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Film-maker Errol Morris asks whether Donald Rumsfeld's infamous quote was a sign of his intelligence, or of his ignorance and talks to psychologist David Dunning, co-author of the 1999 paper 'Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties of Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-assessments'.

<em>'Is an “unknown unknown” beyond anything I can imagine?  Or am I confusing the “unknown unknowns” with the “unknowable unknowns?”  Are we constituted in such a way that there are things we cannot know?  Perhaps because we cannot even frame the questions we need to ask?'</em>

Many of the issues raised here can be applied directly to our studies of the scientific and epistemological fringes, even to military and intelligence secrets - how can you come up with an answer when you don't even know what the question is?

Read the piece over at the <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the-anosognosics-dilemma-1/" target="_blank">New York Times</a>