I agree with most of that. But those questionable replies? They're Rumsfeld's.
> Actually, absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
Agreed. And yet Rumsfeld says, in the linked press event transcript,
> Now what is the message there? The message is that there are no "knowns." There are thing we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.
> It sounds like a riddle. It isn't a riddle. It is a very serious, important matter.
> There's another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist. And yet almost always, when we make our threat assessments, when we look at the world, we end up basing it on the first two pieces of that puzzle, rather than all three.
[emphasis mine]
> The ridicule such as in the examples reveals epistemic immaturity.
Almost. The example replies, were Rumsfeld's, at the two events. Extracts, but I suggest fair ones. The example questions were paraphrased. Then I prefaced the alternate contexts, hoping to better illuminate the flaws in the replies.
The epistemic immaturity you observe, is a property of Rumsfeld's replies, and what I sought to illustrate, in support of GGP seeking to understand the historical ridicule. I'm sorry that ended up less than clear.