Taxonomy of Ignorance
At the KMPro meeting last week, someone semi-joked about the four levels of ignorance, which are related to the Levels of Competence. So, I attempted to dig up some reference to the levels of ignorance.
Unsuccessful, but I found a 1999 paper, Modelling Ignorance Levels in Knowledge-Based Decision Support (pdf) from Ema Denby & John Gammack, School of Information Technology, Murdoch University, Australia. They create a Taxonomy of Ignorance, based on previous work by Holtzman. The purpose is to increase awareness of both knowledge and ignorance that help shape decision processes.
Here is the taxonomy from the paper:
| Ignorance Level | Description | Knowledge Required |
|---|---|---|
| Combinatorial | Computational task too difficult, e.g. problem with 10 40 variables. | Mathematics model available; use of supercomputers. |
| Watsonian | Cannot make the connection from all the clues; solution method incomplete. | Method for determining the important facts from the unimportant ones, and drawing the right conclusion. |
| Gordian | King Gordius tied a knot for the future king of Asia to untie. Alexander the Great was able to "untie it" by cutting the knot with his sword, thus solving the problem in an unusual way. | Lateral thinking; are there "rules" to be broken? |
| Ptolemaic | Attributed to the Greek mathematician and astronomer, Ptolemy, whose model of the universe centered around a stationary earth. | Evidence and observation of reality. |
| Magical | "No one knows how it works, but everyone knows that it works", e.g. the use of Aspirin and other similar drugs. | Trial and error. |
| Dark | No model is available but one is aware of the issues, e.g. "What is Life?", "Consciousness", etc. | Future of Science |
| Fundamental | Unaware of issue. (Ignorance is bliss!) |
6 Comment(s)
Does this Taxonomy of Ignorance (via Seb's Open Research and Jack Vinsom) help with Enemies of Learning?... Read More
Excellent! This is exactly what I was looking for originally.
Jack Vinson (a newly blogging chemical engineer who I found thanks to Denham's wonderful KmBlogger page ) has dug up an interesting Taxonomy of Ignorance . Read More
www.jimboren.com Boren is the editor of The Journal of Applied Ignorance. Will forward information on his article, "A Philosophy of Ignorance" --- and "Osteocranial Densities in the Diagnostic Study of Political Leaders" He writes: "The purpose of ignorance is to liberate the minds of people from the restraining chains of knowledge."
THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY ECONOMICS
and can be most easily found at: http://www.aucegypt.edu/faculty/thompson/herbtea/articles/jie2.html
Herb Thompson (1997) "Ignorance and Ideological Hegemony: A Critique of Neoclassical Economics", Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, 8(4): 291-305.
All the things of which people are aware they do not know (the most recognised form of ignorance);
All the things people think they know but do not (ignorance based on error);
All the things of which people are not aware that, in fact, they do know (intuition);
All the things people are not supposed to know but could find helpful (taboo);
All the things too painful to know (psychological suppression of memory); and
All the things, of which people are not aware that they do not know (ignorance-squared).
Philip G. Armour wrote a piece on the five levels of ignorance in the October 2000 Communications of the ACM (I'd post a link, but the only URL I have is specific to the Florida Tech domain -- go to http://www.acm.org/dl and you can browse to it or search to find the link. Non-free digital library registration required, if you don't have corporate or university access to the digital library).
The following is drawn from his article.
His orders are:
0th Level of Ignorance -- Lack of Ignorance (I know something and can demonstrably prove it)
1st Level of Ignorance -- Lack of Knowledge (I don't know something, but I know that I don't know it)
2nd Level of Ignorance -- Lack of Awareness (I don't know something, and I don't know that I don't know it)
3rd Level of Ignorance -- Lack of process (I don't know something, I don't know that I don't know it, and I don't know how to find out that I don't know it)
4th Level of Ignorance -- Meta Ignorance (I don't know that there are these levels of ignorance)
It would be interesting to combine this with the levels you have above....