There are 4 distinct ways to categorise your own knowledge. Known knowns, Known unknowns, Unknown knowns, and Unknown unknowns.

Known knowns

You know what you know. This is the realm of professionalism. A specific skill set, theories, and epithets you can recite in your sleep. Everybody is a master of at least something. Excellent at one, two, three, four, fifty things. Well done! Within your resume of known knowns can you begin to identify your place in this world, how you can competently assist others. However, the realm of known knowns is dangerous, as it can lead one to disregard all that one does not know — as irrelevant. That's quite alright anyway, someone else can do it. The more masterful you become at what you know, the more money you can make to access the fruits of the knowledge that you don't have. At the end of the day, no one can know everything.

Peak of Mount Stupid — Dunning and Kruger's research showed that people who scored in the bottom 25% thought they were in the top 25%. But here's the key—the peak isn't just where clueless people sit. It's also where beginners with a few wins live, and where experts in one thing assume they're experts in everything. Your known knowns create a closed loop: your knowledge feels complete because you don't know enough to see the gaps. It's circular—you'd need to know more to realise you don't know more.

Known unknowns

Just outside the reach of your current skill set. You can see it on the horizon, the things you don't yet know, but you could know if you tried. When one enters a flow state, they sit within the realm of their known knowns and reach into the known unknowns for new skills, therefore growing as a person. It's an amazing place, you didn't know it before, and now you do. Well done! Your known knowns have expanded a bit.

Valley of Despair — The valley hits when your awareness catches up with reality. You've learned just enough to see how much you haven't learned. It's a double curse—you're bad at something, and you finally know it. Worse, the more you learn, the more questions appear. Every answer spawns ten new problems. But research shows this is actually progress—experts aren't confident because they know everything, they're appropriately cautious because they've been through this valley. The descent isn't failure. It's the first time you're seeing clearly.

Unknown knowns

You just know. You don't know how. Call it what you want, prescience, intuition, de ja vu. You know what's going to happen. And you know how it's going to happen. And you're doing it. And you know why you're doing it. You just don't know how you're doing it. It's peculiar, because it feels more like you remembered, than you learned. Well done?

Slope of Enlightenment — This is your brain getting efficient. When you first learn something, you think through every step consciously. But as you practice, that knowledge moves into autopilot. Brain scans show the activity literally shifting from the thinking parts of your brain to the automatic parts. Expert chess players don't analyse positions—they just see them, instantly, from pattern recognition built over thousands of games. This is why experts sometimes can't explain what they know—it's no longer stored as words or steps. It's been compressed into instinct. You're climbing because you're finally good enough to realise how much better you could still get.

Unknown unknowns

This moment unexplored. And this moment unexplored. And this moment unexplored. And this moment unexplored. And this moment unexplored. But the sun will rise tomorrow, won't it? And this moment unexplored. And this moment unexplored. And yet, you have faith and confidence, and resilience, and drive, and power, and love, and you put one foot in front of the other in this moment unexplored. And this moment unexplored. Well done.

The Endless Horizon — The Dunning-Kruger graph usually ends with a flat line—stable expertise. But that's a lie. Studies of actual masters (chess champions, surgeons, concert musicians) show something different: sophisticated uncertainty characterises the best people. They don't know less—they know how much they don't know. The unknown unknowns don't shrink as you get better. They grow. Every answer reveals deeper complexity that beginners can't even see exists.

The graph ends here because you can't measure what you can't perceive. True mastery isn't reaching the end—it's recognising there is no end. You act anyway. Not because you know enough. Because you've made peace with never knowing enough. The science stops. You keep walking.

Oct. 2, 2025, 6:24 p.m.

Written bY CYril