I once heard an academic talking on the radio about social metacognition. He pointed out that some episode in Shakespeare’s Othello involves 7 levels of metacognition. 5 of them are in the play (unfortunately I can’t recall the details, but someone thinks that someone else knew that someone else deceived someone into thinking that blah blah). The sixth is the fact that the audience understands it, and the seventh is that Shakespeare knew that by writing this he could make the audience understand it. (And arguably there’s an eighth, that we realize that Shakespeare knew that...)
It only took the academic a few sentences for him to summarize the whole situation and all the levels, and it was all perfectly clear. Showing how good humans are at advanced metacognition.
Also, incidentally, metacognition is crucial in professional level poker, in which multiple levels are used—e.g. by betting this I can make my opponent think that I think that he thinks that I have an ace.
I once heard an academic talking on the radio about social metacognition. He pointed out that some episode in Shakespeare’s Othello involves 7 levels of metacognition. 5 of them are in the play (unfortunately I can’t recall the details, but someone thinks that someone else knew that someone else deceived someone into thinking that blah blah). The sixth is the fact that the audience understands it, and the seventh is that Shakespeare knew that by writing this he could make the audience understand it. (And arguably there’s an eighth, that we realize that Shakespeare knew that...)
It only took the academic a few sentences for him to summarize the whole situation and all the levels, and it was all perfectly clear. Showing how good humans are at advanced metacognition.
Also, incidentally, metacognition is crucial in professional level poker, in which multiple levels are used—e.g. by betting this I can make my opponent think that I think that he thinks that I have an ace.