“When You Are Dealing With a Revoltionary Advance in the Understanding of a Subject, the Talking-It-Over Part Is an Essential Stage of the Learning 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:

They have decided.  If people valued what you have to offer, they would be over here on this board supporting you.  I am sure we can all agree that thousands upon thousands of people have seen your posts.  People clearly know who you are and what you have had to say.  There is no lack of awareness.

There is a lack of having had the experience of talking things over in a civil and calm and reasoned way.

I knew that the Greaney study was in error on the morning of May 13, 2002, right? I was still a Buy-and-Hold at that time! Explain that. It’s crazy. In my brain I just comparmentalized things. I thought, well, the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies are wrong but Buy-and-Hold in general is still good stuff. Then I spent several months talking things over with people at the Motley Fool board. On the evening of August 27, 2002, I concluded that Buy-and-Hold was garbage, that anything that made people so emotional that they endorsed death threats cannit possibly be good stuff.

If someone who saw the error in the Greaney study clearly could be fooled by this stuff, anyone could be fooled by this stuff. The thing that worked for me was talking things over. The same thing worked for John Walter Russell. He was a Buy-and-Holder on the morning of May 13, 2002. Then he engaged in discussiosn in response to my May 13, 2002, post. Then he became such a believer that he devoted eight years of his life to researching the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept for free. It was the same story with Wade Pfau. He was a Buy-and-Holder until he saw my posts at the Bogleheads Forum. Then he talked things over with me in emails. Then he became such a believer that he devoted 16 months of his life to researching my investing ideas and concluded that: “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!”

When you are dealing with a revoltionary advance in the understanding of a subject, the talking-it-over part is an essential stage of the learning process. We cannot get from the horrible place where we are today (a CAPE value of 30!) to the wonderful place where we all deep in our hearts want to be tomorrow without passing through the talking-it-over stage of the learning process. We need to open every site to honest posting re the past 42 yeats of peer-reviewed research. By the close of business tomorrow. If not a good bit sooner.

My sincere take.

Rob