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Comment by Cushman | Hacker News Reader

I'm with you aside from this: "why should accounting be automatically less creative than painting?"

I'm sure you don't mean what it looks like, but I can't imagine what that could mean.

I think he means that if you force every company into the same financial mold, you're not going to get anything interesting in the public markets. Anyone outside the box will not play in the public arena because the rules will be so restrictive as to be unworkable.

Most people think of accounting as being like math. It's more like writing.

Why can't your "gut" be involved in forecasting the success of your company? People often come up with the right answer without knowing how; making them write down every assumption they made while coming up with an answer would make coming up with an answer impossible.

The real world is not 9th grade math.

People often come up with the wrong answer without knowing how, too. They just forget about those times.

It's been well documented— your perception of the "real world" is heavily distorted. That's why we have math— to figure out the right answer despite human biases.

My point was about forward looking statements and inducing companies to reveal their rational processes.

So by all means, use your gut. Then show your work. People can then bet on your gut. Or somebody else's work.

Just forcing a company to say "We expect X amount of growth in the next financial quarter, and the reason we expect this amount of growth is - even though we are an international financial corporation - guesswork and gut feeling, rather than any kind of formal model" would be a step forward.

You have two companies. Both predict X growth. One provides a full model which backs up their prediction. The other flat-out states that they made the number up. Which would you pick? It doesn't actually matter - the point is that their operations are more transparent and your choice is more informed.

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