No One Knows What the F*** They're Doing (or "The 3 Types of Knowledge") | Hacker News Reader

No One Knows What the F*** They're Doing (or "The 3 Types of Knowledge")

jangosteve.com

215 pointsJangoSteve79 comments

Sometimes, in conversations with others, I hear them say with complete confidence stuff that I know is total crap. It's like I just can't get over how absolutely wrong they are and yet how absolutely right they believe they are.

So I start wondering how many times I do exactly the same thing. I mean, how can I know what I don't know? How much is there? How do I even know if something I really believe is true or not?

It's hard to think that everything I believe about the world might be completely untrue. In illusion. An ... imagination.

Sometimes I am faced with a situation where if I convince the other person of what I believe, then I also believe that person will be better off. For example, if a car is coming and a child is entering a road, Instinctively, we think to call out to the child or try to stop the child or yell at the car to stop the car, but what if the underlying belief: That the child is better off not being hit. Is false?

What if the child may be better off for being hit. Perhaps it makes the child stronger later in life or through her recovery, she meets the man of her dreams and they live happily ever after?

We don't know. I don't know. How can I know what to do?

You can't argue against someone's reality. However, you can get them to believe in your reality.

For example, what is easier - convince you a) that the Martians are attacking or b) that I believe the Martians are attacking?

a) Convince the girl that she is interesting and sexy or b) convince her that you believe that she is interesting and sexy

b, and if they think they're not, neither. (based on personal experience) The second 'b' tends to come after some acceptance of the second 'a'.

This happens to me quite often but if I think a bit about it, I'm not 100% sure either why they're completely wrong.

If you want to get into the conversation (not recommended as it gets ugly quite often when people are completely sure of something * caugh...republicans... caugh*) it's actually better to argue on why they're wrong to be COMPLETELY sure rather than argue the opposite point you might think is right.

They will have far less argument to explain why their point is completely right than to show that yours isn't right either.

All of the best republicans I have known are their own biggest critics. All of the best democrats I've know have been as well.

The problem is that its the most cock-sure on either side that get into the intractable arguments with each other, or worse, rush into action so sure that they are correct that they never even consider the unintended consequences.

Sadly, it also makes them much more likely to be elected.

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. - Douglas Adams

I haven't read the article, yet, but in response to your comment, I am reminded of how, often, people are encouraged to be and rewarded for being "certain". AKA "assertive".

Frequently, when I qualify the knowledge I'm sharing with comments about my level of certainty in it and/or its sources, I'm criticized for being some combination of "too verbose", "uncertain", "confusing" (even though, when people actually pay attention to me, they usually say afterward that they have a much better understanding than they did before), etc.

The world is complex, sometimes. But there's a lot of pressure to ignore that complexity.

And then people wonder why things go to hell in a hand basket. And EVEN THEN, all too often they don't really want to know. They just want to know who to blame, and what pre-packaged "solution" to implement.

the pressure is not to ignore but to reduce that complexity. People who ask you questions expect that from you, the provider of information. They expect you to reduce that complexity, and if you are not doing your job, meaning you give them too much information, they will be unhappy. Its not that they don't want to know, but why do they need you if you cannot reduce the complexity for them, i guess this is what most people are getting paid for - for reducing complexity for other people. Someone who have read C. Shannon may add something about entropy etc, but i know i don't know information theory, even though i suspect it is relevant to what i just said

I've had clients ask me a question and say, "I don't want to know how, just if it is possible?" and I suppose because I think they think it is really hard, I just tell them how to do it, it's like 2 clicks.

But then half an hour later they ask me the same question the same way and so I just say, 'Yes.' and start answering like that, yes, no, yes, no, yes, yes... and they tend to like that better.

There are times when someone else is making e.g. the design decisions, the schedule decisions, etc. Let's take schedule: They want to know when I'll be done with something. But I have 5, 8, however many dependencies, half of whom are not responding to my queries for information and several of whom are outside of my team and immediate reporting structure.

What do I need? Responses so that I can determine my own schedule. What do I get? "Just tell me when you'll be done."

Well, Mr/Ms project manager, what do you really need to be doing? Getting answers from the dependencies who are refusing to answer me. But that's difficult and frustrating and time consuming. So you just lean on me, because I'm on your team and at hand.

More frustrating than schedules are specifications. I'll do some QA work. In order to have some idea of the effort, I need to know the specifications. But those are still in (major) flux (despite being 2/3 of the way through the budgeted schedule). I attempt to explain this. I start describing detail because the person I'm talking to has no idea of the scope of impact this lack of definition creates, or perhaps even that there is still a lack of definition and what that is. But they just want a date, and/or a number of hours.

I'm delving into detail because they haven't done their job. But they don't want to understand the impact of their lapse. They just want "the solution".

