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JackV comments on Rationality Quotes December 2013 - Less Wrong
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I don't like a lot of things he did, but that's the second very good advice I've heard from Rumsfeld. Maybe I need to start respecting his competence more.
The "known knowns" quote got made fun of a lot, but I think it's really good out of context:
"There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know."
Also, every time I think of that I try to picture the elusive category of "unknown knowns" but I can't ever think of an example.
I guess "unknown knowns" are the counterpoint to "unknown unknowns" -- things it never occurred to you to consider, but didn't. Eg. "We completely failed to consider the possibility that the economy would mutate into a continent-sized piano-devouring shrimp, and it turned out we were right to ignore that."
That's a survivor bias.
Things that we know that we don't know we know? I run into these all the time... last night, for example, I realized that I knew the English word for the little plastic cylinders at the end of a shoelace. (I discovered this when someone asked me what an 'aglet' was.) I'd had no idea.
An aglet... beautiful. I probably have a larger vocabulary in English than in Finnish by now. Lots of unknown knowns there I bet.
I cannot for the life of me remember why I know that word.
It's also a speed-boosting item in the video game Terraria. (I did not know the meaning of the word until now.)
It was a minor plot point in a Terry Pratchett novel. Could that be it?
I don't think I've ever read any Pratchett novels, but I might well have read a summary or discussion of the relevant one.
It was a pretty minor plot point, so that probably isn't it.
Yes but as soon as you thought of it it becomes a known known :)
True, much as unknown unknowns become known unknowns.
That said, I can infer from how often I come across them (converting them in the process) that there's a large store of them remaining unconverted.
I'm going to guess you have at one point watched this "Phineas and Ferb" episode, and then forgot it. There's a song and the chorus is "A-G-L-E-T don't forget it".
If that's how it happened, it's pretty amusing, because one of the running gags was that Candace kept going on about how there was absolutely no need for anyone to know the word aglet, and she became frustrated when it started catching on everywhere.
My brain has, in the intervening weeks, offered up a memory of learning the word "aglet" from a Reader's Digest vocabulary quiz in my childhood. That said, your explanation is much better than mind, despite being false, so I'm tempted to accept it as the official story of why I know the word "aglet".
On this site, I really ought to be downvoted for that sentiment, I suppose.
I figure "unknown knowns" covers a huge category of its own: willful ignorance. All those things that are pretty obvious (e.g. the absence of the Dragon in the garage) but that many people, including Rumsfeld apparently, choose to ignore or "unknow".
Information that was relevant and available but not considered at the time of decision making I'd consider unknown knowns.
Its much easier to generate good advice than to follow it.
I'm also fond of
Rumsfeld quotes
He's oversimplifying-- was it necessary to go to war then?-- but it's still worth thinking about whether a criticism is based on what's actually possible.
What's the first one?