The saying long predates Rumsfeld's 2002 usage: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/... | Hacker News

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		dredmorbius on June 3, 2020 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Never-before-seen “black nitrogen” plugs puzzle in... The saying long predates Rumsfeld's 2002 usage: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns I'd first encountered the idea of "unknown unknowns", or unk-unk, in a 1982 book, Forced Options, p. 10: https://archive.org/details/forcedoptionssoc0000shin_c8x7/pa... The notion dates at least as far back as 1955.

no-s on June 4, 2020 [–]

I'm pretty sure Rumsfeld was paraphrasing J.B.S Haldane from a ca. 1927 publication, or Eddington's paraphrase of Haldane's observation:

"The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

Rumsfeld never claimed it to be original with him.

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