The joy of always being wrong

I just watched a BBC documentary on science (video below) and it centered on a general theme of precision. Basically anything in life is unknowable if you want absolute precision; it is only by allowing a certain degree of estimation that we can know anything. You can never truly know the age of the universe, the length of the space bar on your computer, what time it is, etc.

This brings up a question: am I okay with being wrong. On a personal level I think I am okay that everything I think about life can be countered with a 'but'. I will really enjoy poking holes in all of the 'facts' my kids may bring home from school. It's being wrong as a professional that might get to me.

Valuation is all estimation, and over the course of the last year I am beginning to learn that the best investment banker isn't the best estimator. Because valuation is all estimation, everybody understands any value derived is a 'best guess'. The thing about i-banking is that bankers almost always have an incentive to make the value higher or lower than the true value. I used to think that i-bankers would spend a lot of time on getting the true value, and then adjust growth, margin, and discount metrics, to derive an either optimistic or pessimistic price. Now I'm beginning to think that i-bankers skip the true valuation altogether and go straight for the optomistic or pessimistic price. Instead of that price being a statistically plausible deviation from the true price, it just becomes a strategically plausible price that the buyer/seller will accept. The whole process moves from science to sales.

I like the science, I love how stochastic variables working together can bring meaningful estimations. The idea that time devoted to estimation of any variable makes it more accurate, that overtime any model can become more and more precise is extremely empowering. Like the mathematician/physicist/statistician, time spent on my task brings increase certainty; unlike the scientist, instead of studying how things are or were, I focus on how things will be.

I am okay with always being wrong if I cared about being right in the first place. Reality hardly ever strikes the middle of the bell curve anyhow. I am not sure if I'm okay with being wrong, if I use the excuse that I can never be right to shape (or fabricate) my sure-to-be wrong answer to the will of my employer. I can only hope after the mind shock of moving into the private sector that I remember the difference.