Not that I don't make mistakes, myself, and sometimes fail to deliver. But I try not to blow people off because they are finding what they are tackling to be complex.

I guess my comment has ended up being very work focused. Similar things happen in personal life. I started to describe an example, but I think I've written enough.

Right or wrong, NOT acting is often a far worse sin. Do you live your life in hesitation, questioning your every move? The silver lining is that everyone is as equally wrong as you. The world rewards those who cause motion, who act. Energy excites.

It is also interesting to consider that you might be wrong about how wrong somebody is. What if you are both right, that you have not considered their issue in a context they perceive?

We perfectionists strive to be right and worry too much about being wrong. How complicated we make our lives.

> The world rewards those who cause motion, who act.

I hate to bring Godwin into this, but Hitler acted/caused motion, so did Stalin, so do a lot of bad people. Did the world really reward them?

Have you had a noticeable fraction of their fame, wealth or power?

Does the world reward suicide? That's an act. :P

Isn't that the decision to stop acting for the rest of time?

They left enough of a mark with their motion that you readily brought up names and thought of actions. Fame is enough reward for some people, as is power and money. I did not exclude the possibility of punishments.

The point is that, right or wrong, they made decisions. They lived. How many of us can say that we took a chance and really felt alive with that big decision? Maybe it is about starting a war with your neighboring country; maybe it is as thrilling as asking your sweetheart to marry you. The act of making the decision breathes life into you. And sure, maybe it is the wrong thing to do, but how do you measure that in good time before making your decision?

The act of making the decision is what separates leaders and followers.

Um. This post is more than a little scary. The philosophy of "act, don't think" is equally as dangerous as "think, but don't act."

Edit: A better way to put it. "Think, but don't act" can only destroy your life. "Act, but don't think" can destroy everyone's.

The act of making the decision without care of consequence is what separates psychopaths and sociopaths from people.

Um... no, being right actually matters. Leaders that say, get half their men killed in a phyrric march to Russia failed, no matter how they are remembered. They did wrong. It isn't enough. Being the Best or Nothing is an attitude that will end in tears. It's only to be the best-- the most considered and thought out-- that one can be. Anyone can hare off into idiocy... that doesn't take bravery, or gumption, or if it does, it takes tools that could be used well and uses them for ill. All it takes is not knowing enough to be concerned, and thus not knowing enough to make informed decisions about what one's going into.

Action is like fire-- it's a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.

We always operate with imperfect knowledge. So we must make decisions based on probable outcomes. Is the child more likely to be better off if not hit by the car? Since the chance of death is high, then yes.

You also have to factor out things that appear on both sides of the equation. Any of the possible positive things you have prevented that also could happen had you intervened are irrelevant to the decision.

We never have perfect knowledge, but we must act anyway. The alternative is to be frozen and do nothing, ever.

It's not a binary system. The point is that it's better to make a decision knowing that your knowledge is imperfect and allowing for that than to do so thinking that your plan is perfect and that nothing could possibly go wrong.

"So I start wondering how many times I do exactly the same thing."

Not so many times. People who fall into your description do know they are BSing, what they don't know is some people actually know they are doing so. I have seen a few of these who actually know their words are total crap, know that everyone doubts them, put keep going with a straight face. They are also the kind that usually get promotions and pay raises.

Do me a favour, save the child if it's in your power and think about all the possible parallel universe outcomes over a nice glass of chablis later.

Reminds me of the quote from Rumsfeld.

Reformatted by http://www.slate.com/id/2081042/

  The Unknown

  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.

It always bugged me how Rumsfeld was slagged for that statement. I found it a very clear explanation of the difficulty in assessing a chaotic environment.

Agreed. Much like the "series of tubes" comment from Stevens -- that's a perfectly good analogy, and one that technically-inclined people use all the time in some variant like "fat pipes". He said so much other ridiculous stuff that I can't understand why people picked on the one thing that almost made sense.

No, Stevens was mocked because he rambled like Grandpa Simpson about how staffers sent him "an Internet" that took 5 days to reach him because the tubes were clogged. "Series of tubes" is merely the most memorable quote from that bizarre stream of consciousness.

And, he was the guy in charge of regulating the Internet in the Senate.

Indeed, even though a "series of tubes" is a relevant analogy, it's still plenty obvious that Senator Stevens is clueless with regard to the Internet.

Cool, I had not heard that before, but that's too close for coincidence. I wonder now if maybe someone mentioned that quote to me in the past and it got lodged in my subconscious. Or maybe we independently came to the same conclusions... unlikely but it's happened many times before.

At any rate, I've added this reference to the article. Thank you very much for this.

Both Rumsfeld (and the article) missed the 4th type of knowledge: "unknown knowns." That is, things you know, but you don't realize you know yet. (Either you know it subconsciously, have knowledge from another domain you don't yet realize is appropriate to the job at hand, or you learned it before, forgot it, and only need a small reminder or mental jog to regain it.)

