JackV comments on Rationality Quotes December 2013 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Cyan 17 December 2013 08:43PM

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Comment author: BlueSun 02 December 2013 03:16:14PM 18 points [-]

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.

Comment author: JackV 02 December 2013 04:14:39PM 19 points [-]

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."

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 04 December 2013 01:37:37PM 15 points [-]

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.