Donald Rumsfeld

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United States Secretary of Defense Donald Henry Rumsfeld, most famous in these pages for Rumsfeld’s taxonomy of knowns and unknowns.

There are five types of known.

The Rumsfeld three:

• Known knowns: Things you do know you know;
• Known unknowns: Things you do know you don’t know;
• Unknown unknowns: Things you don’t know you don’t know;

And the Jolly Contrarian three:

• Unknown knowns: Things you don’t know you do know.
• Not officially known: Things you know but the general public can’t prove.
  
• Knowable unknowns: Things you don’t know, but think you do know, for the time being, because computers.

See also

• Unknowns