Why Everyone Knows What “Netflix and Chill” Really Means | Glenn Loury & Steven Pinker

35 thoughts on “Why Everyone Knows What “Netflix and Chill” Really Means | Glenn Loury & Steven Pinker”

1. Go to https://ground.news/glennshow to spot media bias and become a smarter news consumer. Subscribe through my link for 40% off unlimited access this month.

2. I never even HEARD that phrase until about a week ago……

3. Euphemisms, my favorite Carlin skit. I love Pinker.

4. Professor Pinker! Now THIS is a discussion!

5. One of the interesting "common knowledge" challenges that came up recently was the Obama-as-apes video that everyone assumed was racist — meaning the original video, not the Trump video to which it got attached, nor to Trump's decision to not pull down the video immediately. Everyone just assumes that "putting the faces of black people on apes is racist" even if a white person (Biden) also appeared as an ape in the same video and even when black people appeared in the same video as other animals besides apes. I think it's entirely possible to grow up in this day and age not knowing anything about the racist association of black people with caricatures of apes, but some people just refuse to believe anyone could be so ignorant — as if the history of racism, which obviously no one is born knowing but has to learn from others, is supposed to be everyone's "common knowledge".

6. I know I'm not the only one who doesn't get it. I get that you know that I know that you know, but what then? You guys know you don't get it.

7. Yawn. Yawn. Yawn and Yawn, again.

8. Is Glenn feeling ok? He doesn’t seem like himself.

9. It was not a strongly enough established convention to amount to real sexual consent.

10. As a fan of Pinker, I think I'll try to disagree on a point.

    I'm long off X. It seems clear to me that people are not so undiscerning and parroting to copy Trump's antics blindly. Or Musks, for that matter. Even taking into account each man's very unique position of organizational power and wealth, their antics seem to mostly offend and entertain merely politically.

    I hate hearing that Trump used the phrase, "shithole county." Sometimes I do find him funny. I've still never voted for him. I do recognize that he's turning the activist game of provocation and raising awareness back against itself.

    I'd love to see the method used by the NY Times behind giving Trump a 9% chance of victory 2016. It seems their sociological intuitions for nudging resemble these fears that ethical norms are fragile.

    I suppose if Trump thinks he's being transparent and forthright, he may have to explain the essence of socio-philosophical methods and its knowledge as to see such knowledge is not misunderstood.

    Only if there was an evolutionary science to apply instead.

    I said I was going to disagree, but it seems Pinker is right, it's not rational to expect agreed disagreement to be enough. It may even be dangerous to expect as even a thing.

11. Harvard is a Horrid Institution

12. Pinker is categorically wrong about crying being a sign of surrender. I've observed in myself, and many others, crying while in the process of fighting.

13. this was hard to listen to echoes

14. Polite speech makes the little lies that we tell ourselves and others to project our desired perception of our place in the world easier to believe.

15. I saved this episode and plan to listen to it again in the future. I appreciated his guest and the subject of speaking directly as opposed to innuendos.

16. I don’t understand why the recursiveness should continue ad infinitum: isn’t it sufficient that you know that I know and I know that you know? Also, there would seem to be a big, critical difference between such a state of affairs and one of actual mutual acknowledgment. Common knowledge per se isn’t necessarily enough to break the taboo, given continuing deterrent power on the part of the authorities (in this respect the Hans Christian Anderson fable may be more than a little unrealistic).

17. I absolutely love Pinker but he appears to like to have his cake and eat it too. He talks like a dualist. He doesn't even try to provide a physical explanation for this common knowledge concept. Why would the brain need to convince "the mind" of anything? What is this common knowledge thing? Where's it located? The only way he can explain it is from a ghost in the machine perspective. Anyhow. Great podcast.

18. I didn't view the U.S. toppling of the Taliban as a moment of revenge, but rather as a preventive measure to insure the Taliban didn't continue to harbor a radical Islamist organization which would plan and carry out more attacks on U.S. cities. It is interesting that Steven Pinker sees revenge where others don't. Not being a New Yorker and not even knowing any New Yorkers, I didn't feel the need for revenge. I just didn't want what happened to New York to happen to Seattle.

19. Why does the U.S. have to tip toe around China's feelings of inferiority while China feels free to proclaim the superiority of the Han people? Every nation in the world, powerful, not powerful, or moderately powerful feel free to insult the U.S. at will with zero expectation of reprisal or "revenge."

20. Steven Pinker has a wonderfully naive understanding of U.S. businessmen as norm following faint hearts. Musk and Trump aren't outliers. They aren't even the extremes of norm breaking in the business world. The are merely the most recent and the most celebrated.

21. I believe in direct speech. Thus, I prefer "How about Netflix and a BJ?

22. Pinker's explanations of game theory in decision making (i.e. I know you know i know) sounds like it should be called "The Dodgeball effect"

23. Typical "Harvard Professor Tries to Make Something Trivial and Obvious Into Something Mysterious and Fascinating" in order to make themselves look smart and sell books.

24. Its interesting to watch Pinker's participation in precisely the sort of euphemisms. He described celebrating a political assassination as "not showing sufficient deference". And the neutral "killing of" an important political figure.

25. I've always felt the unspoken fourth quadrant of Rumsfeld's quadrant matrix analysis, the "unknown known", was an important feature of the system. This within the limit that any approach is illusory. Though the awareness of it's existence in itself may be significant.

26. More, please! ❤

27. Steven Pinker is a genocide denier.

28. Thank you very much…

29. I can't believe Pinker gets paid to do this kind of bullshit, it's mind blowing.

30. Pinker!

31. After 7 unbearable minutes of Pinker desperately pontificating on the obvious, Glenn tells him that he knows what we all know: “how did you get a 300 page book out of this?”

32. The description of interpersonal mind-reading or understanding here is, while not uninteresting, male, the best parts thus being the ones about threats and veiled come-ons. I do not think that crying means what Pinker says perhaps because he does not depart for the male camp which is indeed not encouraged to succumb to visible melancholy or distress.

33. Especially circa minute 28:30, to oppose crying and laughter as emotional states is not 100% accurate or honest; we can laugh to stop from crying as has been noted in the humour of various persecuted peoples. Still, the style of or reason for laughter is not the same across groups and certainly not across language groups therefore crying is probably not so easy to study as people including women in general aim not to do so in front of others who may take advantage of their visible vulnerability in unsympathetic, unhelpful and incompetent ways unless the woman is an actress or unless crying can elicit help and support.

34. There is a bit too much circularity in the discussion of conjecture here.

35. It's cold war politics: https://youtu.be/qVO85anasrA?si=3sp2JZ2eSYUcTP1b&t=155

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