Perfection is the Enemy of the Good

 

If I Can’t Have You

If I can't have you
I don't want nobody, baby
If I can't have you, uh-ho-oh-oh-oh

Love the One You’re With

And there's a rose in a fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can't be with the one you love, honey
Love the one you're with

Dueling lyrics to show that "Perfection is the Enemy of the Good.”

Stating an absolute position sounds admirable, but it is limiting. “All, or nothing at all” means you will accept the absolute, perfection, or will accept nothing. Like teaching sex education to teenagers.

Should unmarried teenagers be having sex?  Probably not. 

Will teaching sex education make unmarried teenagers have sex? Probably not. 

If unmarried teenagers are not having sex, then do they need sex education?  Probably not.  But if they do have sex, then at least they will know what then are doing.

Humans are not absolutes. We can approach an absolute but can not attain that absolute. IOW, we exhibit exponential behavior. Saying that you will only settle for an absolute, IOW perfection, guarantees that you will attain nothing.  On the other hand, if you accept less than perfection, then you will attain something.

When disaggregating an Origin-Destination table, such as USDOT’s Freight Analysis Framework, or any matrix which is itself an aggregation, or expansion of a survey,  then there is one unique outcome that is related to that aggregation or survey, IOW is accurate. However, there are many possible outcomes, e.g. disaggregations, many of which are virtually identical and some of those are also the most numerous, probable.  That most probable outcome may not be ACCURATE, but it is available and can be solvable.   Or as statistician George Box famously put it, “All models are wrong, but some are useful”  A most probable solution may be wrong, but it may be useful.  Use the solution you can solve, e.g. love the one you’re with.