Knowable unknown
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Knowable unknown
/ˈnəʊəbᵊl ʌnˈnəʊn/ (also “constructive known”) (n.)
Hailing not from Donald Rumsfeld’s famous taxonomy but the JC’s private one, a “knowable unknown” is something you don’t know, and can’t know, but believe you can as good as know, just as long as you have enough data, clever enough algorithms and a suitable array of industrial-grade reality distortion fields and bullshit detector defeat devices installed around you.
Such as that “options will behave as predicted by the Black-Scholes option pricing model”.
The problem with knowable unknowns is that they are irritatingly time-bound, and tend to be lazily knowable at all the times where you don’t really need to know them, but then suddenly impenetrably unknowable just when your pants are down, life is standing behind you with a red hot poker and it would be really super convenient if, just for one goddam moment, you could know them right now.
Victims of expiring knowable unknowns include Long-Term Capital Management in 1998, the entire financial services industry in 2008, and those people who mistook Sam Bankman Fried for some kind of genius.