Relevance vs reliability

Now here’s an interesting conundrum. In my experience, if something is reliable, it is generally relevant. For instance, if something can be observed and understood well, it is a reliable basis for a theory. A theory connects one reliable facts to other reliable facts and thus from a science perspective where certainty is the name of the game, reliability leads to relevance.

Not so in the real world where the ceiling is an bright blue color with white patches on it. Here one does not tend to discuss things that are reliable. For instance, nobody talks about how the bus shows up on time (unless it doesn’t) or how the coffee machine once again produced some brown water. Rather the interesting or relevant things are those that in fact are not reliable in the sense that they are uncertain. Global warming comes to mind although the certainty of its existence is increasing. Evolution is another discussion, at least for the great uneducated masses.

So for financial markets which are supposed to price in the future e.g. price -> NPV, reliable knowledge is no longer relevant to investors because the value of such information has already been priced in.