ES wrote: I disagree with those who just write these kind of efforts off. It's easy to trash someone's ideas but much more difficult to pitch in and try to find answers in a constuctive way. I for one appreciate these kinds of efforts in putting forth new ideas. It's how we learn. I wish I had the time and expertise to be of more help.
Thanks John!
ES, I'm disappointed with this line of thinking.
I quite agree that people should be encouraged to post their ideas for discussion in public places. I quite agree that ideas and effort should not be written off summarily.
However, restricting responses to rah-rah-rah, no matter what idea is presented, is not constructive and does not lead to learning.
Research is not a speech. It's a dialogue in which you should expect to have your assumptions and reasoning applauded by some and questioned by others. While "trashing someone's ideas" is one way of criticizing an argument, it is not the only way.
JWR is of course entitled to make assumptions, do myriad calculations based on those assumptions, and present the results as useful. As a researcher, he then bears the burden of defending the assumptions and the methods he used to create the results. If it then turns out that, using identical assumptions and a much simpler method, one can reach a related but obviously nonsensical conclusion, that indicates a problem.
If you want to learn something, whether you are the researcher or just part of the audience, you must take such criticism to heart. Dismissing it or ignoring it on the grounds that it "trashes someone's idea" is not constructive and makes learning impossible.
There is an elementary principle of logic that, if reasoning properly from a set of assumptions leads to nonsense results, something is wrong with the assumptions. That's all I did in my first post in the thread. I didn't trash JWR's ideas. I just pointed out that the same assumptions, together with a much simpler argument, lead inexorably to nonsense. There is something readers can learn from that, which is that JWR's assumptions must have been nonsense in the first place.
There is also an elementary principle of logic that any conclusion, be it true or false, can be drawn from false assumptions.* There is something that readers can learn from that: Since JWR's assumptions in the thread starter were nonsense to begin with, there is no way to determine whether his results are true or false. It's not that they are necessarily wrong; the problem is that they are
useless.
It's your board. You can run it as you like. If you think that it is constructive for someone to repeatedly post useless information, it's your prerogative. I cannot agree. If site policy is going to be
1. Nonsense is permitted, perhaps even encouraged. Repetition especially welcome.
2. Rebutting nonsense is not constructive and will be discouraged.
then the forum is useless. No one can learn anything in such a place.
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* For those with no exposure to formal logic, here's a simple FIRE/SWR example to demonstrate how proceeding from false assumptions leads to false results. What JWR posts differs only in quantity, not quality.
Assumption: 1% = 0%.
Issue: How much can I withdraw annually from my portfolio without going broke?
Answer: As much as you like. Why? Well, you won't ever go broke if you withdraw 0% from the portfolio. And since 1% = 0%, you won't go broke if you withdraw 1%. And since 2% = 1% + 1% = 0% + 0%, you won't go broke if you withdraw 2%. ... And since 100% = 100 * 1% = 100 * 0% = 0%, you can spend it all in the first year and yet will never go broke!