The BS asymmetry principle

"Buy what you like" is terrible advice for watch collectors

An old post… something triggered me, so decided to reshare it!

I have written about the idea of "buying what you like" being poor advice for watch buyers... in short, the premise that you already know what you like, is a fallacy, because for most people, this is continuously changing due to external influences.

The more appropriate advice therefore, is to educate yourself deeply on the subject, in order to ensure you can clearly articulate what you like, and therefore be sure you do indeed like that thing - only then can you be sure you will be buying what you like.

With that in mind, I was reading this awesome post about something he calls Brandolini's Law - this is the simple observation that it’s far easier to produce and spread BS, misinformation and nonsense than it is to refute it. There was also a fun infographic from the site which I will share below.

Why am I sharing this here? Well, in relation to the aforementioned discussion about the value of educating oneself about what you like - it is equally important to ensure your information sources are trustworthy, and verify everything you hear and read.

Nowadays everyone is a self-proclaimed expert and worse, many collectors now think they can become dealers too - making them really poor sources of information because they struggle to remove the dealer hat while giving fellow collectors advice; the conflict of interest is quite clear.

Not much more to say on the matter - just thought this was a cool graphic, and made a good point about the amount of bullsh*t flying around in hobby.

-F

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