Shared vs Common knowledge, and the call for acceptance of viewpoint diversity and reason to accelerate progress

When the little boy in Hans Christian Andersen's tale about the Emperor's new clothes said that the emperor was naked, the shared knowledge became common knowledge. What's the difference and why does it matter? Here are four examples about domestic violence, climatology, food and health, and creativity and science, that illustrates how false information becomes common knowledge and the costs thereof. The tale about the Emperor's new clothes tells us that shared knowledge can become common knowledge, but the examples that followed showed that common knowledge isn't necessarily consistent or congruent with science-based facts. In both cases people may suffer from conformity/group-think. Adding acceptance of viewpoint diversity and reason to the model will enable a conversational process that will increase the probability to reach rational conclusions that will accelerate progress. 5 pages.

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When the little boy in Hans Christian Andersen's (1805-1875) tale about the Emperors new clothes (1837) said that the emperor was naked, the shared knowledge became common knowledge. What's the difference and why does it matter?

Shared knowledge means information that is distributed between people (in many people's minds). Common knowledge means that person A knows that person B, C and so on also knows, and vice versa.

In the case of the Emperor's new clothes, the fact that the emperor was naked was shared - everyone could see it - but at the same time, each individual wasn't sure that other people saw the same thing. Because of uncertainty, people in general tend to remain silent. This phenomena can be attributed to something called the bystander effect, which may be explained by conformity or group-think, both meaning:

“the tendency for an individual to align their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors with those of the people around them” (Psychology Today).

That changed when the little boy shouted that the emperor was naked, and the shared knowledge became common knowledge.

Common knowledge doesn't mean that people share validated facts and figures, just that they become aware that other people have the same information. In order to find out whether or not the viewpoint is factual, there are at least two things that needs to be added to the model:

1. acceptance of viewpoint diversity.
   
   
2. reason - using language to exchange ideas - talking without winning (Borgström, 2023; Pinker, 2011).

This can be applied on a number of things: climatology/stratigraphy, domestic violence, food and health, creativity and science, topics I have explored scientifically.

For example, last Sunday, I went to the Swedish theater in Helsingfors. For the upcoming EU-election, Finnish politicians go to different places to meet with people with the ambition to gain their trust and their potential vote. Therefore, they become very available for conversations, including for scientists who want to interview them.

Outside the Swedish theater I therefore had a discussion with a politician about domestic violence, and she was of the opinion that men are more violent in the home environment  compared to women. This is a viewpoint that is intuitively shared and common to many people (actually most people).

Science-based knowledge, on the other hand, show, again and again, that women are the typical perpetrator of domestic violence (Archer,2000, 2004; Bates, Graham-Kevan och Archer , 2014; Bates och Graham-Kevan, 2016; Bates, 2018; Bates, Kaye, Pennington och Hamlin, 2019; Bergkvist, 2002; Crick och Grotpeter, 1995; Thornton et al. 2012).

Listen to Dr Elizabeth Bates: Intimate Partner Violence (34 minutes).

This has also been communicated by the Helsingfors Police (2022, 2024), and Finland's child commissary (2023). 40% of the school children report that they are victims of psychological domestic violence which is typically a female behavior (Crick and Grotpeter, 1995; Hyde, 2005).

The implication of the discussion was not that the politician submitted to the science-based facts that I provided, but that our respective standpoint on the topic became common knowledge for both of us. The rational prediction is that if she and other politicians refuse to accept the science-based common knowledge about domestic violence, more children and men will suffer from women's domestic violence.

The second example is climatology. Private organizations like the Club of Rome and World Economic Forum, has since long reiterated a narrative that suggests that variations in the climate that occurred after the industrial revolution is explained by human activities - extensive release of carbon dioxide (CO2). That, they claim, has lead to global warming, which in turn will elevate sea levels (that is yet to happen). This narrative has been used by people working in media since the 1960s (Ebell and Milloy, 2019).

Thanks to uncritical media reporting, Club of Rome/World Economic Forum has been extremely successful in sharing their narrative to common people. This narrative may also have become common knowledge.

