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More subdivisions of the 5OI. With Second Order Ignorance, rather than parsing knowledge, we look at intention.
Second Order Ignorance (2OI)
Recall that 2OI is not knowing what we don't know. There is an event horizon effect that pertains here. We can all honestly and happily state that there are a lot of things we don't know. As long as we back up the context ladder sufficiently far we can land on a topic where we do know we don't know. I could state: "there are a lot of things I don't know about science..." Here, I have landed on (a label of) something I do know I don't know (1OI) and that label is "science". But it is quite a long way from obtaining any useful knowledge within this domain. I could pare it down by stating "...there are a lot of things I don't know about nuclear science..." And I've narrowed the context somewhat. But it is still some way from being useful in finding out exactly what it is I am unaware of.
We all suffer from 2OI about many things. And, the nature of 2OI being what it is, we don't know what they are. Whenever we zero in on something we are/were unaware that we didn't know we transition into 1OI.
But what if we don't want our ignorance to be exposed?
Second Order Ignorance Prime (2OIa): I have 2OIa when I know I don't know I don't know something,...
...BUT I plan/expect/hope to realize this when I am sufficiently exposed to my ignorance,...
...AND I am intentionally looking to obtain that exposure
2OI can be rather humbling. It tells us we are not as smart or as knowledgeable as we thought we were. Most adults do not like this sensation. Some people cannot take the ego-hit and flee from it.
Second Order Ignorance Secondary (2OIb): I have 2OIb when I know I don't know I don't know something,...
...BUT I plan/expect/hope to realize this when I am sufficiently exposed to my ignorance,...
...BUT I am not seeking out that exposure.
I called this "non-culpable lack of awareness". In this state, I will admit I don't know something and, presumably, will seek to acquire that knowledge if I happen to stumble upon it. Perhaps if my nose is rubbed in it, I might grudgingly own my lack of awareness.
Second Order Ignorance Tertiary (2OIc): I have 2OIc when I know I don't know I don't know something,...
...BUT I will ignore it if I am exposed to my ignorance,...
...AND I will actively work to avoid being exposed to that ignorance.
SOFTWARE TESTING
Since this is a topic about which I have some experience, I will use this to illustrate these levels of 2OI:
As previously asserted, software testing has two functions:
Prove that the knowledge we have inserted into the program is "correct"--the program does what it is supposed to do.
"Prove" that any "incorrect" knowledge hasn't been "accidentally" inserted into the program--the program does not do things it is not supposed to do.
These correspond to 0OI (the "provable" part of knowledge) and 2OI (is there anything about the program we don't know we don't know?)
As also noted earlier, we should never test for 1OI--if we know there's something in a program that doesn't work correctly, we should first fix it and then run a 0OI test to prove we've fixed it.
The ideal testing environment to find software errors is having a 2OIa mindset: we acknowledge there are almost certainly things we don't know about the system under test and we do our very best to find what they are (which is, of course, using a 3OI process). When we find these bugs, we then work through a careful analysis to first render our 2OI into 1OI and then turn our 1OI into 0OI. We first identify (in detail) the question (why did it go wrong?) and then determine the answer to the question (how can we fix it?). These correspond to the classic phases of find a bug, fix a bug.
FOOTNOTES
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