Don't forget the 5th type, "incorrect known knowns" - things you think you know that are wrong. For example, you could know there's a dictator somewhere, he's got a lot of WMDs and his country's in a bad way, and you have a foolproof plan to quickly go in and fix the place up without much hassle.

Think about what you just said. "Unknown knowns" (emphasis added). Therefore, they are knowns, and would fit into the "Shit you know" category.

Personally, all I could think about after reading this article was the song Colors of the Wind from Pocahontas:

    You think I'm an ignorant savage
    And you've been so many places
    I guess it must be so
    But still I cannot see
    If the savage one is me
    How can there be so much that you don't know
    You don't know 

    ...

    But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger
    You'll learn things you never knew you never knew

That seems to pretty precisely describe the two groups: Pocahontas being in the nurse's position, unsure of her own stance, while the English men squarely fit into the egotistical group.

Gave you a point for quoting a song from a Disney animated film on HN while remaining relevant.

I'll come right out and say it: Most of the pleasure in my work comes from agreeing to do something I know I don't know, and then figuring it out.

Now, what disconcerts me is that, given the same situation, if I say "sure, I can do that" people believe me, but if I say "I don't know how to do it, but I can figure out" others hesitate. I think this has to do with most people wanting you to know a lot, instead of wanting you to know a lot of what you don't know. I'm a firm believer that the latter is far more useful.

"Fake it 'til you make it."

If you say you can do it, people believe you. Once you have done a bunch of stuff and people know you can do it, you can tell them you'll figure it out, and they'll believe you.

Recognizing that difference in how people react is what puts you into the first category of confident people in the article.

the experience of his girlfriend struck a chord with me. I used to be confused why no one else was asking questions in class. it took getting to the higher levels of hard science education before I realized: everyone else had just been learning by rote. it's easy to just show up, memorize, and pass the test. it came back to bite them in the ass later when they reached the washout phase of math, physics, and chemistry. classes suddenly switched "know XYZ" to thinking critically about why XYZ was happening and what that implied about the physical system we were working on.

And that is why people who do well in hard sciences deserve more pay than people who (are otherwise equal and) don't.

And they usually get it.

You're entitled to your own opinion, not to your own facts. (Some TED speaker)

What are facts if not just opinions we agree on?

Theoretically, they can also be statements that are testable in the future.

Ex: At 25C and 1atm, oxygen is a gas, not a liquid or solid. No matter how many times you test that, it will always be true; hence, it is a fact.

Of course, if you ask enough questions (How do you know it is 25C? Why are you confident that instrument is accurate? How do you establish the temperature scale in question?) the person claiming it is a fact will eventually get confused (it is was something they didn't realize they didn't know), send you off to ask someone else (if it was something they know they didn't know), or bored (if it was something they know but they are tired of answering your questions) and you will be free to think the fact wasn't really a fact after all.

Link?

Missing: shit you don't know you know.

And as you get older, shit you know you know, but can't remember.

Yeah, I kind of figured that would just fall into the "shit you know you don't know" category, as in "shit you know you don't know anymore" :-)

For me, the most worrying thing about working in technology has been how as I keep working, I learn more and more about technology. And it gets easier to forget how large that 'shit you don't know that you don't know' category is, compared to when I was a snot-nosed high schooler and painfully aware that I didn't know pretty much anything...

I'm still not sure how to go about maintaining that perspective. It would be nice if there was a reliable technique one could apply but I suspect it requires frequent 'oh, I just f--ked up' gut checks, like taking down a production website. Maybe the mark of a truly brilliant person is that they're able to maintain that perspective better than others?

One way I keep this perspective is to observe something random around me and think as deeply as I can as to how that thing came to be. Random example off the top of my head:

Have you ever noticed that when you have the intermittant windshield wipers on in your car, you can change the speed of the wipers to be either faster or slower. When you lower the speed, it re-starts the wiper interval with the swipe at the end of the interval, like this ....|....|....|

But when you quicken the speed, it re-starts the interval with the swipe at the beginning, like this |....|....|....

Some engineer actually realized that when you quicken the speed of the wipers, it's probably because you have an already built-up amount of water on your windshield and need a swipe right away. And when you lower the speed, it's probably because you're getting streaking.

This is pretty ingenious I think. Yet, how often do you appreciate how much thought and effort went into this otherwise unnoticeable feature of your everyday (rainy) life?

That's how I try to keep this perspective.

There is a meta-problem here: we can't really know how big that red slice of the pie - the "don't know what you don't know" slice - really is. I think he captured the essence of the learning process correctly though, the "know what you don't know" slice just keeps getting bigger as you get older, thus the oft-cited expression, "the older you get, the less you know".