For other people, especially in the science community, the science-based view of the climate is shared and common to some, but not all, scientists, showing that:

1. climate is a complex process where trace gases move in a cyclic fashion between five spheres: the atmosphere, the Biosphere, the cryosphere, the hydrosphere, and the pedosphere.
   
   
2. central to this process is the carbon cycle. 
3. during the introduction of Phanerozoic (the Cambrian explosion), CO2-levels in the atmosphere were 5000 - 7000 ppm, oxygen levels were 4-10%, and the temperature was 50% higher.
   
   
4. Eocene (~50 mya) was peak warm.
   
   
5. current levels of CO2 in the atmosphere is ~420 ppm, oxygen levels are ~20%, and the temperature has dropped significantly.

Ergo. Since the Cambrian explosion, 95 % of the CO2 has moved from the atmosphere to the bedrock, forests, and the oceans and it has only become colder.

The third example is food and health. Since at least the 1950s, food has been on the governmental 'plate' so to speak, and in 1961, the newly founded American Heart Association (AHA) gave the first dietary advice, warning people that saturated fats will raise serum cholesterol, leading to cardiovascular disease, including Atherosclerosis. In the early 1980s, governments around the world introduced dietary guidelines, where they warned people that meat and saturated fats are bad for health (Malmros, 1950; Teicholz, 2023). This narrative was shared, and is, common knowledge to common people. The result: since the introduction of dietary guidelines, life-style diseases like  type-2 diabetes, high blood pressure, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), have spread almost exponentially.

Science based-knowledge, paradoxically because the dietary guidelines are compiled from peer-reviewed publications, point in the opposite direction - that meat and animal fats are crucial for human health (Adesogan et al.2020; Balehegn et al. 2019; Ede, 2024). This view is neither shared or common to people in general.

The fourth example is creativity and science. Both of these concepts are included in general concepts like executive functions (Diamond, 2013) and prospective thinking (Gilbert and Wilson, 2007), but their connotations are a bit different to one another. But that's likely not shared or common knowledge.

Yesterday I attended the 2024 Product Development Project gala at Aalto university in Esbo.

It was truly interesting to be in this product development working climate, and to talk to the people who had developed the various concepts (which, if the product developers work hard, may go to market, which was something I suggested to everyone of them).

But on one occasion I got into a discussion with a physics student about science and creativity. The student's view was that creativity was a prerequisite for science, but he didn't reveal any definitions. I, on the other hand, argued that creativity and science are two different ways of thinking:

1. Creativity is the mental process of combining or melding unrelated symbolic representations, or fragments thereof, into new distinct categories/concepts (Albert Einstein (1879-1955), in Hadamard, 1945/1996; Wynn, Coolidge and Bright, 2009; Österberg, 2012; Österberg Köping Olsson, 2018, 2021). This is sometimes described as lateral thinking.
   
   
2. Science is the process of exploring to discover (Edward Witten, physicist), or  a rigorous, systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world (Heibron, 2023; Wilson, 1999). These mental activities are based on cognitive flexibility, but based on vertical thinking (visual cortex to prefrontal cortex).

Our common knowledge was that there was viewpoint diversity between us, and by accepting that and applying reason, we could do what scientists have done for millennia - exchanging knowledge and reach a conclusion.

But the student became a bit aggravated because I, the scientist specializing in things like creativity, didn't submit to his viewpoint.

The student's behavior is explained by release of a hormone called cortisol. That means that activities in the hippocampus (the center for instrumental and epistemic rational thinking) are put on standby in favor of increased activity in the Amygdala (center for emotional activities), leading to fight - flight behavior (Goleman, 2006). Consequently, the physics student wanted to end the conversation, i.e., applied flight behavior - sticking to his conviction. This is very common behavior.

Ergo. The tale about the Emperor's new clothes tells us that shared knowledge can become common knowledge, but the examples that followed showed that common knowledge isn't necessarily consistent or congruent with science-based facts. In both cases people may suffer from conformity/group-think. Adding acceptance of viewpoint diversity and reason to the model will enable a conversational process that will increase the probability to reach rational conclusions. If so, less: (1) children (and men) will suffer from women's domestic violence, (2) people will suffer from depression because of climate anxiety, (3), people will suffer from life-style diseases. And if people in general learn the difference between creativity and science, that will accelerate progress.

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