
No One Knows What They're Doing (2010) - MattRogish
http://jangosteve.com/post/380926251/no-one-knows-what-theyre-doing
======
RankingMember
I feel like Richard Feynman always had a good take on this:

“I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers
which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and
different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not
absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything
about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have
to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost
in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as
far as I can tell.”

~~~
Fasebook
So what analogs can we draw between the universe and the commercial web? How
is it that we don't know what we're doing when working with documented and
supported tools? It's almost like some kind of separation of duties to keep us
blind to the big picture. God must really hate us!

------
JangoSteve
Hey everyone, crazy to see my article posted here again 4 years later (I can't
believe it's been 4 years since I wrote that). I'm glad it's still relevant to
people.

If this were one of my open source projects or programming articles, I'd say,
"Let me know if you have any questions." But I'm not sure I could answer
anyone's questions on this subject. I'll sure try though if you do have any.

~~~
porter
I see what you did there.

------
DigitalJack
The "types of knowledge" sounds like Donald Rumsfeld quote who was derided for
speaking of the concept since 2002 and I'm sure before then even. "known
knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns)

~~~
georgemcbay
As much as I didn't care for most of the entire Bush administration it always
bothered me that he was made fun of for that quote since it is actually
incredibly profound (if not particularly original).

------
stretchwithme
What about shit you don't know you know? There are many things we do and know
that we don't understand. Very often it doesn't matter. A child does not need
to be aware that their finger is narrower than their nostril to use one upon
the other.

If you wait until all the studies are complete before trying to do something,
you will never take action. Life is more about trial and error than knowing
how everything is known.

~~~
waps
In AI this is a little bit known as the rationality paradox. People generally
agree that the following formula is the definition of acting rationally :

argmax(sum(probability_of_event * utility_of_event) given action)

So do you open a door ? There could be a bear behind the door that will eat
you if you open the door. The probability of that is not zero (and even if it
was, it would not matter). The utility of that is -inf. The utility of not
opening the door is also -inf. There could be a bear behind you and the door
could be your only way to safety.

So a rational actor would never do anything at all, as the rational function
would never converge.

Ergo, nobody and nothing is rational (as soon as the world has a certain
minimal level of complexity).

There are various suggestions given out of this conundrum, but none are even
mildly satisfying. For example, one could claim that you don't know those
odds, so you don't care. But that is the same as saying you can't really be
rational, so it's not a solution.

~~~
FigBug
In "The Man Who mistook His Wife for a Hat"
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Mistook_His_Wife_fo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Mistook_His_Wife_for_a_Hat)),
a book on mental disorders, there is a case of a man who can only make
rational decisions. He is unable to function, he can't get past what to wear
or what to eat in the morning. Even this simplest decisions take him hours.

~~~
taejo
The story you mention may indeed appear in an Oliver Sacks book (I've read
several, and the story is familiar to me) but it doesn't seem to be in _The
Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat_ , according to the list in the article you
linked.

~~~
FigBug
The book has 24 essays, they aren't all listed in the Wiki page.

------
9999
An interesting addendum to Rumsfeld's categorization of knowledge is Slavoj
Zizek's notion of the unknown known:

What he forgot to add was the crucial fourth term: the "unknown knowns," the
things we don't know that we know-which is precisely, the Freudian
unconscious, the "knowledge which doesn't know itself," as Lacan used to say.

If Rumsfeld thinks that the main dangers in the confrontation with Iraq were
the "unknown unknowns," that is, the threats from Saddam whose nature we
cannot even suspect, then the Abu Ghraib scandal shows that the main dangers
lie in the "unknown knowns" \- the disavowed beliefs, suppositions and obscene
practices we pretend not to know about, even though they form the background
of our public values."

[http://www.lacan.com/zizekrumsfeld.htm](http://www.lacan.com/zizekrumsfeld.htm)

I agree with Zizek's assessment that unknown knowns are even more dangerous
than unknown unknowns.

------
arobbins
Previous HN discussion:
[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1121775](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1121775)

------
jagath
Reminded me of what my grad advisor used to say -

If you ask an undergrad student, the answer is always a "yes" or a "no".

If you ask a master's student, the answer is always a "may be".

If you ask a doctoral student, the answer is always "i don't know".

------
SilasX
While this is often true, I can't accept it as being as universal as claimed.
Many projects, with visible success, pretty clearly require someone that knows
what they're doing, or else they will noticeably fail. And they happen in
environments that don't care how good your model is, and throw all kinds of
kinks in your plan. Buildings, aircraft, software.

Nor does it ever connect the "recognition of what you don't know" ability back
to the nurse's situation: how does that account for why she got such praise?
What observable shortcomings did the other students have, and she lack, that
are connected to the unknown-unknown problem?

