Group of businessman carrying briefcase run around a clock 3d illustration
2.subjective opinion.
In our liberal society, more liberal than any that has gone before it, it has become a custom to allow a platform for any view of the world, no matter how skewed and unfounded. This is a good thing. We need to have an open exchange of ideas and opinions, and in fact, the democratic process that we’re so fond of is dependent upon it. But that does not mean that every opinion is equally valid, nor that it is an accurate representation of how the world really is.
One of the most annoying sentences I get to hear is the one saying that “It’s true for me”, often uttered as a form of defence of some non-evidential opinion about how something works, be it alternative medicine, the supernatural or similar fringe topics. The thing is that truth is something that I take very seriously. I’m a strong supporter of freedom of speech and I would in fact lay down my life to protect your right to state your opinion about any given subject, but that does not mean that I neither support nor accept your opinion.
It has been stated on several occasions that everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts, and that is an important point to make. Opinions are by definition subjective and likewise facts are by definition objective. A fact is something that can be tested, measure or otherwise objectively concluded while a valid opinion is an interpretation of those facts, which means that in order to have an informed opinion you have to be familiar with the relevant facts.
And herein lies the problem.
In order to form a relevant opinion about a subject you have to actually know something about it.
Which means studying.
Which means doing research.
Which means work.
Does that mean that an uninformed opinion is worthless?
Yes, it does.
Does that mean that people should avoid forming strong opinions about subjects they don’t know much about?
Yes, it does.
You are of course free to state whatever uninformed opinion you choose, but you shouldn’t be surprised if people ignore it or even ridicule it.
That’s the price you pay for not learning the relevant facts.
Part of the problem is that the process of forming an opinion based on objective facts is quite different from the way we “usually” form opinions, which are more akin to knee-jerk reactions often based on our initial subjective emotions regarding a subject. When taking the objective facts into account the ideal position is to have no feelings about the subject at all, and while this is in practice impossible to achieve fully, it is an ideal worth striving for. When all the available facts are on the table and the criteria for success are established, then the weighing of pros and cons can begin. This is kind of like setting up a mental (or actual) “scoreboard” in which the various facts are assigned a value based on their relevance and impact, and then totted up against one another until you can clearly see what your opinion logically should be.
The reason we should strive not to have an opinion before we start looking at the objective facts of a matter is something called Confirmation Bias. Wikipedia has an excellent definition of what that is:
“Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true. As a result, people gather evidence and recall information from memory selectively, and interpret it in a biased way. The biases appear in particular for emotionally significant issues and for established beliefs. They also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position.”
Basically what this means is that if you are convinced that your boss dislikes you and is picking on you more than anyone else, you will begin to notice it more and more when he picks on you and ignoring it more and more when he picks on somebody else. If you think that there are more red cars driving around than any other colour, you will automatically notice the red cars more than those of a different shade. And so on and so forth.
This is even worse if it is an opinion that you’ve stated publicly because of a nice little psychological effect called Consistency, and you can see this clearly in for instance politics. When was the last time you saw a politician openly admitting they were wrong and had changed their opinion? I assure you it is a fairly rare sight. But this also applies to people in general, and it appears that the need to be consistent is so strong that many people will hold on to their opinions no matter how heavily the facts speak against them.
The only solution is to build yourself a fortress. No, not a real one, although that would be pretty cool too, but a mental fortress with its own fortifications and gates, with walls that are constantly checked and rechecked for validity and logic adherence, not so that you can shut other people’s opinions out, but so that you can control them for factual basis and make sure they are on the level. At the same time you must check and recheck your own opinions for the same, because let’s face it; no-one is better at fooling you than you.
Thanks for your time.
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