Thinking about how everyone made smugly made fun of Rumsfeld for saying "there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns", but that's actually hands-down the most intelligent thing anyone in the Bush administration ever said.

It is absolutely VITAL to understand that there is a difference between things you KNOW you don't know (I do not know when I'm going to die; I do not know how or why 'spooky action at a distance' occurs; I do not know the lyrics to Sweeney Todd; Etc) and things we DON'T KNOW…

…that we don't know! Like let's say there's a Thaxrian Biodisintegrity Fleet en route to Earth that will arrive in 7 months. I don't know how to kill a Thraxian, but I don't even KNOW I don't know that, because I don't even know what a Thaxrian fucking IS, or that they EXIST.

So when the Thraxians show up, we'll be fucked, because we don't even know enough to know what the gaps in our knowledge of Thraxians even ARE.

And there's FAR less esoteric examples of this all the time. It is, in fact, what causes the Dunning-Kruger effect, where people…

…with very limited, superficial understanding of a subject will esteem their expertise in it more highly than the actual expert. Because the amateur knows so little about the subject, they don't even have an understanding of how much there IS to know about it, and so often…

…overestimate the tiny fragment of their knowledge of the subject as ACTUALLY being the near totality. They know 5% of topic X, but that 5% doesn't include "knowing that 94% of it even exists", so he thinks he knows 5/6ths of the total subject. The EXPERT on the other hand…

… may have spent years studying so as to learn 59% of Subject X… but they definitely found out about the remaining 41% they DON'T yet understand. So THEY just see all the learning they still have left to do to ever truly master their field.

Anyway:

Rumsfeld was a fucking MONSTER. But that one thing he said that one time was spot-on. And only a fool ignores the risk of unknown unknowns.

OH OH OH

Unknown Unknowns are also a HUUUUUUGE part of why things like recognizing your cultural / experiential blindspots, listening to marginalized groups about their own lives and issues, hiring sensitivity readers, staying in your lane or approaching with humility, etc are…

…so important!!! Because if you're cis, for example, there will be aspects of trans lives, issues, political struggles, needs, anxieties, etc that you don't even KNOW you're not aware of, because they would simply never actually occur to you. Like… did you know trans people…

…who haven't had bottom surgery sometimes get nervous and scared about the way it sounds when we pee, and that it might out us? Probably not! (Unless you have lots of trans friends?) Cos why the fuck WOULD you know that, or even ever think about it!

A lot of the most embarrassing gaffs you see in writing other identities comes from this kind of thing: it just never occurred to the writer that it WAS something they might not understand or know, so they never thought to ask or research. "pre-op trans woman with flight powers…

…hovering above a crowd in a miniskirt without even wearing tights or leggings", "young Black girl with corn rows AND side buns", etc.