Essay: Known knowns and unknown unknowns

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Known knowns and unknown unknowns

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

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Donald #Rumsfeld on Known knowns and unknown unknowns

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

Known knowns and unknown unknowns

In 2002, the press took exception to a comment by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. However, I think he was onto something important…

“…there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
Donald Rumsfeld – Defense Department briefing, February 12, 2002  (Federal par. 160)

This quotation has been rendered in several minor variations. They all fall short by one of exhausting the matrix of known and knowable. But, that is not critical to the point that he was making. The version (below) that I transcribed from a video of his briefing includes the sound of an audience starting to laugh. The reporters may have been anticipating questioning him sharply about unknown knowns:

“… 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.”           
ibid (transcribed by Satterlee—italics added)

Secretary Rumsfeld was nearing the end of a protracted and confrontational news conference at the time that he made this statement. Reporters had repeatedly parsed his words and perversely tried to turn them against him. He had just defended a ludicrous challenge to the Pentagon’s attentiveness to Iraq. A questioner asserts that, “…there is no evidence of a direct link between Baghdad and some of these terrorist organizations.”

Rumsfeld, evidently getting testy, introduces