Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
Posts: 19,742
|
Post by Dub on Jul 27, 2015 11:09:18 GMT -5
… You're just wrong. (houstonpress.com - by Jef Rauner on July 22, 2015)
I spend far more time arguing on the Internet than can possibly be healthy, and the word I’ve come to loath more than any other is “opinion”. Opinion, or worse “belief”, has become the shield of every poorly-conceived notion that worms its way onto social media.
There’s a common conception that an opinion cannot be wrong. My dad said it. Hell, everyone’s dad probably said it and in the strictest terms it is true. However, before you crouch behind your Shield of Opinion you need to ask yourself two questions.
1. Is this actually an opinion?
2. If it is an opinion how informed is it and why do I hold it?
I’ll help you with the first part. An opinion is a preference for or judgment of something. My favorite color is black. I think mint tastes awful. Doctor Who is the best television show. These are all opinions. They may be unique to me alone or massively shared across the general population but they all have one thing in common; they cannot be verified outside the fact that I believe them.
There’s nothing wrong with an opinion on those things. The problem comes from people whose opinions are actually misconceptions. If you think vaccines cause autism you are expressing something factually wrong, not an opinion. The fact that you may still believe that vaccines cause autism does not move your misconception into the realm of valid opinion. Nor does the fact that many other share this opinion give it any more validity.
To quote John Oliver, who referenced a Gallup poll showing one in four Americans believe climate change isn’t real on his show, Last Week Tonight…You saw this same thing recently when questions about the Confederate flag started making the rounds. It may be your opinion that slavery was not the driving cause of the Civil War, but the Texas Articles of Secession mention slavery 21 times (rights are mentioned only six, and only once in a sentence that doesn’t mention either slavery or how way more flippin’ awesome white people are than black people). Do I even need to point out that some people are also of the opinion the Holocaust was fake, and that their opinion means absolutely nothing to the reality?
And yes, sometimes scientific or historical data is wrong or unclear or in need of further examination. Everyone knows water expands when it freezes. Do you know why it does that when literally nothing else in the world does? Nope, and neither does science. Or hey, here’s a question; what was the racial heritage of the Ancient Egyptians because historians can’t come to a consensus and their art is too stylized to accurately judge.
Subjects like that are the sort of things that are ripe for an opinion. Water expands when it freezes because of the shape of the molecule. The Egyptians were a displaced black African race that settled the Nile. Here, opinion can be a placeholder for a greater understanding assuming there ever is a greater understanding. There is no verification; it can only be guessed at. Hopefully in an educated manner.
That’s where the second question comes in; is your opinion informed and why do you believe it? Though technically these opinions cannot be wrong they can be lacking in worth simply because they are lacking in structure.
Here’s an example. Let’s say I meet a fellow Doctor Who fan, and this fan’s favorite Doctor is David Tennant. Nothing wrong so far. However, upon further discussing the subject this fan tells me that he or she has never seen any of the pre-2005 episodes or heard any of the radio plays. Now, it’s possible that even if he or she had David Tennant would still be his or her favorite Doctor, but it’s also possible that it would be Tom Baker or Paul McGann or someone else.
In a perfect world someone confronted with this would simply say, “Well, David Tennant is my favorite that I’ve seen.” There’s plenty of reasons to not have seen any older Doctor Who. It’s not all on Netflix, there’s a lot of it, radio plays can get rather expensive, etc. Having a narrow opinion from a narrow set of information is only natural.
What mucks it all up when a narrow set of information is assumed to be wider than it is. There is a difference between a belief and things you just didn’t know. It’s easy to believe, for instance, that whites face as much discrimination as people of color, but only if you are completely ignorant of the unemployment rates of blacks versus whites, the fact that of the Fortune 500 CEOs only five are black, or the fact that of the 43 men who have been president 42.5 of them have been white.
In other words, you can form an opinion in a bubble, and for the first couple of decades of our lives we all do. However, eventually you are going to venture out into the world and find that what you thought was an informed opinion was actually just a tiny thought based on little data and your feelings. Many, many, many of your opinions will turn out to be uninformed or just flat out wrong. No, the fact that you believed it doesn’t make it any more valid or worthwhile, and nobody owes your viewpoint any respect simply because it is yours.
