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Spoken aloud, it can't be denied
In the 1989 comedy When Harry Met Sally, Harry compliments Sally's looks a bit too insistently, and she accuses him of coming onto her. He offers to take it back. She tells him he can't, because it's already out there.
The two have just met and are sharing a ride across the country. They are grown, sexually mature adults, so each must know the possibility of a sexual relationship has crossed their minds. Each could still think the other doesn't know exactly what is running through their mind: maybe she thinks he's dense, or maybe he thinks she's naive.
Once it is said in plain language, the other person knows you know. A fact that was out there but deniable becomes shared knowledge that neither can pretend away.
Why does shared knowledge change behavior?
Economist Robert Aumann gave common knowledge a formal definition in 1976. A fact is common knowledge when everyone knows it, everyone knows that everyone knows it, and so on without end. Political scientist Michael Chwe argued in his 2001 book Rational Ritual that Super Bowl ads are worth their price partly because viewers know that other viewers are watching the same thing. Public events create this kind of shared awareness in a way private messages cannot.
How does a tale show privately known truths turning public?
In Hans Christian Andersen's story The Emperor's New Clothes, every onlooker privately sees that the emperor is naked. Each stays quiet because they assume the others see the clothes. A child's blunt remark makes the truth public, and the crowd takes it up. Andersen published the tale in 1837.
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