8253025200

Why Hillary Clinton Needs to Be Two-Faced is the headline of a very interesting column in today’s New York Times. It’s a commentary on the alleged comment Clinton made about politicians needing to be “two-faced.”

The important points it makes about achieving change are somewhat comparable to the ones made in my Washington Post column, The importance of being unprincipled.

And what is says about “knowledge” could be very useful in an IB Theory of Knowledge class:

Modern social science makes a related distinction between shared knowledge and public knowledge. Public knowledge is information that is out there in plain and undeniable view, stuff like stock prices, weather bulletins and campaign promises. If knowledge is public, you and I both know it, and you know that I know it, and I know that you know it, and you know that I know that you know it, ad infinitum. If knowledge is merely shared knowledge, by contrast, you and I both know it, but I’m not sure if you know and you’re not sure if I know.

Shared knowledge has a very handy, if somewhat peculiar, trait: Even if we both know it, we can plausibly deny knowing it. Maybe you and I both know we dated the same person at the same time — but if neither of us is sure the other knows, we can both pretend not to know, thereby staying friends.

I’m going to add it to:

The Best Posts & Articles About Compromise

The Best Posts & Articles On Building Influence & Creating Change