You can be wrong or ignorant. It will happen. Reality does not care about your feelings. Education does not exist to persecute you. The misinformed are not an ethnic minority being oppressed. What’s that? Planned Parenthood is chopping up dead babies and selling them for phat cash? No, that’s not what actually happened. No, it’s not your opinion. You’re just wrong.
|
|
Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
Posts: 19,742
|
Post by Dub on Jul 27, 2015 11:12:56 GMT -5
Linked from the piece above was this TED Talk from 2011. I think this is just brilliant… though it looks as though I could be wrong.
|
|
|
Post by millring on Jul 27, 2015 11:18:03 GMT -5
My observation (from having noted the comments on facebook to this viral video):
No matter how many ways this concept is expressed, everyone who loves this video and this concept is absolutely positive that the person presenting the video is talking about EVERYONE ELSE. Not them.
|
|
|
Post by millring on Jul 27, 2015 11:18:56 GMT -5
Notice: She started out with "So...."
|
|
Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
Posts: 19,742
|
Post by Dub on Jul 27, 2015 11:21:24 GMT -5
My observation (from having noted the comments on facebook to this viral video): No matter how many ways this concept is expressed, everyone who loves this video and this concept is absolutely positive that the person presenting the video is talking about EVERYONE ELSE. Not them. So, I didn't see the Facebook link nor the associated comments but I'm sure you're right. I, on the other hand, assume she means me. Right?
|
|
|
Post by millring on Jul 27, 2015 11:41:40 GMT -5
Confession: I read the headline before and because is summed up what I thought the video was about (opinion vs fact) and the comments that followed the video did nothing to dissuade me from that presumption, I never watched the video. But because Dub put it up ( a recommendation from someone whose opinion I do value) I finally listened to the video.
The opinion vs facts thing is the LAST quote I'd have pulled from the video as a clickbait headline. I really like the video and it really underscores the odyssey I feel as though I've been on the past decade or so. I've never felt as though I know less than I do right now.
|
|
|
Post by Marshall on Jul 27, 2015 11:47:37 GMT -5
I remember back in college studying Art History. And I'd look at all the slides and review all the pictures and I'd draw my own conclusions about the validity of this-and-that. And how this-looks-like-it-is-derived from that. I think as artists, we are encouraged to take our own meaning from things we observe and apply it to our own efforts. That works nicely in how it influences our new work. But it has no basis on truth or fact about the things we are observing. I found that out quickly as I would repeatedly be corrected for my wrong opinions/observations about what I was being tested on. So I learned to turn off the observational eye and turn on the memorization/regurgitation machine when it came to test time.
Much the same applies to things we see and hear these days. The temptation is to take what reinforces our preconceived view of things, and reject what doesn't; without any concern for the accuracy (or not) of anything we see/hear. In part it's because we are bombarded daily with so much information that it's impossible for us to dig to the bottom of anything. There just aren't enough hours in the day. Plus the present day bombardment of information is so slanted, that truthfully, almost nothing we see/hear is unbiased. So, it fosters an easy excuse to grab onto some factoid and run with it.
|
|
|
Post by fauxmaha on Jul 27, 2015 11:54:02 GMT -5
So, I was sitting in the living room last night, watching Lavalantula while casually listening in on Angie and my father in law talking theology in the next room. The great thing about Lavalantula, or at least one of the multitude of great things about Lavalantula, is that you don't really have to pay close attention to the dialog in order to track the plot. I had a lot of spare room in my mind for listening in. So anyway, my father in law has what I think of as sort of a elementary parochial school vision of theology. He picked it up at St. Joseph's School in Earling, IA in the 1940's. He likes to toss out things that strike him as paradoxical: "If God is all forgiving, why is there Hell?", "If God is all powerful, can He make a rock so big He can not lift it?", stuff like that. It's all kind of amusing and endearing in a way. So, you might think I'm just rambling, but I'm going somewhere with this. I think there are a lot of begged assumptions taking place most of the time we think someone else is "wrong". Get beyond simple arithmetic, and things get pretty complex. So, for example, global warming. There aren't many people who absolutely reject, root and branch, the idea that CO2 emissions impact the environment. If you look, you can find a few, just as you can find people who believe just about any other nutty thing you can imagine. But there is a grand sleight of hand act going on. In the current discourse, once one accepts AGW theories, it is simply understood that one will therefore accept whatever AGW abatement policy is currently being proposed. This is where "science" come in, because being "anti-science" is (along with being "racist") the modern heresy. We jump directly from the problem to the solution, and those who might ask "what does this solution cost?" or "why this solution and not others?" or "how can we be sure this solution doesn't do more harm than good?" or "how can we trust governments with the level of power required for these solutions?" or "how can you be sure this solution will work?" of "wouldn't localized, discrete solutions be better?" never have their concerns addressed. Instead, they are brushed away as "deniers" who are "anti-science". So, in other words John Oliver, straw man, baby, straw man.
