More meta than thou?

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/revenge-of-rumsfeld-s-fourth-quadrant-closing-the-strait-of-hormuz uses US military failure to execute on-shelf Hormuz Strait plans to discuss the 4th un/known quadrant, the unknown known one that Rumsfeld with his known known, known unknown and unknown unknown distinction forgot. Unknown known data exists, but organizations don’t use it. “Unlikely” → “Don’t plan”, with consequence-focused voices unheard, wishful thinking, desensitization to cry wolf warnings deliberations prominent.

Another interpretation is that it is knowledge that has been forgotten. For example I knew (but forgot) a good way to set Windows environment variables is with SETX. See EnvVarsOnWindows

Or Polanyi%27s_paradox, We know more than we can tell.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_unknown_unknowns Rumsfeld in a documentary later recognized unknown knowns as “the things you think you know, that it turns out you did not”, or “things that you know, that you don’t know you know”, and in an autobiography Socrates’ discussion of knowns/unknowns.

The wiki page is good on use in American engineering contexts and antiquity. I think the engineering use stems from the Johari window used in therapeutic and corporate change-encouraging exercises from 1955.

There again one dimension is knowing/unknowing, but the second is not a meta knowing/unknowing one of which the first is subject, but that of what you know about your self and what others know about you.

See JohariWindow.

Me at

Back to JohariWindow

Back to ActionResearch

Back to TheExaminedLife

Back to PhilosophicalAmusings

Back to TheUnexaminedLife