The Fourth Quadrant- The Unknown Known
There are known knowns — there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns — that is to say, 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 I turned 38 today and of all the quotes I could pick to give narrative force to this occasion, why am I going with Donald Rumsfield talking about the catastrophe that was the Iraq invasion? It's because while he stumbled upon a tremendous epistemological truth, Donald was one configuration shy of making a whole quadrant of knowledge Everyone is fairly familiar with the things that they know- for instance that they're alive, that they need to stop drinking so much at parties etc. They also know the things that are unknown -but this knowledge is twofold. they know that they could know but currently don't know -something like how many cars are brought into the country every day, or how the universe came to be they know that th...