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.

But... you have to remember...art is art...but on the other hand water is water...and east is east...and west is west...and if you stew cranberries like applesauce, they taste much more like prunes that rhubarb does...

I know that the little bribe pocket on the old PA licences was the perfect place to keep extra beer money.

I know it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, today.;)

I know i had a good time at the drink experiment party. :)

I also know I had too much to drink, too darn quickly. I proved I could still get hammered in a couple of hours and worry I was about to get sick. I'd like to apologize to SG, monster, Cloud and everybody else I didn't say goodbye to when I took off. :o

I keep seeing this Rumsfeld quote all over the place, as if it's supposed to make him foolish... but I have no problem with it, it's a completely accurate statement--and despite the logical complexity of it, he didn't even flub any of the words. Do people really not understand what he's saying, or do they just think it's funny to see the same word so many times in a sentence?

I think it's mildly amusing just because it's so convoluted. The first time I saw it posted, it was offered as an example of him being dumb. I listened carefully to it, and like you I thought he made sense. But he could have said that while we have some idea what's going on, we don't know it all. It would have been much simpler. I'm actually impressed that he said it with no mistakes. I'm not sure I could.

So is any tautology. He was running down the clock on the interview, saying nothing. Sorta like saying that he knew where the WMDs were - around Baghdad, or north, south, west, or east of it.

There, he was trying for a tautology, but got nabbed by the WMDs not actually existing. Sorta the only way he could have been wrong.

Glad to hear that.

By the way, have you noticed the odd but beautiful sunsets these last 2 nights? I walk outside and the light is a greenish gold.

I know there is Only 2 currently active Test Truck ( 65 K worth of truck for testing truck scales ) drivers in our shop out of a crew of 8 , this IS TOOOOO few , I have to drop what I am doing , drive 3-4 hours ONE WAY , load into the truck , drive it , do the job , then go BACK to what I was doing WAY TOOO OFTEN !!!!

WA ,WA ,BITCH , Moan ,CRY !!!!

I didn't post it to start a Rumsfeld discussion.
I posted it because the thread is called "What do you know?"
I found the Rumsfeld quote to be, at first glance, confusing, but if you thought about it for a moment, it makes perfect sense.
I now have it printed out and hanging above my desk.

I also used it to segue into the Groucho Marx quote, which, in and of itself, is absurdist logic in it's finest form.

Yes. We're in a canyon and the trees on the opposite side have been lit by that light.

I know I embarassed my boss today, because he turned deep scarlet :blush:

I invented a model of secondary brain injury that I dubbed the 'poke' model. (Will come up with something a little more scientific for the journal article) Anyhoo, my boss just came up to me and said " Are you available tomorrow for a poking?" I said, totally straight faced, "Yes, but I'll have to ask my husband if it's OK." He turned red and said "I probably wouldn't be wecome at your house anymore." I said, "As long as I got a raise after you would be". He got even redder. I made him forget what he was going to say, heh heh heh.

It was a hoot.

I know it's wrong to teach your children to hate.

I know it's wrong not to educate your girls.

I know it's wrong to execute a family member for "honor."

From DoD website transcript, 06 June 2002

Here's the quote, in context. You may draw your own conclusions, but I think its' just a long winded way of avoiding the question. The reporter asked, "You said things were worse than the facts show. Tell us what is worse." Rumsfeld said "Ok. We don't know." That's not answering the question. That's trying to baffle 'em with bullshit. FUD. Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. Let's parse his answer in an effort to understand what he said.

Rumsfeld's statements.

BigV paraphrase and interpretation.


Rumsfeld: Sure.

"Ok, I'll answer your question." Not a lot to interpret here. Except that he doesn't answer the question. Rumsfeld himself is famous also for saying "Don't answer the question you've been asked, answer the question you wish had been asked". I paraphrase, but this is an example of him following his own advice.


All of us in this business read intelligence information. And we read it daily and we think about it and it becomes, in our minds, essentially what exists. And that's wrong. It is not what exists.

"We read intel, and then decide that what we read is truth. But we're wrong to make that conclusion." Here Rumsfeld states his case. He will try to support it in a minute, but I would point out here that this is the moment when he transfers our attention from the question asked to the question he wishes was asked.


I say that because I have had experiences where I have gone back and done a great deal of work and analysis on intelligence information and looked at important countries, target countries, looked at important subject matters with respect to those target countries and asked, probed deeper and deeper and kept probing until I found out what it is we knew, and when we learned it, and when it actually had existed. And I found that, not to my surprise, but I think anytime you look at it that way what you find is that there are very important pieces of intelligence information that countries, that spend a lot of money, and a lot of time with a lot of wonderful people trying to learn more about what's going in the world, did not know some significant event for two years after it happened, for four years after it happened, for six years after it happened, in some cases 11 and 12 and 13 years after it happened.

"Sometimes we find out later that we had an incomplete understanding of the truth. This happens despite our best efforts. Sometimes the missing pieces are important, and sometimes they're not known until years later." Here Rumsfeld supports his case, "Our conclusions are not 'the truth'" by saying that our intelligence, upon which we based our conclusions, was incomplete.

So far we have:

"Ok, I'll answer your question. We read intel and draw conclusions. But conclusions are ideas, not reality. We have found that our conclusions are based on incomplete intel."

Back to his words.

Now what is the message there?

Rumsfeld will now try to tie together his evidence in support of his original statement.

The message is that there are no "knowns."

Pretty unambiguous.

There are thing we know that we know.

Which he immediately uses to contradict himself. This is "the first thing". It is also unambiguous, and fairly reasonable. Most people "know" some things.


There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know.

This is "the second thing". Also unambiguous, also fairly reasonable. Most people know of things that they don't know.

But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.

This is "the third thing". It is a little more abstract, and it sounds unusual, but it's not weird or wrong. It's a way of saying "ignorant", something we all share to some degree, something we're all familiar with. It's only slippery in that we are often unaware of our ignorance.

So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.

"We base our conclusions on what we're sure we know and what we're sure we don't know, but we don't know what we're missing."

Right. Just like everyone else in the whole world does, every day. Proceed with what you know and keep your eyes open. Duh.

It sounds like a riddle. It isn't a riddle. It is a very serious, important matter.


"You're confused, but I'm not and it's important, so believe me." This is his argument, his conclusion. "I said things were uncertain. You should believe me." WTF?!

There's another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist. And yet almost always, when we make our threat assessments, when we look at the world, we end up basing it on the first two pieces of that puzzle, rather than all three.

Rumsfeld says "We're unsure as to the incompleteness of our understanding of things." Now, how does that answer the question? It does not. He does not answer the question. But he sounds profound doing it, and that buys some time and space.

Yes, sir.

"Next!" Whatever.

not picking up on any personal knowledge here, just yammering