Monday, May 04, 2009

Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns

I remember watching the news briefing where Donald Rumsfeld made this statement and thinking, what the heck did he just say?

The Unknown

"As we know,
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."

—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing


From Slate Magazine, "The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld" - by Hart Seely