Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“That’s not so.”
Yes it is. Your emotions confirm that.
Okay, Anonymous.
Please understand that I don’t deny my bias. I have 16 years of my life involved in building the Valuation-Informed Indexing model. So I have a deep emotional commitment to this model. I try to keep my emotions in check. I make an effort. But in the event that I sometimes let my emotional bias get the best of me, I wouldn’t know that that was happening, would I? So it is possible that your suggestion here is on the mark. Perhaps what I am seeing so clearly would not be so clear to me if I were capable of seeing things from a 100 percent objective perspective.
The only thing that I have been able to come up with to deal with that possibility is to make note from time to time that it is possible that I am wrong, that I am just another one of those flawed humans. I say that from time to time for that reason. I certainly don’t think that I am wrong. I believe strongly that I am right or else I would not have devoted 16 years of my life energy to this thing. But it is POSSIBLE that I am wrong and that I don’t see it. So I think that it is healthy for me to make note of that reality from time to time. As confident as I am, I am one of those darn flawed humans.
This line of discussion reminds me of the comment that one of the members of one of the peer-review committees that rejected the paper that Wade Pfau and I wrote together put forward. He said something to the effect of “it would be nice to know the ultimate criterion to look at to know which of the two strategies is the right one.” That’s a fair comment. It would be hard to argue with it. But I see that more as an argument in support of publishing the paper than as an argument for rejecting it for publication. There is no one ultimate criterion. There is a PROCESS in which humans talk things over and come to decide on things over time. The publication of peer-reviewed research is part of that process. You publish the paper not because it is ultimate truth but because it helps people to prepare themselves for the discussions that they need to have among themselves to arrive at truth over time.
I am emotional. You are emotional. We are both humans. So that one is a given. The difference, in my eyes, is that I favor permitting the debate to go forward and you favor shutting it down. The debate is the process by which we learn who is right and who is wrong. Shut down the debate and we are stuck with what we thought we knew before the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research was published, and that’s that the market is efficient and that Buy-and-Hold is the ideal strategy. I want to see the debate move forward because I want to move beyond that old and flawed (in my assessment) understanding. You don’t want to move forward. You like where things are today. So you do everything you can to shut down the debate. We work at cross purposes.
I could be wrong on the ultimate issue. I don’t think so. But you never know. But I don’t think that I am wrong on the process issue. The process issue — that new ideas may be discussed, whether advocates of the old idea want those discussions to take place or not — is what our country is all about. When you engage in criminal behavior to stop the debate from even taking place, you travel to a place where I just cannot go. I love this country. I love what it is about. If I am wrong and the debate goes forward, I will be discovered. Good. That’s the way it should be. If the debate is blocked — boo, baby!
That’s not me. That’s not what I am about. I love it that my country favors seeing such debates go forward and I don’t think that that one can ever change. I can say that it is possible that I am wrong re the substance issue but my love for what my country is all about runs too deep for me to say that the laws that my country has saying that such debates must be permitted to go forward are wrong. I think those are good and necessary laws regardless of whether I am being tripped up by my emotional weaknesses or not.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. I am voting for the people of the United States! No apologies.
Emotionally Influenced and Thus Possibly Wrong Rob
Seriously, you are so unhinged that you can’t even take a break from posting on Christmas Day. Shouldn’t that be a sign that you are a problem?
Do we stop eating on Christmas Day?
Do we stop taking medicine on Christmas Day?
Do we stop watching sports on Christmas Day?
If we have discovered something that is a pure good, we should want to do it every day of the year, on Christmas Day and on all the others. The last 37 years of peer-reviewed research in this field is all good, Anonymous. It is good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff.
The great irony is that it was my good friend Jack Bogle who popularized the idea of using the peer-reviewed research as a guide as to how to invest one’s retirement money. I think he was right the first time. Things got tricky for him when new research was published that showed that one of the things that he had once believed (that it isn’t necessary to practice price discipline when buying stocks) was actually not so. If he weren’t one of those darn humans, that wouldn’t have tripped him up so much. But he had a problem with saying the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong.” and 37 years later, it’s a lot harder to say those words than it ever was before. And so here we are.
Are you saying that we should give up trying to help this great man each Christmas Day? I don’t see why. He has helped us all in scores and scores of ways. Is there some reason why we shouldn’t be willing to give up a little of out time — yes, even on Christmas Day — to return the favor? I know that I sure feel a lot better with myself when I play it that way.
You see any honest posting as a threat. That’s why you would like us to take a break from it on Christmas Day. I think you need to ask yourself why discussions of the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research seem so threatening to you. Stop seeing such discussions as a threat, and you can begin enjoying them. Imagine!
The research is not trying to hurt you, my dear Goon friend. It is trying to help you. Knowing the true safe withdrawal rate is a plus, not a minus. I am sure.