|
|
|
Post by Marshall on Jul 27, 2015 12:25:07 GMT -5
Series of unfortunate assumptions about other people's opinions
1. The ignorance assumption
2. The Idiocy assumption
3. The Evil assumption
"The miracle of your mind isn't that you can look out the window and see the world as it is. It's that you can see the world as it isn't."
"Unlike God, we can't know what's going on out there. And unlike all the other animals, we're obsessed with trying to figure it out. To me, this obsession the the root of all our productivity and creativity."
"We eat this stuff up. We love things like plot twists, and red herrings, and surprise endings. When it comes to our stories, we love being wrong. But you know, our stories are like this, because our lives are like this. We think this one thing is going to happen. Then something else happens instead."
|
|
|
Post by Marshall on Jul 27, 2015 12:41:44 GMT -5
Yeah, I liked it.
(But I could be wrong)
|
|
|
Post by millring on Jul 27, 2015 12:53:08 GMT -5
So, for example, global warming. There aren't many people who absolutely reject, root and branch, the idea that CO2 emissions impact the environment. If you look, you can find a few, just as you can find people who believe just about any other nutty thing you can imagine. But there is a grand sleight of hand act going on. In the current discourse, once one accepts AGW theories, it is simply understood that one will therefore accept whatever AGW abatement policy is currently being proposed. This is where "science" come in, because being "anti-science" is (along with being "racist") the modern heresy. We jump directly from the problem to the solution, and those who might ask "what does this solution cost?" or "why this solution and not others?" or "how can we be sure this solution doesn't do more harm than good?" or "how can we trust governments with the level of power required for these solutions?" or "how can you be sure this solution will work?" of "wouldn't localized, discrete solutions be better?" never have their concerns addressed. Instead, they are brushed away as "deniers" who are "anti-science". Or racism and solutions to it as a cultural problem. The same people who do the sleight of hand with the global warming thing ("What's that? you don't agree with my solutions? Science denier!") do the same thing with issues of race. Lately, now that racism has been expanded to include "privilege" in a manner rhetorically charged to indict every American white man, we've gone so far beyond the intent of civil rights so as to include thought as a crime. And the thought that is a crime is one group's interpretation of what the other "side" MUST be thinking (sez they). And without even noticing it, we went directly from getting rid of government-codified racism (Jim Crow, separate-but-equal) to disallowing private ownership from having distinct meaning. Because of the sleight of hand we never even noticed the step-too-far that culture would have corrected in a better way, and we substituted a government way that actually fanned and continues to fan the flames of what was a dying cultural phenomenon.
|
|
|
Post by aquaduct on Jul 27, 2015 13:02:51 GMT -5
I also like the liberal companion meme going around that whines about how tired they are of repeating themselves to people too stupid to get it.
To which I say in a gleeful tone, does that mean you're finally going to shut the f**k up?