~~~
JangoSteve
I'll be honest, that article was written by someone not long out of college
(me). In that situation, I'd say it's more true then, than when you get older
and have a more experienced peer group. But of course, that more experienced
peer group also tends to be much humbler and aware of their shortcomings as
well, so I'd say the article still addresses that.

The way it was meant to be brought back around to the nurse's situation was
that, she actually was really good at what she was doing for her level of
experience and progression through schooling, despite knowing that she had a
long way left to go. As to what observable shortcomings other students had
compared to her, I cannot say. I wasn't in the class or at work with her. The
point was that her professors and supervisors, all of which gave her praise,
were probably better able to see that than she was, given their experience and
level of context within the field of nursing and teaching.

The real issue, though, was in the cognitive dissonance between what she felt
she was capable of and what others knew her to be capable of. This was an
attempt to give at least some small explanation for that cognitive dissonance.
It is possible to know more than anyone else about a given subject, and still
know practically nothing about it compared to the amount of information about
that subject contained within all of mankind or even the universe.

~~~
SilasX
Thanks for taking the time to reply to these questions.

>But of course, that more experienced peer group also tends to be much humbler
and aware of their shortcomings as well, so I'd say the article still
addresses that.

I have to disagree: however humble they might be, someone on the projects I
mentioned has to have a deep enough understanding to know how to handle the
cornucopia of problems that can derail it: unexpected soil problems,
dependencies not working like intended, aerodynamic lift not being as high as
the model.

I compare it to my understanding of long multiplication, which I've tested
against students new to it. "How do you do it?" Here's how. Why is it done
that way? Well it's an expansion of this formula. "Why in this order?" If you
don't do it that way, you're actually multiplying these other numbers; you
have to correct for it like so. "What if I forget some of the entries in the
multiplication table?" Then here's how you multiply single digit numbers;
here's multiplication as a version of addition. "What if I forget how to add?"
Break out the number line, let's review.

That kind of understanding is revealed in any large-scale, finished, working
product.

>The way it was meant to be brought back around to the nurse's situation was
that, she actually was really good at what she was doing for her level of
experience and progression through schooling, despite knowing that she had a
long way left to go. As to what observable shortcomings other students had
compared to her, I cannot say.

Then I don't understand how this was supposed to reassure her; if I offered an
explanation, I would test its implications against the rest of the scenario:
is there a way overconfidence manifests in the typical student? Is she
returning the (correct answer) "I'd have to ask someone" more often than the
other students? As it stands, you've just listed something that might be
consistent.

Remember, the problem is not that "she was good for her level of experience";
the problem was that "she was called the best student they'd ever had".

(I note with some irony that, for you claim to know general competence levels
just after college is _itself_ seemingly outside your knowns!)

~~~
JangoSteve
> I have to disagree: however humble they might be, someone on the projects I
> mentioned has to have a deep enough understanding to know how to handle the
> cornucopia of problems that can derail it

I agree with what you said, which is why I have a hard time understanding what
exactly you disagree with. Are you saying that more experienced people tend to
be less aware of their shortcomings? Or maybe we're taking humble to mean two
different things? I'm using "humble" in the "not arrogant" sense, not the
"feeling inferior" sense.

