The most famous quip ever about opinions belongs to NY Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927 - 2003). It goes, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Opinions look like facts, like declarations of the truth (“This statement is true”); but unlike factual statements, opinions are never provably true or false. Indeed, not all factual statements are true, some are statements that are false. But opinions are statements that are never demonstrably true or false. BELIEFS and POINTS OF VIEW, on the other hand, may consist of opinions and/or factual statements.
The reason for this rant about opinions is this: in America – the world’s model of a working democracy, where what is true seems to be determined by popular vote – there are an alarming number of citizens who believe that they have a right to their opinion when they do not – because something that they have said is not an opinion, it is a statement that can be proved true or false.
The best example of a domain where opinions have no place is science. Especially the “hard sciences” (math, logic, astronomy, physics) and less so the “soft sciences” (biology, zoology & botany, and the human/social sciences). The hard sciences deal in absolute certainty (like 2+2=4) while the soft sciences deal in probability (“your cold will last a week”). A striking example of certainty in a hard science (e.g., astronomy) is this: the next Solar Eclipse that will be visible in the United States will be on display on October 14th, 2023, and will be visible in Albuquerque, NM at 11:00 am local time. Wow, huh? Can you tell me with certainty and with that level of precision where you will be ten days from now at 2:45 pm local time? Even this statement cannot be an opinion as it will be proved either true or false come October 14th, 2023.
But not every assertive statement ("this statement is true") is either a factual statement (true or false) or an opinion! There are other kinds of assertive statements.
If you cannot name the 16th president of the United States (A. Lincoln), but you hazard a guess anyway, your guess is not a fact or an opinion, it is just a flaming GUESS.
If you have a problem with Darwinian Evolution – particularly the notion that we humans are primates and near cousins to chimpanzees – your denial of Evolution is not an OPINION, it is just a bad case of science denialism or ignorance, a factual kind of statement that is false. While God may have written the Good Book 2,000 or more years ago, He also had a hand in the progress of science since then. We are apes, like it or not! A few of us are smart apes (e.g., Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein come to mind). Most of us are just ordinary chimpanzees!
Crystal balling the future is also not an opinion; it is a PREDICTION. Or a guess. The reason it is not an opinion is it will be proved true or false in time, rendering your guess a good or bad prediction. If that future event is sufficiently far in the future, when neither of us will be around to verify that prediction, then maybe we can call it an opinion.
You like Vincent van Gogh but don’t much care for Pablo Picasso? “I don’t GET Picasso; he is not a great artist.” For most of us – who do not spend our spare time in art museums, who are neither artists nor art critics nor art historians nor teachers of the fine arts – our feelings about van Gogh and Picasso are just reflections of our (untutored) TASTE! Not an opinion of any sort. Just taste. For experts in the field (see list above), it may be an opinion, but it is an informed opinion, unlike our uninformed taste.
In an Economist/YouGov Poll of February 6 - 9, 2021 among 1500 U.S. Adult Citizens, Barack Obama was selected as the best president in American history by 18% of respondents and Donald Trump as the best president in American history by 13% of respondents. The first thing that pops into MY head is: these 31% (18% + 13%) of respondents are revealing themselves to be ignorant of American history; one wonders how many presidents they can even name. If I were one of these Americans, I would hope that I would have the wisdom to say to the pollster: “I am flattered that you are asking me for my opinion, but I know so little about the subject that any answer that I might share with you would only expose me to be an ignorant fool. But if you are asking these questions to ascertain just how informed or ignorant Americans are about their own history, you have my consent to record me as among the ignorant, but not among the foolish. So, thanks, but no thanks.” Now THAT is WISDOM, knowing when your “opinion" does not and should not count, when your opinion is uninformed.
So, what then qualifies as an “opinion”? Answers to certain kinds of questions are always opinions. What kinds of questions? A) Those which are not well-defined or measurable. B) And those where there are a host of possible “right” or acceptable answers.
Huh?
The question about “best president” is such a question. What does “best president” even mean? There must be dozens of factors that go into that ambiguous phrase. Are all these factors measurable? Communication skills. How is that defined, how is it measured? Intelligence. IQ may measure intelligence, but is that what the questioner really means? Do you see the difficulties?
And “who was the best president?” has multiple answers, sensible and otherwise. Lincoln and Washington and FDR and maybe Cousin Teddy are all possible sensible responses, informed opinions. Obama or Trump are legitimate as opinions, but they are not sensible or informed opinions as they depend on one’s ignorance of American presidential history. A sensible or informed opinion is fact-based, an "expert" opinion, while an insensible or uninformed opinion is ignorance based. But both are opinions. This is the perfect place to define the much-maligned word “expert.” An expert is someone who has devoted time and effort – typically measured in decades and/or 10,000 hours and more – to learn the facts in a field of study, and whose opinions are informed by facts and intelligence.
Often, when words such as “greatest” and “least” or “best” and “worst” are used in a question soliciting a judgment, you are being asked for your opinion. And while no opinions are ever the single correct answer, most opinions are either informed or uninformed. If you are asked to name “the greatest baseball player of all time,” and you are not a rabid fan of baseball lore and legend, be smart and pass on the question. At the right time, humility looks brilliant and inspired. And wise.
I think most would agree with this as sensible. It seems the hard part is choosing who gets determine what counts as "fact". All is well when humanity agrees, but quite a mess when they don't.
ReplyDeleteOur race to the Moon never asked a single question of a voter; the ONLY people who were involved at all in the Mission were EXPERTS in their fields. It took "humanity" 200 years to accept Copernicus' Heliocentric universe. If we can't find a way to institutionalize EXPERT testimony so as to override popular opinion, democracy MUST fail. Maybe a way to accomplish this would be to subject every statement a politician utters to a fact-check process. Who will decide what are the facts? Experts, of course. And when experts do not agree among themselves, to a significant level (say, 90%++), it should be open season for the great unwashed. But any officeholder who travels in NON-facts (according to EXPERTS), should be removed from office, permanently, no matter what the voters want.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, among experts in their field, Donald J Trump is one of the four WORST presidents, even among Republican experts. This may change over time. But don't wait up.