Things I Know I Know

Exactly.

Okay, not exactly. It does make sense. It’s just kind of ...twisty. And maybe, I don’t know, uncomfortable, too.

So, what does it mean?

The biggest and the most dangerous category by far is the one that contains things that you don’t even know you don’t know. You can’t discuss them. You can’t ask questions about them. You can’t develop a plan for gaining knowledge with a comprehensive set of classes, outside reading and helpful discussion because you Don’t Know these things are out there. You don’t know these things even Exist. You don’t know. And if you don’t know, you can’t take any of these things into account when you make decisions, you can’t adjust your world view. These things are simply missing, like black holes in the overall picture of life. I can’t give you examples of things that I don’t know that I don’t know because I Don’t Know Them.

The second pretty big category is the one that contains things you know you don’t know. This one’s easier to define and not as frustrating. I know I don’t know Japanese or Russian (though I once learned the alphabet from a book) or how to play contract bridge (though my mother does which is why I know much more about what I don’t know about contract bridge than I ever used to). What I know that makes this category different from the category of Things I don’t know I don’t know is that I know this stuff exists. And I don’t know anything about it. I know that somewhere there is information about building nuclear weapons and operating on brain tumors and installing fiber optics cable through an existing parking lot. And because I know, I could, if I needed to for some reason, learn this stuff. Which I can’t do for the set of things I don’t know that I don’t know.

Then there’s the (relatively) smaller category of things you don’t know you know. Some of these things hop back and forth between the category of things you don’t know you know to the category of things you know you know when, for instance, something happens to dredge up that particular bit of information (like remembering all the words to the Gilligan’s Island theme song whenever I hear the first five notes of the tune) or when someone points out something that they see in me but that I’ve never particularly noticed, like "Do you know you always interrupt me when I’m talking to you?" (Note: I don’t actually do this, it’s just an example. At least, if I do do it, it’s not one of the things I know).

Finally, there’s the set of things you know that you know. You hope that this is a constantly changing set of things. And not because things you used to know are dropping out of this category into things you used to know but have forgotten, a subset of things you don’t know you don’t know (or, alternatively, a subset of the set of things you don’t know you know if they’re things you would remember if someone just reminded you).

There’s a subset--things I think I know--that fits and doesn’t fit because a lot of the things you think you know are opinion, which you know (as in I know what my opinions are right now). But opinion is based on a combination of values and experience and facts and can only be formed by things you know, influenced by things you know you don’t know and things you don’t know you know and changed by things you find out later, but right now are in the category of things you don’t know you don’t know.

Whew.

Everything you learn, everyday, gets moved from one of the other categories into Things you know you know. Everyone’s set of things is unique too. And one of the ways we contribute to the world is passing on the things we know we know to other people.

That’s what this blog is.

Me, talking about things I know I know and, inevitably, things I think I know.

...though in the way of all things I could be wrong.