Reality: the ultimate BS detector

One of the common (and fun) things about being both an engineer and trader is the refinement of the internal tool we should all have known as as the "BS detector". It's often fun watching the faces of seasoned engineers react to when a marketer translates their work into what might grab others' attention. If the faces reflect approval, you know you've got a good marketer, and that the message being sent is very close to what the design and market intent was to begin with (or expands upon it meaningfully).

The ultimate BS detector is Reality. I give it a capital "R" in this case to emphasize the role of Reality. Reality in this case isn't just what's true vs. false, but rather the stark truth that not only tells you if you're wrong, but spits you back in the face (to use more blog-friendly terminology) and makes you wipe up and scrub afterwards. Engineers and traders look Reality in the face every day, not due to their moral superiority or intelligence, but rather due to the nature of the game. If something isn't working, you'll know it, suffer from it, and be forced to change things to correct it without another person ever having to make a judgement call.

Reality isn't just some subjective, manipulation-prone metric like how well you did on an antropology essay (no offense; I speak from experience having aced a class from a famous anthropologist without actually reading any of the books he assigned us), or how well you were able to convince your bosses at your investment firm that your wonderful way of handling clients is what led to those mega-deals. We are taught that success in the "real world" should in fact de-emphasize the quantitative approach, where softs skills and emotional intelligence rule. The funny thing is, that's mostly true! I'm all for it, especially in contrast to master test takers who thing they're geniuses but face shortcomings in basic real-world scenarios. But the fact of the matter is that much of what we face in the real world is not Reality. Rather, I'd degrade the real world of subjectively influenced outcomes to lower-case "reality." It's what we see before us given the system and society in which we live, but it's not Reality. Lower-case reality is prone to subjective manipulation. The results of an election is reality, but does not tell us anything conclusive about who might be the best candidate or who's best for the country or local district.

Rather, Reality is an electrical or mechanical device telling you that it won't work properly after 2 years because you didn't think through the risk of failure properly, or simply won't work at all in hot conditions since you didn't run enough thermal simulations at high temperatures and modify the design accordingly. Reality is also the inability to prove that 1+1 = 3, even though people successfully fool others into believing things like that all the time in the "real" world (think of phone bots convincing people to hand over their money to the "IRS" due to "unpaid debts", or your financial advisor convincing you that you need to always be "invested" long in the markets).

There are some wider societal implications of the honing of one's BS detector, but I won't get into that here. Just wanted to emphasize that it's one of the greatest tools that is never taught in schools, but inevitably learned if you stay in the game long enough.