I think you can be confident in your abilities while still being humble about
them, and that's really what I meant by it when referring to the more
experienced peer group. In fact, the most experienced people usually have an
innate sense of confidence that allows them to avoid having to constantly tell
people "I know what I'm doing". They don't have to tell people, because they
can show it. That's the level of humbleness (or modesty may be a better word)
that I was referring to.

> Then I don't understand how this was supposed to reassure her; if I offered
> an explanation, I would test its implications against the rest of the
> scenario:

That is generally the next step. You make observations, develop theories to
explain the observations in a consistent manner, and then devise new tests to
test those theories. This post was simply at the "developing a theory" step.

> (I note with some irony that, for you claim to know general competence
> levels just after college is itself seemingly outside your knowns!)

The irony is not lost on me. To be fair though, I didn't and still don't claim
to "know" general competence levels, I just blogged my thoughts. Of course I
could have littered my post with all sorts of qualifiers like "maybe",
"perhaps", "sometimes", and "I think", but that doesn't make for effective
writing. The post was not written or meant to be read in a vacuum. Context is
important.

~~~
SilasX
>I agree with what you said, which is why I have a hard time understanding
what exactly you disagree with

The "No one knows what they're doing" bit. The people on those projects --
they know what they're doing.

~~~
JangoSteve
Oh. Yeah, it was really meant to be taken as "No one knows what they're doing
[all or even most] of the time."

------
js2
I see no mention of the closely related four stages of competence:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence#The_f...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence#The_four_stages)

~~~
JangoSteve
I hadn't seen that before. Having just read through the wikipedia article, I'd
say that my post is less about the theoretical categories themselves and more
about people's inability to distinguish how their own knowledge is divided
between those categories in their own minds, versus how it's divided in
others. But yes, that's extremely relevant and awesome, thanks for that!

------
wyager
I don't know if I agree with this. The author might be incorrectly projecting
his feelings onto other people. There are a fair number of people in the world
who know _exactly_ what they're doing.

~~~
SubZero
This falls under the "shit you know you don't know" category.

~~~
louthy
Exactly. Two of the most powerful things you can learn in life are "There's so
much more to learn" and "Nobody knows what they're doing".

Early in life you get the impression that parents know everything, then it's
teachers, then it's bosses. When in fact they don't.

We're not robots with perfect abilities, understanding that everyone to a
degree doesn't know what they're doing gives you a different outlook on the
world.

Note, that doesn't mean everybody is incompetent.

~~~
wyager
>"Nobody knows what they're doing".

How can you possibly make this assertion? I have a direct counterexample; _I_
know what I'm doing. There's a lot of stuff I don't know, but I would not
describe my state of being as "not knowing what I'm doing".

>everyone to a degree doesn't know what they're doing

This is very different from "Nobody knows what they're doing". Just because no
one has a perfectly clear idea of everything doesn't mean they don't know what
they're doing.

~~~
JangoSteve
You are absolutely right about the title. Though, I should probably clarify,
the more accurate title would be "Nobody knows what they're doing all the
time." That was the intent when I wrote it, but it could be argued that if the
title weren't a bit sensationalist, we may not be having this meaningful
discussion with points and counterpoints on HN right now.

EDIT: Actually "all the time" doesn't quite cover it, I'd say it's "most of
the time".

------
robbyking
Donald Rumsfield summed this up nicely:

> _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._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns)

~~~
qwerty_asdf
It's quoted in the article, and the article draws a good rationale for why our
own confidence shrinks in the face of awkward self-awareness.

Nevertheless, whenever I feel like I'm confronting bullshit artistry on a
profound and deliberate scale, Donald Rumsfeld is my yard stick, and a
distorted image of his smirking face is conjured in my mind's eye, and
replaces the bullshit artist's face, and that quote rings through my head with
lots of reverb and phased, flanged echo.

