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I think the gist of it is that people use difficult to understand things as a way of both signaling competence and of intimidating others into not questioning t
by nazgulnarsil 17y ago
I think the gist of it is that people use difficult to understand things as a way of both signaling competence and of intimidating others into not questioning them. think mutual funds who leech off their clients with worse returns than the S&P500. over time the best ways of doing this have been refined, think of the way media outlets use statistics that, while not exactly lies, are at best not the whole truth. and not 1 person in 100 has the competence to debunk the nonsense.
- akadien 17y agoThat's exactly what I meant! Thanks for saying it so well.
- hga 17y agoYou'll need to give me another example. Year to year returns after fees from a mutual fund vs. S&P500 is too trivial as long as there are no tax implications (and you can get the latter from your CPA if it isn't a retirement investment). We're not talking complicated statistics where everything starting with the assumptions must be suspected, we're talking N% return in X year.
- nazgulnarsil 17y agothat was a simple example where even though the numbers are trivial to interpret people still make gross errors. now look at the mortgage market for instance, where people basically have no idea how home financing works. I hear all the time about how some couple "discovered' that you could avoid brokerage fees by getting a license yourself at trivial time and money investment.