I feel like Richard Feynman always had a good take on this:<p>“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.”
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.<p>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.
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."<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns</a>
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.<p>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.
An interesting addendum to Rumsfeld's categorization of knowledge is Slavoj Zizek's notion of the unknown known:<p>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.<p>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."<p><a href="http://www.lacan.com/zizekrumsfeld.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.lacan.com/zizekrumsfeld.htm</a><p>I agree with Zizek's assessment that unknown knowns are even more dangerous than unknown unknowns.
Reminded me of what my grad advisor used to say -<p>If you ask an undergrad student, the answer is always a "yes" or a "no".<p>If you ask a master's student, the answer is always a "may be".<p>If you ask a doctoral student, the answer is always "i don't know".
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.<p>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?
I see no mention of the closely related four stages of competence:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence#The_four_stages" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence#The_f...</a>
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 <i>exactly</i> what they're doing.
Donald Rumsfield summed this up nicely:<p>> <i>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.</i><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns</a>
I think when talking about confidence or success these categories of knowledge don't account for the whole picture.<p>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.<p>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<p>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.
"Expose your Ignorance" is a phrase I like from the book <i>Apprenticeship Patterns</i>. 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).<p>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]
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.
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".<p>But of course Steve's analysis is easier to apprehend.
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.
great read, thanks for sharing.<p>Reminds me of Taleb's concept of epistemic arrogance, which is more prevalant than not among educated people in my experience.<p>never underestimate the vastness of what we don't know that we don't know.
<i>Have you ever received praise, or even an award, for being great at something despite having no clue what you’re doing?</i><p>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.<p><i>Do you feel like a fraud...?</i><p>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.<p>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.<p>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.