|
|
|
Post by Marshall on Jul 27, 2015 14:00:53 GMT -5
. . . , So, for example, global warming. There aren't many people who absolutely reject, root and branch, the idea that CO2 emissions impact the environment. If you look, you can find a few, just as you can find people who believe just about any other nutty thing you can imagine. But there is a grand sleight of hand act going on. In the current discourse, once one accepts AGW theories, it is simply understood that one will therefore accept whatever AGW abatement policy is currently being proposed. This is where "science" come in, because being "anti-science" is (along with being "racist") the modern heresy. We jump directly from the problem to the solution, and those who might ask "what does this solution cost?" or "why this solution and not others?" or "how can we be sure this solution doesn't do more harm than good?" or "how can we trust governments with the level of power required for these solutions?" or "how can you be sure this solution will work?" of "wouldn't localized, discrete solutions be better?" never have their concerns addressed. Instead, they are brushed away as "deniers" who are "anti-science". . . . , Ok. I get that. And I sort of agree. (We're getting far afield of the original post). I have this impression that there are just too many of us on the planet to stop the change, even if we knew how to correct it. And anything we do to improve, if it even worked, would be overwhelmed by the increase in population that would come from such technological advancement. And if it didn't work, then there'd be all this effort for no effect. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to do the right thing. We always should try to do that. (It's far better to light a candle than to curse the darkness) But I'm cynical about the final benefit (and leerie about the ramifications). I think our grandchildren will inherit a vastly different world than what we did. That's not good or bad. It just is.
|
|
|
Post by patrick on Jul 27, 2015 14:09:41 GMT -5
"Everyone knows water expands when it freezes. Do you know why it does that when literally nothing else in the world does? Nope, and neither does science."
He's wrong. Water expands when it freezes (at least under the conditions found on the surface of earth) because as heat is removed from water, hydrogen bonds form that are able to form the molecules into an open hexagonal lattice, which is less dense than liquid water.
Under other conditions, water freezes into other crystalline structures that are more dense than liquid water.
|
|
|
Post by TKennedy on Jul 27, 2015 14:17:54 GMT -5
I may have posted this before.
|
|
|
Post by patrick on Jul 27, 2015 14:26:15 GMT -5
So, for example, global warming. There aren't many people who absolutely reject, root and branch, the idea that CO2 emissions impact the environment. If you look, you can find a few, just as you can find people who believe just about any other nutty thing you can imagine. But there is a grand sleight of hand act going on. In the current discourse, once one accepts AGW theories, it is simply understood that one will therefore accept whatever AGW abatement policy is currently being proposed. This is where "science" come in, because being "anti-science" is (along with being "racist") the modern heresy. We jump directly from the problem to the solution, and those who might ask "what does this solution cost?" or "why this solution and not others?" or "how can we be sure this solution doesn't do more harm than good?" or "how can we trust governments with the level of power required for these solutions?" or "how can you be sure this solution will work?" of "wouldn't localized, discrete solutions be better?" never have their concerns addressed. Instead, they are brushed away as "deniers" who are "anti-science". That may be your opinion, but it would be wrong. To find outright AGW deniers, you need look no further than our elected officials, where a majority of Republican Senators and Congressmen either deny AGW or question the science behind it. E.g., Senator Inhofe. As for abatement policies and their respective strengths and weaknesses, I see those discussed and debated all the time, from "Do nothing and just enjoy the ride while you can" to active modifications of the atmosphere by injecting sulfer compounds, to carbon taxes, increasing efficiency, expanding nuclear power, etc.
|
|
|
Post by fauxmaha on Jul 27, 2015 14:44:51 GMT -5
. . . , So, for example, global warming. There aren't many people who absolutely reject, root and branch, the idea that CO2 emissions impact the environment. If you look, you can find a few, just as you can find people who believe just about any other nutty thing you can imagine. But there is a grand sleight of hand act going on. In the current discourse, once one accepts AGW theories, it is simply understood that one will therefore accept whatever AGW abatement policy is currently being proposed. This is where "science" come in, because being "anti-science" is (along with being "racist") the modern heresy. We jump directly from the problem to the solution, and those who might ask "what does this solution cost?" or "why this solution and not others?" or "how can we be sure this solution doesn't do more harm than good?" or "how can we trust governments with the level of power required for these solutions?" or "how can you be sure this solution will work?" of "wouldn't localized, discrete solutions be better?" never have their concerns addressed. Instead, they are brushed away as "deniers" who are "anti-science". . . . , Ok. I get that. And I sort of agree. (We're getting far afield of the original post). I have this impression that there are just too many of us on the planet to stop the change, even if we knew how to correct it. And anything we do to improve, if it even worked, would be overwhelmed by the increase in population that would come from such technological advancement. And if it didn't work, then there'd be all this effort for no effect. