The 2002 Iraq War, when the United States argued that the Iraqi government had weapons of mass destruction and was preparing to go to war with it on the grounds of supporting terrorists.
On February 12 of the same year, Rumsfeld, then Secretary of Defense, was asked about the evidence and said:
"As far as we know, there are 'known knowns' and there are things we know we know; we also know there are 'known unknowns'. That is, there are things we now know we don't know. But , there are also 'unknown unknowns' - things we don't know we don't know."
The unknown unknown, what kind of state does it describe?
The three risks mentioned in this passage are:
Known (Known-Known): Knowing what risks may occur and having an accurate understanding of their likelihood and impact, e.g. a person is destined to die.
Known-unknown: It is clear what risks may occur, but the probability and severity of the risks are not understood. For example, in the rainy season, it is likely to rain the next day, but it is not certain when it will rain. how much.
Unknown-Unknown: Do not know what risks may occur, and therefore do not know the probability of occurrence and the severity of the impact, such as natural disasters such as earthquakes.
"Knowing is knowing, not knowing is not knowing." However, sometimes we don't know whether we know or don't know.
Another example that also brings us to mind is a black swan event.
Black swans were not observed by any Western civilization before the 17th century, and Europeans believed that swans were all white. But this Latest Mailing Database unshakable belief collapsed as people saw the first black swan in Australia, a black swan that implies unpredictable major rare events, unexpected but changing everything.
Former Wall Street trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb defines a black swan in three ways:
Black swan events are events that observers cannot predict.
Black swan events can have serious and widespread consequences.
After a black swan event, people rationalize the event as predictable (called hindsight bias).
Black swans exist in all fields, no matter financial markets, business, economy or personal life, they cannot escape its control.
Four hundred years ago, the English Renaissance philosopher Francis Bacon issued this warning: Beware of being bound by the threads of our own thoughts, but we always make the mistake of thinking that what happened in the past It's very likely to happen again, so it's inevitable to work from experience.
In the process of human social development, what has a major impact on our history and society is usually not what we know or can foresee.
Black swan events are not predictable from observed data, and predictions of the unknown are difficult to predict due to lack of awareness, so risk management methods become futile. Because in this world, even knowledge is useless because experts don't really know what they don't know.
Black swans are different from low-probability and high-consequence events because they cannot be predicted by probabilistic means.
When we usually say the unknown, we are actually aware of the existence of this unknown, even if we don’t know what it is or how deep it is.
For example: after 9/11, Americans were aware of the terrorist attack and the damage caused by the terrorist attack, but they did not know when and where the terrorist attack would happen. This is what we usually talk about as the known unknown. Before 9/11, people didn't know what a terrorist attack was at all. When people talked about issues that might cause harm to society, they didn't think of a terrorist attack at all. This was the unknown, that is, the unknown unknown.
Of course, black swan events and crises cannot be equated. Not all black swan events are crisis events , such as the rise of the Internet.
Not all crises are black swan events. Terrorist attacks occur almost every day around the world, but the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack was described as a black swan because of its unprecedented scale and unpredictability.
Our lives are full of examples of this:
People get married thinking they already know everything about each other, which is known known. But we're not sure and there's no reason to be sure what we're going to face together, it's the known unknown. Each specific marriage has infinite possibilities for men, women, related parties, and children. This is unknown and unknown.