
No One Knows What the F*** They're Doing (or "The 3 Types of Knowledge") - JangoSteve
http://jangosteve.com/post/380926251/no-one-knows-what-theyre-doing
======
fnid2
Sometimes, in conversations with others, I hear them say with complete
confidence stuff that I know is total crap. It's like I just can't get over
how absolutely wrong they are and yet how absolutely right they _believe_ they
are.

So I start wondering how many times _I_ do exactly the same thing. I mean, how
can I know what I don't know? How much is there? How do I even know if
something I _really_ believe is true or not?

It's hard to think that everything I believe about the world might be
completely untrue. In illusion. An ... imagination.

Sometimes I am faced with a situation where if I convince the other person of
what I believe, then I also believe that person will be better off. For
example, if a car is coming and a child is entering a road, Instinctively, we
think to call out to the child or try to stop the child or yell at the car to
stop the car, but what if the underlying belief: That the child is better off
_not_ being hit. Is false?

What if the child may be _better_ off for being hit. Perhaps it makes the
child stronger later in life or through her recovery, she meets the man of her
dreams and they live happily ever after?

We don't know. I don't know. How can I know what to do?

~~~
wallflower
You can't argue against someone's reality. However, you can get them to
believe in your reality.

For example, what is easier - convince you a) that the Martians are attacking
or b) that I believe the Martians are attacking?

a) Convince the girl that she is interesting and sexy or b) convince her that
_you_ believe that she is interesting and sexy

~~~
Groxx
b, and if they think they're not, neither. (based on personal experience) The
second 'b' tends to come after some acceptance of the second 'a'.

------
kqr2
Reminds me of the quote from Rumsfeld.

Reformatted by <http://www.slate.com/id/2081042/>

    
    
      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.

~~~
DLWormwood
Both Rumsfeld (and the article) missed the 4th type of knowledge: "unknown
knowns." That is, things you know, but you don't realize you know yet. (Either
you know it subconsciously, have knowledge from another domain you don't yet
realize is appropriate to the job at hand, or you learned it before, forgot
it, and only need a small reminder or mental jog to regain it.)

~~~
tyler197802198
Think about what you just said. "Unknown _knowns_ " (emphasis added).
Therefore, they are knowns, and would fit into the "Shit you know" category.

------
harpastum
Personally, all I could think about after reading this article was the song
_Colors of the Wind_ from _Pocahontas_ :

    
    
        You think I'm an ignorant savage
        And you've been so many places
        I guess it must be so
        But still I cannot see
        If the savage one is me
        How can there be so much that you don't know
        You don't know 
    
        ...
    
        But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger
        You'll learn things you never knew you never knew
    

That seems to pretty precisely describe the two groups: Pocahontas being in
the nurse's position, unsure of her own stance, while the English men squarely
fit into the egotistical group.

~~~
blueben
Gave you a point for quoting a song from a Disney animated film on HN while
remaining relevant.

------
kilian
I'll come right out and say it: Most of the pleasure in my work comes from
agreeing to do something I know I don't know, and then figuring it out.

Now, what disconcerts me is that, given the same situation, if I say "sure, I
can do that" people believe me, but if I say "I don't know how to do it, but I
can figure out" others hesitate. I think this has to do with most people
wanting you to know a lot, instead of wanting you to know a lot of what you
don't know. I'm a firm believer that the latter is far more useful.

~~~
frederickcook
"Fake it 'til you make it."

If you say you can do it, people believe you. Once you have done a bunch of
stuff and people know you can do it, you can tell them you'll figure it out,
and they'll believe you.

