Your interlocutor with a smart look utters obvious stupidity, but it is impossible to convince him that he is mistaken. “This is my personal opinion,” he says. Jeff Roner, Houston Press columnist, explains the difference between opinion and error.
“Over the past few years, I have been interacting with students a lot. They are terribly angry when I tell them that the words “This is my personal opinion” do not exclude the possibility that the statement associated with them may be fundamentally wrong. It amazes me how some people spew out fountains of extreme stupidity, verbally or in writing, under the guise of “personal opinion”. They angrily reject any information that challenges their views and habits – it really scares me. Opinion or, even worse, belief has become a shield behind which ill-formulated, meager thoughts creep into the social network.
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- Only truth can dispel delusion
Most of us are conditioned to think that an opinion cannot be wrong. Strictly speaking, this is true. But before you crouch behind that shield, ask yourself two questions.
- Is this really an opinion?
- If this is an opinion, how informed am I and why do I hold it?
According to the dictionary, an opinion is a preference or judgment about something. “My favorite color is black”. “I can’t stand minty taste.” House M.D. is the best medical series ever. All these are opinions. They may belong only to me or be mass, but they have one thing in common: they cannot be verified. I just think so.
There is nothing wrong with having an opinion about different things. The problem is created by people whose opinion is actually a delusion. If you believe that vaccination causes autism, you are not expressing an opinion, but simply mistaken, because the facts say otherwise. You and a host of other people can believe as much as you want that vaccination causes autism – your delusion from this will not become a reasonable fair opinion that reflects reality.
According to polls, one in four Americans believe that there is no global warming. But what does it change? Climate warming is a fait accompli. With the same success, you can conduct a poll “Which number is greater, 15 or 5”? or “Is it true that owls exist”?
Steven Fry
“The Book of General Delusions”
If we compare all the knowledge accumulated by mankind to sand, then even the most brilliant intellectual will be like a person to whom one or two grains of sand have accidentally stuck.
Yes, there are questions that do not yet have reliable answers, they need further study. For example, it is still unknown what race the ancient Egyptians belonged to. Historians cannot agree on this issue, and ancient Egyptian art is too stylized to be judged without prejudice.
And here we turn to the second problem – how valid is your opinion and why do you adhere to it? While an opinion cannot be wrong in theory, it can be out of touch with reality—for example, it lacks logic. Let’s say I meet a House M.D. fan and he tells me that his favorite episode is so-and-so. So far, no big deal. However, over the course of the conversation, it is revealed that he or she only saw the first two seasons. If a person watched all the episodes, his opinion would be more reasonable. Of course, there is no reason to watch the entire series – it takes energy and time. Having an opinion based on little information is natural.
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- What do we really believe
But you can not take a little information wider than it is. There is a difference between persuasion and when you just don’t know the facts. For example, believing that whites face the same discrimination as black people is possible only if you are completely unaware of unemployment rates among blacks compared to whites and you are new to the fact that in the world list of heads of of the most successful companies, only 5 people out of 500 are dark-skinned, and out of 43 US presidents, 42,5 are white.
In youth, we all tend to live in a world of illusions. However, over time, entering the world and getting used to it, we discover that what we considered our informed opinion is in fact a small thought, born of our emotions and a minimum of information. Many, many, many of our opinions turn out to be ill-founded or frankly wrong. Yes, we think so, but this does not bring our opinion closer to reality, and no one is obliged to respect our point of view just because it is ours.
See website for details , online publication July 23, 2015.