What's that saying again about being right and getting it right?
If I remember correctly, it's from the book The Beginning of Infinity or from other works by the author David Deutsch. The book is quite heavy intellectually and I haven't been able to land many of the ideas mentioned in my current framework of thinking/understanding.
Yes, this distinction of being right versus getting it right is one of those ideas that sounds simple until you realize how rarely it's actually practiced.
Being right is almost like a static way of defending one's current position based on past data.
"I'm right that this company will dominate its market," for example is a claim staked in the ground, defended against all challengers.
Getting it right is arriving at better explanations, even if it means abandoning what you thought yesterday.
"Looks like the competitive landscape has shifted, so the original thesis needs revision, could be time to reassess or exit.", another example that's dynamic, responsive to new evidence.
Science works this way, for the most part. Every groundbreaking theory emerged because someone cared more about getting it right than being right.
Market Doesn't Care About Your Thesis
But it's investing where this distinction matters more. The market doesn't care about your thesis; it may not even be aware of it. If the market cares, then what it cares about is what's actually true.
And "true" here is more so what the market is reflecting either current fundamentals or future expectations discounted back to today.
I've observed investors (including myself) hold losing positions because selling would mean admitting the original analysis was wrong, even when the fundamentals still look solid on paper, which is usually overblown rationalization masquerading as conviction.
Pardon me to mention Soros calls this reflexivity, but it's really about this same idea as one's job isn't to defend their position in such matters of investing/trading but to really understand what's happening.
This usually takes looking hard at the data in an objective way.
When a thesis breaks, do I get curious about what I missed, or defensive about what I got right? Do I track my errors as seriously as my wins?
The best investors I know are remarkably willing to say "I was wrong about that" without it seeming to cost them anything psychologically.
Specifically, this shows up in how disconfirming evidence is handled.
The Yat Siu Dilemma
I've mentioned the Mocaverse project every now and then, had the token on my watchlist for many months now but still didn't get the signal to make an investment other than knowing Yat Siu of Animoca Brands is a leading founder, who I've listened to most of the talks this person has given, learnt a lot from them, especially in terms of frameworks to understand this space.
The MOCA chart after TGE almost mirrors the life cycle of memecoins and I get the part that this is more so the characteristics of many projects in this space but still, it's an uneasy feeling to bid the lows solely based on arbitrary fundamentals that this is a good project, good team that have a good probability of executing their vision.
I'm watching MOCA because I believe Animoca's track record and ecosystem give them a durable advantage in Web3 infrastructure.
But I also notice the token's price action almost mirrors degen memecoin patterns, as in initial hype, brutal drawdown, no clear bottoming structure.
Here, "being right" framework finds explanations such as it's still early days, the broader market is weak, quality projects always get repriced eventually, Yat Siu's vision will compound over years.
And the "getting it right" approach jumps towards asking does my original explanation still hold, or does the price action reveal something about token design, actual usage, or market structure that I'm missing?
I don't know. Maybe "good team" doesn't translate to "good token" the way I assumed.
Deutsch argues that good explanations are hard to vary since they're specific and testable.
What would have to happen for me to know I'm wrong? If I can't answer that precisely, I'm probably optimizing for defending my narrative rather than discovering what's true.
The irony in general is that people "obsessed" with being right are often wrong for longer, partly because they've optimized for never admitting error without any room for actually understanding what's true.
In markets, that's expensive.
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