Mining my own personal cognitive landscape i find that if i have a theory about something, i can remain somewhat uncommitted and skeptical of it as long as i don’t start layering conclusions and more theories on top. Once i start doing that, however, i find that my mind habituates the ‘given’ and the theory begins to resemble fact in its frictionless adoption into an idea. Then when i recognize that I’m doing that, it takes mental energy to undo the training.

Which is why i like the ‘unknown knowns’ idea, as one interpretation would be ‘knowns’ that aren’t really known or even knowns that are being incorporated without realizing it.