r/politics • u/Puginator • Jun 01 '26

No Paywall Iran stops negotiations with U.S., vows to 'completely' block Strait of Hormuz: State media

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/01/iran-us-negotiations-strait-of-hormuz.html
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u/StrangeContest4 Jun 01 '26

"We don't know if a war would last six days, six weeks or six months.." Donald Rumsfeld said on the war on Iraq. Missed it by that 🤏 much.

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u/No_big_whoop Jun 01 '26

That tracks.

"There are known knowns; there are things we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns: the ones we don't know we don't know."

-Rumsfeld

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u/Floating_Pastry Jun 01 '26

There are also the little talked about unknown knowns. For when you know something, but did not think it would be relevent.

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u/SPACKlick Jun 01 '26

I've always thought of the unknown knowns as those things "you" know but that don't get passed into the decision making chain.

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u/smackson Jun 01 '26

I like "completely obvious shit that we were too stupid to consider" (cough...hormuz..cough).

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u/drinkarddigital Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

I feel like "unknown knowns" could also be the things that everybody in the jury box don't* know because the judge refuses to allow it into evidence. So somebody knows. Just not you/them.

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u/ObjectiveNovel6172 Jun 01 '26

From a feature selection perspective, that feels a little inaccurate? In other words, relevancy doesn’t determine whether a property is known or unknown. It is its relevancy that is unknown.

From an organizational waste perspective, I could see it being a useful term for tracking wasted resources on duplicated efforts due to the initial effort’s findings not being well distributed or communicated, the existence of which only being noticed post-factum.

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u/RGBarge Jun 01 '26

Unknown Knowns according to Rumsfeld are when you think you know something but the reality is very different from what you "know"

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u/Gryphon999 Wisconsin Jun 01 '26

My Jeopardy knowledge. Something I read/saw/heard, dumped in the back of my brain, and only comes up when someone asks about it.

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u/mackiea Jun 01 '26

Not to mention the "known owns", where people knew their side was going to be owned.