David's Daily Diversions

What the Media Doesn't Know It Doesn't Know

I'm getting very tired of all the mick taking around Donald Rumsfeld's knowns and unknowns. He even won some "award" for gobbledy gook. Everyone seems to think he makes no sense.

Politics aside, what all the journalists and comedians need is even the most basic understand of logic. There is nothing silly or convoluted about "known knowns", "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns". We experience them in everyday life, whether we are intelligent enough to categorise our knowledge or not.

"Known knowns" should be pretty obvious. I just came back from the supermarket, so I'll use it as an illustration. If we have a large box of apples, we known that we know the ones on the top are red.

It is a "known unknown" that we don't know what colour the one below are, though we known there are apples underneath, and we known they are either red or yellow or green. Whether there are any more boxes of apples in the back of the store is also a "known unknown" because we don't have basis for knowning whether the supermarket recieves shipments of apples on Thursday.

However, that the supermarket has stopped carrying apples altogether after these boxes are sold is an "unknown unknown" because we have no clue that stocking or not of apples is or was even under consideration.

If journalists had half a brain and less of agenda, they would realise that they are the ones who are really silly in this whole thing.