The next unit of measurement in scales of bullshit artistry, in terms of
greater precision and smaller units, is Bill Clinton's debate regarding the
meaning of "is":

    
    
      It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If 
      the—if he—if 'is' means is and never has been, that is 
      not—that is one thing. If it means there is none, that 
      was a completely true statement.
    

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Bill_Clinton#In...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Bill_Clinton#Independent_counsel_investigation)

The conversion ratio between Rumsfelds and Clinton-Lewinskies is 1 Rumsfeld =
1 Mega-Clinton-Lewinsky.

------
dbtc
I think when talking about confidence or success these categories of knowledge
don't account for the whole picture.

Knowledge isn't the only thing required to be successful at something, it
doesn't account for skills. When I say skills I mean something that requires
training over time to be able to do.

I know I don't know how to balance on a rope, if I learned successful methods
for balancing on a rope I still probably wouldn't be able to do it. I wouldn't
be successful until I put in the hours to dig those deep trenches between
feedback and response. I might know how to finger a chord on a guitar, kick a
soccer ball or make a compelling argument but I probably won't be very good at
those things until I practice them

Maybe my interpretation of the word 'know' is too narrow but it seems like
these 'learned skills' would fall under a seperate category of things that you
can only get better at with experience.

------
nathanallen
"Expose your Ignorance" is a phrase I like from the book _Apprenticeship
Patterns_. I think it cuts two ways: admitting to yourself what you don't
know, and admitting to the people around you that you don't know. It's hard
enough to admit to yourself that you're falling short and need to dig in and
come to a better understanding of a subject, but it's way more discomfiting to
confess this to your team/clients (especially if you're afraid they won't be
receptive).

For this reason, I've come to love the phrase "developer". I am someone who
develops, and keeps developing. I am not a fixed point. And this is why you
hire me. [See Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset]

------
saosebastiao
This is amazing...I've been trying to explain this concept for a long time,
but have never come to even a fraction of the eloquence of this author.

~~~
ruttiger
Yep, and it seems the more experienced they are, the more likely they are to
experience this.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome)

------
atmosx
Looks kind the Socratic way of perceived knowledge: "You are not able to judge
me, because I know I don't know shit, while you don't know you don't know shit
(yet) and I'm here to prove to you that you really don't know shit".

But of course Steve's analysis is easier to apprehend.

------
waynecochran
Well said. I am always very uneasy if I feel I am the most knowledgeable guy
in the room -- because I know I don't know even a small fraction of what is
known. Now I know why I feel uneasy -- because I am in a dangerous setting.

~~~
beat
I often say that if you think you're the smartest person in the room, you
probably aren't. And if you actually _are_ the smartest person in the room,
you need to be in a better room.

~~~
sb23
That implies that someone always is the smartest, and that person always needs
a better room. If they're so smart, how come they're in crap rooms?

------
bradleysmith
great read, thanks for sharing.

Reminds me of Taleb's concept of epistemic arrogance, which is more prevalant
than not among educated people in my experience.

never underestimate the vastness of what we don't know that we don't know.

------
benched
_Have you ever received praise, or even an award, for being great at something
despite having no clue what you’re doing?_

No. I have to know years worth of mountains worth of knowledge and skills to
get even the slightest nod from anybody. Most software people don't give away
praise for free.

 _Do you feel like a fraud...?_

No. I'm a good programmer, my job is to program things, and my employers seem
to have agreed. Like many people here, I've made lots of shit that works, and
made lots of customers happy.

Shit you don't know you don't know only matters when it matters. And when it
starts to matter, it moves into the shit you know you don't know category, and
hopefully with some effort into the shit you know category.

A single human being can't know much, so out of necessity we act like a cache.
We also tend to work in teams. I frequently encounter problems I can't solve,
that a 3-minute back-and-forth discussion with the two nearest coworkers does
solve.