My best wishes.
Non-Threatening Rob
“If we have discovered something that is a pure good, we should want to do it every day of the year”
Then why don’t you post on weekends? Aren’t those days of the year too?
You might be on to something with that one, Anonymous.
I will give your suggestion some thought.
Tireless Rob
Did you actually post this on Christmas day or was is scheduled ahead of time?
They are always done ahead of time.
Organized Rob
“I will give your suggestion some thought.”
How much thought do you need to put into an obvious, glaring inconsistency? Just handle it the way you always do. Like this:
“It is NOT an obvious, glaring inconsistency. End of explanation.
Glaringly Consistent Rob”
Okay, Anonymous.
Please take good care.
Glaringly Inconsistent Rob
I thought you were a good Catholic? I guess VII is more important to you than celebrating the birth of Christ.
I’m a Catholic. I’m not so sure about the “good” part. I think we are going to have to let someone else judge that one.
I believe that God put me on earth to get the word out about what the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works in the real world. Someone sure has to do it. There are millions of lives at stake. And the future of the economic and political systems of a wonderful country are at stake. So I sure don’t think that there could be any more important work that I could do.
I don’t see how there is any conflict with celebrating the birth of Christ. One way to celebrate Christ’s birth is to follow his teaching. There are millions of middle-class families who are counting on the amounts in their retirement accounts to cover their costs of living in their old age. Opening up every site on the internet to honest posting re the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research will help them in a huge way. That’s my faith in action, you know? Having faith isn’t just saying prayers. A real faith has to evidence itself in one’s actions. I am doing what I can to help those people. I cannot not do so. I think that it would be fair to say that part of the reason is my faith that I am going to have to answer for what I do with my life when I get to the other side.
I went to Mass Monday night. I had dinner with friends and family yesterday. I went to see “A Christmas Carol” with one of my boys on Sunday. There has been plenty of time for Christmas celebrations. But I certainly don’t regret scheduling a blog post to appear on Christmas day. You never know which one is going to touch a human heart. I wish that there were thousands of us putting up blog posts on Christmas Day and on every other day trying to reach human hearts and explain to them that Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick is not the answer. It’s a little late to be saying that when people have lost most of their life savings and have no hope of ever seeing it again. I am proud to be able to say that I am giving it my best shot today, both on Christmas Day and on every other day of the year.
I hope that helps a small bit, my dear friend.
Good (???) Catholic Boy Rob
So when you think of the birth of Christ, you immediately think of VII.
Yes, I do. It’s not the only thing that I think about. But it is certainly one thing that I think about.
I want to be Christ-like. How am I going to pull that off? Some people say lots of prayers. I admire people who do that. But that’s never been me. It just doesn’t click for me. I have to find other ways.
If an old friend calls me on the phone and needs help with a problem, I can be Christ-like by taking the time to help him or her out. That’s every bit as Christ-like to me as saying a prayer.
If my boy has some questions about what courses to sign up for next semester, I can be Christ-like by giving a thoughtful and complete answer, one that reflects my experience and the experiences of others than I have come across who were once in similar circumstances. I feel that God put me though those experiences so that I can learn from them and then pass along the lesson. I see that as Christ-like behavior.
If something is bothering me — say that there’s some physical pain that I am feeling — I can resist the temptation to complain about it or to become impatient with people because I am feeling that. That’s Christ-like behavior.
And, yes, I think that helping people finance their retirement effectively is Christ-like behavior.
We all are given different opportunities to imitate Christ. That’s one that I have been given and I would not feel right if I didn’t do my best. So I do that.
I certainly don’t mean to suggest that people from other religions cannot do amazing things helping to get the word out about Valuation-Informed Indexing. Most belief systems have a number of basic principles in common. Just about all humans believe that we should try to be honest and that we should take care of old people and that people should not have their money stolen from them. Keeping people from being ripped off of their life savings involves all those things. So this is certainly Christ-like work. But it’s also work that fits the precepts of all of the other belief systems that I have heard about.
I think that one of the reasons why the issue is so controversial is that just about everybody would like to be doing good work in this area but the cover-up has been going on for so long that it makes people feel bad for others to learn how they have elected to turn a quick buck rather than to offer truly research-based advice. It’s because we all want to do good that we feel bad when we hear someone telling the truth about the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research. On first impression, that’s a discouraging thought. But the other way of looking at it is that the insane reactions we have seen come about evidenced themselves because at heart we all want the same thing — to help people rather than to destroy their lives. The only thing that makes this hard is that we didn’t always know what worked and so we got into a habit of saying some nonsense stuff and that went on long enough that it has become really hard to come clean about it.
I hope that helps a small bit.
Faith-and-Science-Believer Rob