I just need to get something off my chest.
There's something that's been bothering me for a really, really long time.
I don't know when it started, but at some point while I'm teaching at college,
students have been come in and bringing this into the classroom.
You might have heard it before.
Fact versus opinion.
OK, now I know now from enough students,
I've talked to enough students that they're getting this somewhere along the
line before they get to college and the philosopher in me is annoyed,
pissed off, frustrated as hell.
Any time somebody brings up this distinction, it is a dumb, stupid,
non-existent thing.
We need to stop with this fact versus opinion bullshit.
OK, that distinction does not exist.
Let me explain.
Let me just break it down for you.
OK, what exactly is an opinion?
An opinion is a belief that somebody has, right?
It's a belief that somebody has.
All right, so if you say that I have an
opinion, it just means that you're going to tell me some shit that you believe to
be true. OK, now, whatever, regardless of what you believe,
you may or may not be correct.
Right. So opinions could be true and opinions can be false.
Does this make sense?
This should make sense, right?
Because, look, some of the opinions we have turns out to be right.
Sometimes turns out to be wrong.
OK, now, some people's opinions are completely baseless.
Right. Some people have opinions that are founded in nothing.
They have no support for it.
They just believe whatever they believe.
Right. But there's no good reason backing up their beliefs, their opinions.
In this case, right.
Other people might have very good reason for believing what they believe.
Right. And so their opinions might be very well informed.
Right. They did a dig dive.
They had done research.
They were really well educated and knowledgeable in a particular area that
they have a belief in. OK, so you could have an opinion that is either true or
false and independent of whether or not is true or false.
You could also have an opinion that is well-founded, that has good supporting
evidence and ones that are just not well-founded.
Right. You believe it, but for no for no good reason.
OK, does this make sense?
So opinions could be all sorts of things.
Opinions can be true. Opinions can be false.
Opinions could be well supported, well reasoned, and it could not.
All right.
Now, what exactly are facts supposed to be as opposed to opinions?
This distinction doesn't make sense because facts.
Well, first of all, I have no idea what facts actually are supposed to be
referring to. Somebody explain this to me.
All right. What are facts supposed to be?
Are facts supposed to be just simply data points?
Like if you took a survey and then this is the data that came out of that survey,
is a fact supposed to be something that is actually true?
Right. Or is a fact supposed to be, I don't know, well supported beliefs,
well supported claims? Right.
I have no idea what people are referring to when they're referring to facts.
Now, based off of the way that students at least have used this term.
OK.
I have gathered that many of them think,
seem to think that it means a true statement, something that is
that is beyond doubt that everyone should acknowledge as this is true.
OK, I don't know if that's what is being taught or if this is just what students
are taking away from it, but as I said, with what the various
things that opinions can be, right, opinions could also technically be facts.
Right. Because if you hold true beliefs, then, well, those are facts.
Right. There's no versus.
There's no distinction between these two.
They're one and the same thing.
OK. All right.
In other words, distinguishing between facts and opinions make it seem as if
somehow opinions are less than, but that's bullshit.
OK, I have a lot of opinions.
OK, my friends will tell you some of my opinions.
Absolutely stupid.
When I go on tirades like this in my own personal time, a lot of them will tell me,
call me out for it, will say, you're being stupid.
You're not making any sense.
That's definitely not true.
Here's some evidence to go ahead and prove you otherwise.
OK. All right.
I can be wrong about my opinions a lot of times.
Right. But there are times when my opinions are absolutely 100 percent true,
or at least I believe them to be true and I hope that I have good evidence for thinking so.
OK, my point being that the distinction between opinion and fact makes it seem as
if opinions are just not up to the level of quote unquote fact, whatever the hell that is.
All right.
Opinions could be very, very, very highly regarded,
especially if they have if someone has good reason for thinking they're true.
All right.
Look, a lot of the things that, you know,
people in the public eye, people within academia, just people across the board,
they have opinions all over the place.
Some people you trust. Right.
Why do you trust them?
Because their opinions, and that's what they are, their opinions,
whatever they believe, those are their opinions, might be more likely to be true than not.
And what do we base that on?
We base it on all kinds of reasons. Right.
We might think that they are again, they have good reasons that they could,
you know, expound upon, they could tell you exactly what they mean and why they
think so, they might give you like data points to try to back up their claim.
They might give you well reasoned arguments.
OK, all right.
So opinions are not in any way less than a true statement.
In fact, they could be one of the same thing.
We should not care about this dumb distinction between what is it?
Fact and opinion. All right.
The distinction that we should care about is well supported, well reasoned opinions.
Right. Versus just straight dumb ass grounded in nothing based on just a feeling
or an impression you have opinion doesn't make sense.
Like, look, I don't care whether you have an opinion or not.
Everybody has opinions.
Having an opinion does not mean that whatever it is that you have an opinion
on is somehow, you know, nothing more than a feeling.
That's not what it is. OK.
A lot of people have very good opinions.
Their opinions are grounded in something quite reasonable.
OK, what I care about is why you have the opinions you do.
OK, people come to bad conclusions, wrong conclusions, right.
Based off of good reason.
This happens a lot of the times.
You might reason really well and come to a poor answer.
This happens all the time when researchers are doing some experiment, right?
Like they might have good reason for predicting X, Y and Z.
And then it turns out that they were wrong.
That's part of learning.
That's part of life. Right.
You get stuff wrong a lot of the times. All right.
But just because you had an opinion on it doesn't mean that it wasn't worthy
of some sort of respect and some sort of, you know, people actually seeing that
opinion as a very good opinion to hold, maybe an opinion that maybe everybody
should hold, like, you know, the earth being round.
OK.
Oh, so frustrating.
OK, so what's the lesson here?
Do not ever come in front of me and ever say, well, but that's just your opinion.
It's not a fact. It's like, shut up.
OK, what I want you to tell me is why you think the opinion is wrong.
That's what's more important.
It's not what you believe.
It's why you believe it.
OK, a lot, a lot, a lot of people just making terrible, right,
terrible, terrible arguments could just by luck come to the correct conclusion.
I don't care that you came to the correct conclusion.
I care about the fact that you did it in such a stupid ass way.
OK.
If you want to gain my respect, OK,
it's not about whether or not your opinion is true.
It's going to be about why you believe what you believe.
OK.
And if you have good reasons for believing what you believe,
I could respect you even if it turns out that the conclusion you come to is,
in fact, false. OK, this is what it means to have reasoned discussions, right?
An exchange of ideas, exchange of, right, thought provoking back and forth
where we could help each other get better at reasoning and get better at finding
the truth. OK.
So please, for the love of God, please never, ever, ever.
And I swear, there's a teacher out there who is teaching this to students.
OK, I'm talking specifically to you or parents or anybody else.
Right. Or if it's just like a peer thing,
right, if like students are saying this stuff to each other.
OK, I want everyone to just stop it.
OK, this is dumb.
This thing doesn't exist.
Fact versus opinion thing does not exist.
There's better words here for explaining
what you might have in mind, but this is definitely not it.
OK.
Oh, glad I got that off my chest.