“I Don’t Believe That There Can Ever Be a Last Word. There’s Always Going to Be New Research. So People Are Always Going to Be Learning New Things. If Everyone Converted to Valuation-Informed Indexing Today, Tomorrow Someone Would Come Up With Some New Wrinkle That Hadn’t Been Considered Prior to Today. So There Would Be a Valuation-Informed Indexing Plus. And the Discovery of That Wrinkle Would Lead to the Discovery of Even More New Wrinkles. Learning How Things Work Is a Never-Ending Process.”

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:

You know that you are wrong, so you try and compensate with long winded posts, delete most posts and never let anyone else have the last word.

I don’t believe that there can ever be a last word. There’s always going to be new research. So people are always going to be learning new things. If everyone converted to Valuation-Informed Indexing today, tomorrow someone would come up with some new wrinkle that hadn’t been considered prior to today. So there would be a Valuation-Informed Indexing Plus. And the discovery of that wrinkle would lead to the discovery of even more new wrinkles. Learning how things work is a never-ending process.

People believe different things. And that’s healthy. There might be some threads in which a Valuation-Informed Indexer wrote the last post in the thread. That’s fine so long as there are other threads in which a Buy-and-Holder wrote the last post. That’s not the way it was at the Retire Early board in the days prior to May 13, 2002. There were hundreds and hundreds of threads discussing Greaney’s retirement study and none of them pointed out that it lacked a valuation adjustment. That led people to believe that the study was legitimate. The Valuation-Informed Indexers were afraid to point out the error in the study because you Goons had made clear that there would be consequences if anyone did that.

I am proud that I eventually worked up the courage to post my sincere view that that study lacks a valuation adjustment. I think that people using the study to plan a retirement need to know that. If there are people who want to use the study regardless, that’s their business. But, if I truly believe that the study lacks a valuation adjustment and I fail to say anything, that’s on me. I should post honestly, whether my post happens to be the first in the thread or the last or somewhere in the middle. The big thing for me is that we all feel free to post our honest views.

Rob