Rational Ritual: Why everyone needs to know what everyone knows (2020)

Generating a common understanding can be a really powerful way to avoid misunderstandings. Have you ever had a meeting at work where everyone seems to agree on some course of action, only for everyone to leave the meeting with slightly different ideas in their heads resulting in an uncoordinated mess later? Ensuring a common understanding prevents this problem.

The simplest technique I've found for generating a common understanding is sharing / projecting my screen and then taking live meeting notes that everyone in the meeting can see. So when someone is talking they can immediately spot if I've misunderstood something and correct it. If they don't correct my notes the implication is that what I wrote down is an accurate reflection of what they meant. Because everyone else in the meeting sees the correction (or lack of correction) they too now share in this common understanding.

It is now impossible for us to walk out of the meeting with different ideas in our heads, and also prevents people from later dishonestly claiming that they meant something different from what was written down in my live meeting notes.

Best way to get on the same page with someone is to go around and simply ask: what do you think about xyz. Its such a rare thing for people to come right out with either "what do you think/feel about" depending on what facet you're trying to address. Also thought experiments are fun. Feed people the data and they'll give you everything you want and need to know. But you must care genuinely and be with them and reassure them its ok to talk

Edit: kids are really good at this, like the "Why" rabbit hole or just like blurting out what the feel or they sense others are feeling. The non-prosecutorial curiosity is absolutely key tho. You must be approachabke and a good confidante or nobody will engage with you to the fullest potential.

> Once that threshold is jumped, things can move very quickly

You can see the same dynamic in how scandals unfold in small towns. Everybody knows that married person X is having an affair with married person Y, everybody knows that everybody knows that X is having an affair with Y, but nothing happens until a social consensus is reached that X and Y are going to be shamed for it. It can go on indefinitely with people only whispering about it. And then everything happens seemingly all at once. X loses their job, Y has to resign from the school board, X's marriage breaks up, Y's children get shunned at school.

Before the threshold is reached, people whisper about it, but anyone who speaks too loudly or disapproves too publicly is seen as acting in bad taste. People cringe and turn away from them. Nobody wants to be that person. But as soon as the dam breaks, condemning X and Y becomes the town sport, pursued recreationally by all and competitively by many.

Related:

The Costly Coordination Mechanism of Common Knowledge (2018) — https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9QxnfMYccz9QRgZ5z/the-costly...

The Elephant, the Emperor, and the Matzo Ball (2016) [video] — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eay1-m7RpoU

To be pedantic, ritual solves the common knowledge problem (as three-way handshake does for TCP: ensuring both sides know the other has seen a SYN) and adding rationality to ritual allows one to assume that beyond the core of actual common knowledge, there is an extension of potential common knowledge: things that parties may not be intuitively aware they agree upon off the tops of their heads, but would indeed find they'd arrive at a common (and unique?) solution should they start from the actual common knowledge and apply rational inferences.

In principle, adding rationality should allow one to allow one to reduce the ritual content to a minimum (eg "we hold elections every 4 years whose results determine the leader of the executive branch"?)...

This is tangential to an idea I have been pondering for almost a decade. I had a thought experiment of a Pharaoh on a procession exactly like the one described in this article. As the Pharaoh is carried in a litter on the shoulders of servants the entire population lines the streets and bows to the Pharaoh as he passes.

I thought about: why does each person bow? Maybe some bow because they are scared of the soldiers. Maybe some bow because they want to look like a good citizen. Maybe some bow because they believe the Pharaoh is a literal God. That is, everyone bows for a different reason. The idea that stands out to me is that the Pharaoh doesn't care why any individual bows. The collective effect of each person bowing is somehow independent from the individual reasons for each person to bow.

To me, this strikes at a slightly deeper meaning than "common knowledge". Because the knowledge isn't collective in one sense (I don't know the reasons my neighbors are bowing) but it is collective in another sense (we are all participating in the worship of a single figure).

Well, yes. This is yet another pundit who re-invented the wheel.

The idea of a common background culture reference is useful. At one time, the common background culture in the Judaeo-Christian countries comprised the Christian Bible and a superficial knowledge of Roman and Greek culture. That's what people used as a source of references, from Noah to Caesar. Today, it's popular culture, and references are to Star [Trek|Gate|Wars] and Harry Potter. "What would Captain Kirk do?"

As for a common culture for decision making, that's something the military trains for. Part of officer training is to make sure that everyone knows what everybody does in the common cases. So, when something unexpected comes up, everybody does approximately the right thing before they have a chance to coordinate. "Right way, wrong way, Army way".

> The desire for “common knowledge” - for knowing that I know what others know, and that they see what I see - is deeply human.

Can we not explain this more simply as an evolutionary adaptation -- that species where individuals feel a strong need to share new information have a survival advantage?