You know what you know, don’t you?

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 now know we don’t know.

But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know.

For me this is a great quote, just a shame it was said by Donald Rumsfeld.

It describes a key ability in making decisions. If I asked you what is the capital city of Italy, you would probably know that it is Rome and be confident that you are right. On the other hand if I asked you for the capital city of Latvia – perhaps you won’t have a clue. And know that you don’t. This is known as discrimination. The ability to discriminate between what you know and what you don’t.

This has day to day implications. If you are going somewhere and know that you don’t know the way, then you’ll get out the satnav. Otherwise you’re going to get lost.

Everyday we can be faced with decisions on whether to go this way or that; do this thing or not. We will make better decisions if we know when to just go ahead and when to seek more information. When we are sure we know and when we are not so sure.