- Physical realities, including needs to drink water, eat food, have shelter, etc.
- Emotional realities, including needs for love, honor, loyalty, commitment, etc.
- Economic realities, including labor and capital markets, monetary measurements, financial and budgetary accountings, etc.
These realities are the stuff of which financial analysts, especially the forensic types that should expect rigorous cross-examination akin to hostile peer review, prepare their expert and consultative reports. Generalizable truthful statements are frequently not self-evident; i.e., the analysts are required to gather much data and think about these data elements and values, including their relationship to modern and classical statistics. How do they fit within the accepted conceptual foundation (e.g., law of sales, GAAP)? Are there sufficient competent data to create meaningful facts and narratives? Was the analysis performed with impartiality and objectivity (read: inter-subjectivity)?
The energy required to debunk the status quo may be prodigious (e.g., the resources consumed in restating the historical ‘accounting facts’ of Enron c. 2001). Galileo and Copernicus had similar burdens. Though change is commonly described as inevitable, it is also accepted wisdom that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Personal habits, business and other professional routines, religious rituals, etc. – these social responses to past experience, which provide economic and emotional stability and comfort, also adapt or succumb to the changing, superseding physical realities unfolding from the undefined future.