------
nazgulnarsil
the experience of his girlfriend struck a chord with me. I used to be confused
why no one else was asking questions in class. it took getting to the higher
levels of hard science education before I realized: everyone else had just
been learning by rote. it's easy to just show up, memorize, and pass the test.
it came back to bite them in the ass later when they reached the washout phase
of math, physics, and chemistry. classes suddenly switched "know XYZ" to
thinking critically about why XYZ was happening and what that implied about
the physical system we were working on.

~~~
tyler197802198
And that is why people who do well in hard sciences deserve more pay than
people who (are otherwise equal and) don't.

And they usually get it.

------
fbu
You're entitled to your own opinion, not to your own facts. (Some TED speaker)

~~~
milfot
What are facts if not just opinions we agree on?

~~~
tyler197802198
Theoretically, they can also be statements that are testable in the future.

Ex: At 25C and 1atm, oxygen is a gas, not a liquid or solid. No matter how
many times you test that, it will always be true; hence, it is a fact.

Of course, if you ask enough questions (How do you know it is 25C? Why are you
confident that instrument is accurate? How do you establish the temperature
scale in question?) the person claiming it is a fact will eventually get
confused (it is was something they didn't realize they didn't know), send you
off to ask someone else (if it was something they know they didn't know), or
bored (if it was something they know but they are tired of answering your
questions) and you will be free to think the fact wasn't really a fact after
all.

------
thibaut_barrere
Missing: shit you don't know you know.

~~~
frederickcook
And as you get older, shit you know you know, but can't remember.

~~~
JangoSteve
Yeah, I kind of figured that would just fall into the "shit you know you don't
know" category, as in "shit you know you don't know _anymore_ " :-)

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kevingadd
For me, the most worrying thing about working in technology has been how as I
keep working, I learn more and more about technology. And it gets easier to
forget how large that 'shit you don't know that you don't know' category is,
compared to when I was a snot-nosed high schooler and painfully aware that I
didn't know pretty much anything...

I'm still not sure how to go about maintaining that perspective. It would be
nice if there was a reliable technique one could apply but I suspect it
requires frequent 'oh, I just f--ked up' gut checks, like taking down a
production website. Maybe the mark of a truly brilliant person is that they're
able to maintain that perspective better than others?

~~~
JangoSteve
One way I keep this perspective is to observe something random around me and
think as deeply as I can as to how that thing came to be. Random example off
the top of my head:

Have you ever noticed that when you have the intermittant windshield wipers on
in your car, you can change the speed of the wipers to be either faster or
slower. When you lower the speed, it re-starts the wiper interval with the
_swipe_ at the end of the interval, like this ....|....|....|

But when you quicken the speed, it re-starts the interval with the swipe at
the beginning, like this |....|....|....

Some engineer actually realized that when you quicken the speed of the wipers,
it's probably because you have an already built-up amount of water on your
windshield and need a _swipe_ right away. And when you lower the speed, it's
probably because you're getting streaking.

This is pretty ingenious I think. Yet, how often do you appreciate how much
thought and effort went into this otherwise unnoticeable feature of your
everyday (rainy) life?

That's how I try to keep this perspective.

------
flatline
There is a meta-problem here: we can't really know how big that red slice of
the pie - the "don't know what you don't know" slice - really is. I think he
captured the essence of the learning process correctly though, the "know what
you don't know" slice just keeps getting bigger as you get older, thus the
oft-cited expression, "the older you get, the less you know".

~~~
houseabsolute
You can make some good back of the envelope attempts at answering it. For
example, you can look at how often the big red slice forcibly intrudes on your
life to your detriment, and compare that to how often it happens to other
humans with similar risk-taking habits to you. The more often, the bigger your
personal red slice is.

~~~
fburnaby
But what about the example with the egotist? The fact that so many people can
be so blatantly oblivious to their "unknown unknowns" makes me think I must
have some of them too. I can be cautious and look out for them, which should
certainly help me reduce them, but these things are almost by definition the
things that you don't notice.

------
Estragon
Talking about shit don't know you don't know without referencing Rumsfeld's
"The Unknown" almost feels like plagiarism.

~~~
ktf
You can't plagiarize what you don't know you don't know about...

------
dzuc
"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are
known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know.
But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't
know."—Donald Rumsfeld

~~~
dzuc
Žižek's fourth type of knowledge: "What he forgot to add was the crucial
fourth term: the 'unknown knowns', 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."

------
aaronblohowiak
Confucius said it well: "To know what you do not know is the best."

