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I just need to get something off my chest.

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There's something that's been bothering me for a really, really long time.

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I don't know when it started, but at some point while I'm teaching at college,

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students have been come in and bringing this into the classroom.

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You might have heard it before.

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Fact versus opinion.

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OK, now I know now from enough students,

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I've talked to enough students that they're getting this somewhere along the

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line before they get to college and the philosopher in me is annoyed,

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pissed off, frustrated as hell.

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Any time somebody brings up this distinction, it is a dumb, stupid,

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non-existent thing.

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We need to stop with this fact versus opinion bullshit.

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OK, that distinction does not exist.

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Let me explain.

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Let me just break it down for you.

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OK, what exactly is an opinion?

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An opinion is a belief that somebody has, right?

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It's a belief that somebody has.

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All right, so if you say that I have an

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opinion, it just means that you're going to tell me some shit that you believe to

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be true. OK, now, whatever, regardless of what you believe,

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you may or may not be correct.

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Right. So opinions could be true and opinions can be false.

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Does this make sense?

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This should make sense, right?

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Because, look, some of the opinions we have turns out to be right.

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Sometimes turns out to be wrong.

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OK, now, some people's opinions are completely baseless.

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Right. Some people have opinions that are founded in nothing.

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They have no support for it.

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They just believe whatever they believe.

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Right. But there's no good reason backing up their beliefs, their opinions.

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In this case, right.

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Other people might have very good reason for believing what they believe.

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Right. And so their opinions might be very well informed.

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Right. They did a dig dive.

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They had done research.

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They were really well educated and knowledgeable in a particular area that

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they have a belief in. OK, so you could have an opinion that is either true or

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false and independent of whether or not is true or false.

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You could also have an opinion that is well-founded, that has good supporting

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evidence and ones that are just not well-founded.

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Right. You believe it, but for no for no good reason.

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OK, does this make sense?

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So opinions could be all sorts of things.

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Opinions can be true. Opinions can be false.

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Opinions could be well supported, well reasoned, and it could not.

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All right.

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Now, what exactly are facts supposed to be as opposed to opinions?

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This distinction doesn't make sense because facts.

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Well, first of all, I have no idea what facts actually are supposed to be

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referring to. Somebody explain this to me.

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All right. What are facts supposed to be?

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Are facts supposed to be just simply data points?

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Like if you took a survey and then this is the data that came out of that survey,

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is a fact supposed to be something that is actually true?

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Right. Or is a fact supposed to be, I don't know, well supported beliefs,

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well supported claims? Right.

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I have no idea what people are referring to when they're referring to facts.

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Now, based off of the way that students at least have used this term.

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OK.

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I have gathered that many of them think,

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seem to think that it means a true statement, something that is

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that is beyond doubt that everyone should acknowledge as this is true.

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OK, I don't know if that's what is being taught or if this is just what students

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are taking away from it, but as I said, with what the various

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things that opinions can be, right, opinions could also technically be facts.

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Right. Because if you hold true beliefs, then, well, those are facts.

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Right. There's no versus.

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There's no distinction between these two.

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They're one and the same thing.

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OK. All right.

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In other words, distinguishing between facts and opinions make it seem as if

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somehow opinions are less than, but that's bullshit.

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OK, I have a lot of opinions.

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OK, my friends will tell you some of my opinions.

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Absolutely stupid.

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When I go on tirades like this in my own personal time, a lot of them will tell me,

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call me out for it, will say, you're being stupid.

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You're not making any sense.

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That's definitely not true.

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Here's some evidence to go ahead and prove you otherwise.

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OK. All right.

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I can be wrong about my opinions a lot of times.

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Right. But there are times when my opinions are absolutely 100 percent true,

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or at least I believe them to be true and I hope that I have good evidence for thinking so.

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OK, my point being that the distinction between opinion and fact makes it seem as

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if opinions are just not up to the level of quote unquote fact, whatever the hell that is.

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All right.

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Opinions could be very, very, very highly regarded,

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especially if they have if someone has good reason for thinking they're true.

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All right.

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Look, a lot of the things that, you know,

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people in the public eye, people within academia, just people across the board,

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they have opinions all over the place.

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Some people you trust. Right.

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Why do you trust them?

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Because their opinions, and that's what they are, their opinions,

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whatever they believe, those are their opinions, might be more likely to be true than not.

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And what do we base that on?

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We base it on all kinds of reasons. Right.

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We might think that they are again, they have good reasons that they could,

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you know, expound upon, they could tell you exactly what they mean and why they

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think so, they might give you like data points to try to back up their claim.

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They might give you well reasoned arguments.

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OK, all right.

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So opinions are not in any way less than a true statement.

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In fact, they could be one of the same thing.

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We should not care about this dumb distinction between what is it?

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Fact and opinion. All right.

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The distinction that we should care about is well supported, well reasoned opinions.

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Right. Versus just straight dumb ass grounded in nothing based on just a feeling

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or an impression you have opinion doesn't make sense.

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Like, look, I don't care whether you have an opinion or not.

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Everybody has opinions.

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Having an opinion does not mean that whatever it is that you have an opinion

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on is somehow, you know, nothing more than a feeling.

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That's not what it is. OK.

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A lot of people have very good opinions.

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Their opinions are grounded in something quite reasonable.

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OK, what I care about is why you have the opinions you do.

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OK, people come to bad conclusions, wrong conclusions, right.

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Based off of good reason.

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This happens a lot of the times.

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You might reason really well and come to a poor answer.

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This happens all the time when researchers are doing some experiment, right?

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Like they might have good reason for predicting X, Y and Z.

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And then it turns out that they were wrong.

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That's part of learning.

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That's part of life. Right.

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You get stuff wrong a lot of the times. All right.

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But just because you had an opinion on it doesn't mean that it wasn't worthy

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of some sort of respect and some sort of, you know, people actually seeing that

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opinion as a very good opinion to hold, maybe an opinion that maybe everybody

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should hold, like, you know, the earth being round.

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OK.

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Oh, so frustrating.

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OK, so what's the lesson here?

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Do not ever come in front of me and ever say, well, but that's just your opinion.

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It's not a fact. It's like, shut up.

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OK, what I want you to tell me is why you think the opinion is wrong.

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That's what's more important.

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It's not what you believe.

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It's why you believe it.

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OK, a lot, a lot, a lot of people just making terrible, right,

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terrible, terrible arguments could just by luck come to the correct conclusion.

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I don't care that you came to the correct conclusion.

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I care about the fact that you did it in such a stupid ass way.

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OK.

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If you want to gain my respect, OK,

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it's not about whether or not your opinion is true.

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It's going to be about why you believe what you believe.

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OK.

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And if you have good reasons for believing what you believe,

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I could respect you even if it turns out that the conclusion you come to is,

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in fact, false. OK, this is what it means to have reasoned discussions, right?

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An exchange of ideas, exchange of, right, thought provoking back and forth

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where we could help each other get better at reasoning and get better at finding

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the truth. OK.

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So please, for the love of God, please never, ever, ever.

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And I swear, there's a teacher out there who is teaching this to students.

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OK, I'm talking specifically to you or parents or anybody else.

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Right. Or if it's just like a peer thing,

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right, if like students are saying this stuff to each other.

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OK, I want everyone to just stop it.

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OK, this is dumb.

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This thing doesn't exist.

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Fact versus opinion thing does not exist.

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There's better words here for explaining

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what you might have in mind, but this is definitely not it.

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OK.

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Oh, glad I got that off my chest.