The best three words of all time: "I don't know"

From our Homemade Philosophy Department.

Technically, you could make this The 4 best words of all time: "I do not know". Or, in another language, maybe two, maybe five - I don't know.

The short statement I don't know separates the men from the boys, the women from the men.

We bet you our Susan B. Anthony dollar coin that you would find women use I don't know more often than men do. Not the main point of the post, but think about it for a minute.
Now think about how often you made up an answer when the most honest answer would have been a simple I don't know?

The blogster has used I don't know liberally and with un-nerving nerve, sometimes watered down into a phrase like I'm not sure, or well, there are different aspects...

Several lessons from using this small phrase:
1. It drives most managers crazy.
2. It is a more serious career obstacle than lying your way up.
3. The few people who "get it" should be cherished, they are the best friends you could ever have.

If you made it this far into the post, it says something about you.

What?

I'm not sure.

Scientists are the people who come to mind first when I think of folks who use the phrase most often. Other groups include some of the more precarious fellow humans.

Unsurprisingly, the most averse to the phrase seem to be business people, politicians and religious believers.

What about engineers?

I'm not sure. There certainly are many, probably a majority who don't like the phrase. But not liking it does not mean not acknowledging the fundamental truth of it.
They just spend their lives working towards chipping away at the I don't know.

We should cut this short. The Doctor is waiting.

So, what happens when you realize it does not matter whether you know?

Then it's only you and your sense of morality, your sense of humanity.

Scary. Liberating.

There must be a long established philosophical term for that. But I don't know.