------
toadpipe
What a crock. The things we know amount to nothing compared to the things we
don't, and education doesn't even move the needle on that dial. So what? What
matters is what you need to know to accomplish some goal vs. what you know
right now, and that's much more tractable. Focusing on the (incorrect) idea
that no one else knows anything either so you're just fine the way you are is
pabulum designed to boost self-esteem at the expense of actually learning
something.

~~~
JangoSteve
I think you missed the point in the last section. I think a lot of people
hesitate to seek out the answers for shame that they do not already know the
answers. I'm not saying to be comfortable in your ignorance. I'm saying, don't
be ashamed to ask questions.

And yes, as the rest of the article states, the third category is incredibly
(even inconceivably large). In case I actually need to say it, those pie
charts are for illustrative purposes only, i.e. not drawn to scale.

------
pge
I'm reminded of a saying I heard once:

Those that know and know that they know are wise, follow them. Those that know
and know not that they know are asleep, wake them. Those that know not and
know that they know not are students , teach them. Those that know not and
know not that they know not are fools, shun them.

As the article notes, we're all a little of each, rather than one of the
above, but for me, it captures it nicely.

------
10ren
I find it helpful to think of these three categories as answers, questions,
and neither. Being able to articulate your lack of knowledge as a question
turns out to be a very powerful way to convert the last category into the
first. Questions are important, according to Douglas Adams ("42") and Picasso
("computers are useless, they can only give you answers").

I also think of it as a doorway. Some doors are open to you; some are closed.
And some doorways you haven't noticed are there. It's fun to notice a doorway
- behind a wardrobe; plastered over - for the first time when you return to a
place you've visited many times.

But, for me, it's also humbling each time I realize there's more to it. It
feels unpleasant at first (I guess that's my ego imagining I know everything),
but then it's freeing and reassuring. Nature's imagination is greater than my
imagination.

 _edit_ Unfortunately, I feel as though I know all the principles, and it's
just uninteresting details - data, information - that I lack. I hope this is
wrong, but I can't imagine how...

~~~
milfot
I like that.. questions, answers and everything else.

Though I think questions aren't there to give you answers, they only throw up
more questions.. but I reckon they give you directions. When those
questionable directions start to converge you know you are onto something you
don't know. When those questions converge like an asymptote..ad infinitum,
that's what we call answers.

Doubt scares people, they just want to know where the line ends. But in the
real world the only way find such an direction is trial and error.. i think.

------
invisible
I like to think "hackers" (or those with engineering knowledge) have a small
"shit we don't know" area. If I am to, say, put up a wall where there was once
a door my first reaction would be, "Oh, I need to look this up." I would find
it via some search engine, read about it, and then find the specs for a wall.
Find that I need drywall, footers, etc., see if there are any special
circumstances that apply. Is there shit I don't know? Possibly, but I think
"we" do research twice and action once.

Edit: Or who knows, maybe I don't know that we don't know when enough research
is enough.

------
marilyn
This reminds me of what Socrates said: "all I know is that I know nothing."

------
coffeemug
In the past few months I had the opportunity to meet some very accomplished,
respected people. It made me simultaneously depressed and amazed. Depressed
how limited human beings actually are - the smartest people in the world
actually aren't that different from you or I. Amazed how much we were able to
accomplish as a race in a relatively short time span, despite how incredibly
limited we are.

------
est
this one is better

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Classical-Definition-of-
Kn...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Classical-Definition-of-Kno.svg)

~~~
olliesaunders
What's the deal with the yellow circle?

------
amitti
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory>

~~~
Panoramix
Did you read the book? If so, would you recommend it?

~~~
amitti
Yes, its abit long but worth it.

Developing awareness to the unknown in your daily life requires practice, the
book with its anecdotes helps in that.

------
idleworx
I would add 2 more to that pie chart. 'sh _t you don't want to know' and 'sh_
t you wish you didn't find out'.

------
Revenger
and u dont know wtf u r writing seriously

------
rimantas
Worth mentioning:

<http://mindview.net/WebLog/log-0023>

and more on that: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect>

the report itself (PDF): <http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf>

