The one about the Johari window

A scientist, a magician, a poet, and an alien walk into a bar. The bartender looks up and says, “Is this some kind of strained analogy?”

“Yes,” I say. Oh—I didn’t mention I’m at the bar, too? So are you.

It feels like we’ve been thinking a lot about uncertainty and navigating it these last five years in living rooms, workplaces, social media, and bars. (At least I think bars are still a thing.) That line of thought keeps bringing me back to the Johari Window. It’s a simple frame that helps me think about what we know, what we don’t, and what sits in between, so I started giving each box a voice.

The Johari Window sorts things into four panes: known knowns (what we understand and can explain), known unknowns (mysteries we can see but haven’t cracked), unknown knowns (truths we carry without fully realizing), and unknown unknowns (what we don’t even know we don’t know). Walking into the bar, we have the scientist (known knowns), the magician (known unknowns), the poet (unknown knowns), and the alien (unknown unknowns).

What would they be talking about tonight? Maybe they start with vaccines—Is everything we’ve known wrong?—or the state of the economy and national debt. Why is it so hard to buy a house or sell one? What’s wrong with the (grand)kids, and how do we raise them? Where is our social fabric? Our sense of national pride? Is that something we should care about? And what’s the deal with airplane food?

Maybe the poet will begin by speaking the scientist’s language: “why are we rejecting vaccines now, aren’t we all scientists?” The magician seems a little more open to mystery and talks, maybe, about how they’ve never seen measles and somehow ionized water has helped with their IBS. Awe and attention are their tools. “What do you mean you can’t explain it?” or “we’ve studied that!” we might overhear the scientist say, incensed that this is even a topic of conversation. The poet seems a little more open now thinking about how to carry the undercurrent before others can name it. Maybe they create a new phrase that can remind us to take action faster than a spreadsheet or weave a story about a medicoindustrial complex. The alien — definitely confused at first — might chime in with a nonsequitur or perhaps, “what even is a vaccine, anyway?”

Or maybe they start by talking about the economy? “What should we be doing now?” Do we have a government of magicians using levers that we don’t yet understand scientifically? Are they scientists running experiments? Poets telling stories of “American dynamism”. The scientist draws us to their numbers: this is unprecedented, “our experiments tell us tariffs are going to bite us.” The alien asks whether any of this even matters if superintelligence is right around the corner.

Standing in the doorway of the bar, it’s not clear where their conversation will go. It will probably look like it is getting messier and more argumentative before anything feels settled or harmonious. Still, I’ve enjoyed imagining the different parts and people in the conversation. I’m pretty sure I’d agree mostly with the scientist, but I can hear the poet sometimes. Magic seems like it’d be useful. And I like the enigmatic alien, so frequently misunderstood, even pitiable. Maybe, somehow, they’re the wisest of the group.

As we stand in the doorway, scanning the room for a cozy spot to settle in and talk, the bartender wipes a glass.

“Well, in that case, sit anywhere you all agree on.”