meaning - "Known unknown" vs. "unknown known"


I was recently reading a review of Donald Rumsfeld's autobiography. The reviewer cited one of his famous phrases; he quoted it as "unknown known." Now my memory was that the phrase Rumsfeld used was "known unknown" not "unknown known" and it got me wondering: is there a difference in meaning between the two?



Answer



The full quote is:



[T]here 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.



That explains what known unknowns means: we know there are some things we do not know. As for unknown knowns, a philosopher by the name of Slavoj Žižek extrapolated to define this term: the things that we know, but are unaware of knowing.


So, in short, there is a big difference.


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