You can make some good back of the envelope attempts at answering it. For example, you can look at how often the big red slice forcibly intrudes on your life to your detriment, and compare that to how often it happens to other humans with similar risk-taking habits to you. The more often, the bigger your personal red slice is.

But what about the example with the egotist? The fact that so many people can be so blatantly oblivious to their "unknown unknowns" makes me think I must have some of them too. I can be cautious and look out for them, which should certainly help me reduce them, but these things are almost by definition the things that you don't notice.

That would just tell you the size of your red slice compared to other people, and you would be discriminating in favor of things that are relevant to your life. I true perspective of how much you don't know you don't know would have to take into account the possible sum total of all knowledge; good luck with that.

Talking about shit don't know you don't know without referencing Rumsfeld's "The Unknown" almost feels like plagiarism.

You can't plagiarize what you don't know you don't know about...

See my other comment in this thread. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1123332

edit It is now referenced in the article.

"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 know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."—Donald Rumsfeld

Žižek's fourth type of knowledge: "What he forgot to add was the crucial fourth term: the 'unknown knowns', things we don't know that we know, which is precisely the Freudian unconscious, the 'knowledge which doesn't know itself', as Lacan used to say."

Confucius said it well: "To know what you do not know is the best."

What a crock. The things we know amount to nothing compared to the things we don't, and education doesn't even move the needle on that dial. So what? What matters is what you need to know to accomplish some goal vs. what you know right now, and that's much more tractable. Focusing on the (incorrect) idea that no one else knows anything either so you're just fine the way you are is pabulum designed to boost self-esteem at the expense of actually learning something.

I think you missed the point in the last section. I think a lot of people hesitate to seek out the answers for shame that they do not already know the answers. I'm not saying to be comfortable in your ignorance. I'm saying, don't be ashamed to ask questions.

And yes, as the rest of the article states, the third category is incredibly (even inconceivably large). In case I actually need to say it, those pie charts are for illustrative purposes only, i.e. not drawn to scale.

I'm reminded of a saying I heard once:

Those that know and know that they know are wise, follow them. Those that know and know not that they know are asleep, wake them. Those that know not and know that they know not are students , teach them. Those that know not and know not that they know not are fools, shun them.

As the article notes, we're all a little of each, rather than one of the above, but for me, it captures it nicely.

I find it helpful to think of these three categories as answers, questions, and neither. Being able to articulate your lack of knowledge as a question turns out to be a very powerful way to convert the last category into the first. Questions are important, according to Douglas Adams ("42") and Picasso ("computers are useless, they can only give you answers").

I also think of it as a doorway. Some doors are open to you; some are closed. And some doorways you haven't noticed are there. It's fun to notice a doorway - behind a wardrobe; plastered over - for the first time when you return to a place you've visited many times.

But, for me, it's also humbling each time I realize there's more to it. It feels unpleasant at first (I guess that's my ego imagining I know everything), but then it's freeing and reassuring. Nature's imagination is greater than my imagination.

edit Unfortunately, I feel as though I know all the principles, and it's just uninteresting details - data, information - that I lack. I hope this is wrong, but I can't imagine how...

I like that.. questions, answers and everything else.

Though I think questions aren't there to give you answers, they only throw up more questions.. but I reckon they give you directions. When those questionable directions start to converge you know you are onto something you don't know. When those questions converge like an asymptote..ad infinitum, that's what we call answers.

Doubt scares people, they just want to know where the line ends. But in the real world the only way find such an direction is trial and error.. i think.

I like to think "hackers" (or those with engineering knowledge) have a small "shit we don't know" area. If I am to, say, put up a wall where there was once a door my first reaction would be, "Oh, I need to look this up." I would find it via some search engine, read about it, and then find the specs for a wall. Find that I need drywall, footers, etc., see if there are any special circumstances that apply. Is there shit I don't know? Possibly, but I think "we" do research twice and action once.

Edit: Or who knows, maybe I don't know that we don't know when enough research is enough.

This reminds me of what Socrates said: "all I know is that I know nothing."

In the past few months I had the opportunity to meet some very accomplished, respected people. It made me simultaneously depressed and amazed. Depressed how limited human beings actually are - the smartest people in the world actually aren't that different from you or I. Amazed how much we were able to accomplish as a race in a relatively short time span, despite how incredibly limited we are.

this one is better

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Classical-Definition-of-Kn...

What's the deal with the yellow circle?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory

Did you read the book? If so, would you recommend it?

I read the book and recommend it.

Yes, its abit long but worth it.

Developing awareness to the unknown in your daily life requires practice, the book with its anecdotes helps in that.

I would add 2 more to that pie chart. 'sht you don't want to know' and 'sht you wish you didn't find out'.

and u dont know wtf u r writing seriously

Worth mentioning:

http://mindview.net/WebLog/log-0023

and more on that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

the report itself (PDF): http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf

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