56:41–60:07
• Cognitive Biases and Humility: 62:10–68:11
• Book’s Core Message and Closing Thoughts: 63:38–68:36

Conclusion

This episode blends profound psychological insight with practical wisdom for navigating increasingly complex social and technological landscapes. Steven Pinker, drawing from decades of research and a relentless curiosity, offers a nuanced roadmap for understanding group behavior, rationality, and the critical role of common knowledge in both cooperation and social conflict. If you want to outsmart the irrational world, Pinker’s ideas will upgrade your framework for thinking—and living—well.