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Science teachers in schools and TV documentaries play a large part in driving this perception.


Yup. You teach only 1/4th of the Rumsfeld matrix (known knowns). And TV shows are there for a good story, not philosophy of knowledge.


Don't call it that. He didn't make it up. Descriptive names are better than memorial names anyway. Call it the known-unknown matrix, or known-unknown risk classification system.


It's a fine name, because everyone (in the USA) knows what is being referred to in only 2 words. AND we get to remember a feeling of amusement mixed with horror that we had at the time that man who said something so intelligent was simultaneously making decisions so catastrophically stupid and impactful to all of us.


Why shouldn’t I? You clearly understood what I was referring to? This is not an academic venue but a platform for informal conversations, right?


Wait, what's the fourth? Unknown knowns? How's that work?


They are things that you know, that you don't know you know. For example, uncovering links between existing knowledge that uncovers something that then feels obvious.

This happens occasionally where two previously thought seperate fields of study discover a common link with each being able to explain the questions the other had struggled with.


Yup. My daughter (15y) had the perfect example this morning. She said she was thinking about shooting a person with a cannon upwards, then realizing they feel effectively zero gravity at top, and maybe this could be usefull. Then she remembered parabolic flight paths to train astronauts, realized it’s the same thing, and that she started wondering about a thing she already knew.


Lots of people know things deeply in their subconscious that they are fully ignorant of in their conscious thinking. These can manifest as gut feelings, or anxieties, and with therapy, can be identified. Things like "you should leave him", or whatever.


Tacit knowledge


Find me one science teacher who says that we literally know everything about the human body there is to know. Just one.

The amount of anti-education/anti-school rhetoric on HN these days is worrying.




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