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to do the right thing. We always should try to do that. (It's far better to light a candle than to curse the darkness) But I'm cynical about the final benefit (and leerie about the ramifications). I think our grandchildren will inherit a vastly different world than what we did. That's not good or bad. It just is. That's another good point, and another bit of sleight of hand in a way, that gets to the heart of this. Suppose we really do find a set of policies* that actually succeed in dramatically reducing CO2 emissions, and actually implement those policies, and manage to keep them implemented, on a global scale, uninterrupted, for 100 years**. On what basis do we assert today that the world in 2115 plus those policies will be "better" than the world in 2115 absent those policies? To be really specific, suppose South Florida starts seeing sea level rises that nibble away at it's land mass. What will happen? I'm fairly confident in saying that the sea won't take the lower half of the state overnight. It will be a slow and gradual process. And as it happens, what will people do? Will they move to somewhere else? Will they erect some manner of levies or sea walls or whatever? Will they truck in fill dirt and raise the ground level (ala Galveston 100 years ago)? Who knows. And when it's all said and done, what is our basis for asserting that South Florida as it exists today is "better"? In that sense, much of the global warming debate can be thought of as taking place between one side that is arguing for enforced stability, and the other which is saying that change is inevitable (and unavoidable) and not only not intrinsically bad, but perhaps quite good. But you never hear the debate expressed in those terms. Because science. * Personally, I don't think that is possible, and believe that if CO2 emissions really do go down, it will be the result of the development of some currently unforseen technology. But that is beside the point. ** How does that not seem absurd on its face?
|
|
|
Post by fauxmaha on Jul 27, 2015 15:00:35 GMT -5
So, for example, global warming. There aren't many people who absolutely reject, root and branch, the idea that CO2 emissions impact the environment. If you look, you can find a few, just as you can find people who believe just about any other nutty thing you can imagine. But there is a grand sleight of hand act going on. In the current discourse, once one accepts AGW theories, it is simply understood that one will therefore accept whatever AGW abatement policy is currently being proposed. This is where "science" come in, because being "anti-science" is (along with being "racist") the modern heresy. We jump directly from the problem to the solution, and those who might ask "what does this solution cost?" or "why this solution and not others?" or "how can we be sure this solution doesn't do more harm than good?" or "how can we trust governments with the level of power required for these solutions?" or "how can you be sure this solution will work?" of "wouldn't localized, discrete solutions be better?" never have their concerns addressed. Instead, they are brushed away as "deniers" who are "anti-science". That may be your opinion, but it would be wrong. To find outright AGW deniers, you need look no further than our elected officials, where a majority of Republican Senators and Congressmen either deny AGW or question the science behind it. E.g., Senator Inhofe. As for abatement policies and their respective strengths and weaknesses, I see those discussed and debated all the time, from "Do nothing and just enjoy the ride while you can" to active modifications of the atmosphere by injecting sulfer compounds, to carbon taxes, increasing efficiency, expanding nuclear power, etc. That "or" covers quite a bit of ground, doesn't it. It is the inherent nature of science to be questioned, and given the manifest inaccuracies of global temperature predictions over the last 20 years, such questioning seems particularly apt in this case. The problem with all the AGW models is fundamentally the same as what I just mentioned WRT South Florida. The models are unable to anticipate the adaptability of the environment, just as the adaptability of people is largely unpredictable. Same with wildlife, plants, whatever. In any case, this is all a street that runs both ways. It is clear that the real fault line in the AGW debate comes down to those who enthusiastically embrace the prospect of additional government intervention in society and those who do not. For every Daniel Inhofe, there is a Barbara Boxer. But we are assured that Boxer's position is the result of an objective and impartial review of settled science, while Inhofe's is the result of either denial, stupidity or avarice. Series of unfortunate assumptions about other people's opinions
1. The ignorance assumption
2. The Idiocy assumption
3. The Evil assumption
|
|
|
Post by RickW on Jul 27, 2015 15:03:09 GMT -5
global warming and racism reactions, along with many other things, are driven by the thought, "we need to do SOMETHING". Because they are terrible problems. And most folks sitting comfortably in their homes want it fixed, without considering any consequences. Because that requires a lot of knowledge and thought. It's like having a relative on life support. We need to have them fixed, at any cost, even if there is no chance, and the cost is enormous. Because that is what humans do. Is way harder to say, "it's over," and walk away.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2015 15:44:59 GMT -5
|
|