Unknown Unknowns

There are different level of knowledge and your view about the world:

• Things you know that you know them
• Things you know that you don’t know them
• Things you don’t know that you don’t know them

This fruit of thought is the highlight of a discussion in one moment in my office.

Since we don’t know whose quote was this, i put an extra effort to look it up, it turns out it was a quote from Donald Rumsfeld, here is the full quote:

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.

The idea of unknown unknowns is interesting, isn’t it? it what fuels human’s advancement so far, the hunger of knowledge. That sensation of walking in a direction of unknowns, not knowing what you will get in the end, even not knowing what to expect other than the expectation to expand our know knowns, or known unknowns at least.

So, how much you know that you don’t know?