If you need perfection/precision, you'll never undertake big questions because it's way too hard to get perfect answers

To get precision you'll ask smaller questions.

Which is what is happening with econometrics, and most of science and society.

A version of the streetlight fallacy.

That is, you'll focus on asking questions that are easy to answer precisely, not the important questions.

The important questions will have answers that are fundamentally imprecise.

The right approach is not to ignore the important questions.

It's to get comfortable with uncertainty and imprecision