Unknown unknowns (Patreon)

"Because we know other people only from the outside, we assume they can be known from the outside; we think we can understand people reasonably well based solely on their words and deeds. At the same time, because we know ourselves from the inside, we think we can only be known from the inside. Each of us lives, day in and day out, with an intricate internal reality: with the fluctuations of our moods, the complexity of our emotions, the ongoing committee meeting in our brain, the things we think but never say out loud. As a consequence, it’s easy to feel that no one can grasp our true nature without access to this rich and dynamic inner world. It’s as if we regard other people as psychological crystals, with everything important refracted to the visible surface, while regarding ourselves as psychological icebergs, with the majority of what matters submerged and invisible. We think we can know other people based on criteria we reject for ourselves."

- Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error (2010)

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"A list of all the things that the sea does is not what the sea is. Today, the sea has jewelled its surface, and silvered its fish under a band of beaten gold. Those who know it well will admit that they hardly know it at all. No-one has been to the very bottom. […] And myself? Observe me. There is something to be gained from my surface uses, and perhaps a little more from my lower depths, but my very bottom? That’s where I am alone, the observer and the observed."

- Jeanette Winterson, Art & Lies (1994)