Confusing opinions with facts and vice versa

[Deleted]

Funnily enough this came to me after watching Inside Out and chuckling at the scene where Joy knocks over a crate of opinions and facts and comments how they all look alike, which another character adds "Don't worry everybody gets them confused,". Anyway it's incredibly common here that people confuse their opinions as fact in the heat of debate but could you imagine a world where people only debate in facts not personal opinions. Would a world truly exist?

[Independent voter]

Everything is an opinion and you realize this if you spend anytime at all in a forum. People post articles and stats to back their argument up but that proof is often shaky at best. And this is especially true when you move away from hard science.

[Lava Bucket]

Everything is an opinion and you realize this if you spend anytime at all in a forum. People post articles and stats to back their argument up but that proof is often shaky at best. And this is especially true when you move away from hard science.

When your opinion is counter-factual, it's very convenient if you can get everyone to believe that facts don't exist. Thus the rise of anti-intellectualism.

[unbound]

When your opinion is counter-factual, it's very convenient if you can get everyone to believe that facts don't exist. Thus the rise of anti-intellectualism.

QFT.

It isn't as simple as fact vs opinion, but the whole "everything is opinion" is simply asinine.

“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.” - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

"Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance." - Plato

[Endus]

Everything is an opinion and you realize this if you spend anytime at all in a forum. People post articles and stats to back their argument up but that proof is often shaky at best. And this is especially true when you move away from hard science.

This really isn't the case.

Sure, a lot of things are absolutely opinion, and a lot of people present their opinions as facts, but there are plenty of actual facts that inform opinions, and a fact-based outlook is inherently more justifiable than one that's based on nothing.

Worse, some opinions can run contrary to the facts that we know, which means they aren't just opinions, equally valid as any other; they are demonstrably wrong, and must be corrected, or at least pointed out as the errors they are so that others aren't misled into agreeing with them. An opinion that's wrong on the facts is just wrong; it isn't a justifiable belief. This often carries a religious connotation and so, to avoid targeting any real-life religion, imagine if someone had a religious belief that gravity was a lie, and that you could fly if you just really believed; Peter Panism, to coin a phrase. That religious belief isn't a valid one. It's just false. It's a lie, and your faith in it doesn't change that; it just means you believe in the lie, not that the lie has any truth. Now, plenty of religious groups totally acknowledge this, and their faith exists within and around the known facts of life, filling the voids between, and that's fine. I'm not taking an anti-religious stance here, nor expecting that religious views should be fact-based; that's not what I'm saying. I'm just taking issue with the minority who think their blind faith, that runs contrary to the facts, is somehow equivalent to the facts themselves. It isn't. It just means they believe a lie, not that their lie is true.

Nor is that restricted to religious views; I merely use it because faith is one of the main justifiers of such beliefs. Political ideological views that aren't based on reality can be just as counterfactual and harmful. And again, here, I don't mean "views I personally have an ideological disagreement with"; if someone thinks the minimum wage is fine where it is, and I think it should be higher, neither of us is objectively "right". At least, not without delving into the justifications for each belief.

For the love of bacon, please don't turn this into a debate about the specifics of my examples; I'm only using them as examples.

[Johnkie]

Funnily enough this came to me after watching Inside Out and chuckling at the scene where Joy knocks over a crate of opinions and facts and comments how they all look alike, which another character adds "Don't worry everybody gets them confused,". Anyway it's incredibly common here that people confuse their opinions as fact in the heat of debate but could you imagine a world where people only debate in facts not personal opinions. Would a world truly exist?

some facts started as "Personal opinions"

[Endus]

I do not disagree with what you said; but how do you change the minds (via debate) of someone that holds an irrational/ignorant/misinformed opinion?

If they're irrational to begin with, you probably can't. I don't typically try.

What I aim for is convincing everyone else that may be paying attention that I'm the one with a reasoned argument and justifiable principles.

For instance, I had a person talk to be about Planet X for 15 minutes. I was really close at calling them an idiot, but out of respect for a friend, I held my tongue.

I tried to tell her that the only Planet X was Pluto, and there is no Planet that is going to crash into earth. There is no evidence, we have not seen anything that would lead us to that conclusion, etc... but she went on about how there are "facts" on both sides and she was not sure which one to believe.

They won't crash into the Earth, but there are big objects out there outside of the 9 traditional planets; that's why Pluto was downgraded recently; they either needed to do that, or up the count to 11 or 12, by including the bigger-than-Pluto objects out in the Oort.

One of those cases where there's a grain of fact.

[nextormento]

including the bigger-than-Pluto objects out in the Oort.

A bit nitpicky, but I think you mean the Kuiper belt and scattered disc. The Oort cloud is hypothetical and well beyond the reach of any launched or planned probing.

[Endus]

A bit nitpicky, but I think you mean the Kuiper belt and scattered disc. The Oort cloud is hypothetical and well beyond the reach of any launched or planned probing.

Yes, mixing up my far-reaches-of-solar-system geography. Not an astronomer :P

[Dsonsion]

When your opinion is counter-factual, it's very convenient if you can get everyone to believe that facts don't exist. Thus the rise of anti-intellectualism.

I share this opinion. They first go on with that, then they wear their opinions as a shield against reason, as there really are no facts that could convince people of their wrongness.