LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With QuoteNever. Opinions are things you believe and fight for because you can't call them facts.Originally Posted by Mel
Fact Vs Popular Opinion
In your opinion, do facts generally tally with popular opinion? Give example, if you have some.
Never. Opinions are things you believe and fight for because you can't call them facts.
Mel (07-23-2010)
But, the opinions must come from somewhere. Surely, there must be some kind of information or ''information'' source feeding popular opinion.
Maybe I'm not understanding you....... but Facts & Opinions are 2 separate things & I don't get your "Tally" concept??
Many forum members (especially from the right, imo) have a real problem differentiation between the two. They truly believe that their opinions are facts & try to sell them as such.
Does chocolate ice cream taste better than strawberry?......Would any answer to that question be a fact that would Tally in the general public's minds?
Facts are scientifically provable & universal....Opinions are personal & require no proof. (A fact exists in the real world...an opinion only exists in one's mind)
Last edited by Devil505; 07-22-2010 at 05:27 AM.
"The secrecy of my job prevents me from knowing what I am doing"
cassandrabandra (07-22-2010), Mel (07-23-2010)
Really, tell us more.
In your opinion....did you say?Many forum members (especially from the right, imo) have a real problem differentiation between the two.
Bwahahahahahahaha...exactly!Facts are scientifically provable & universal....Opinions are personal & require no proof
Mel (07-23-2010)
Popular opinion is often not based on facts at all.
"It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them." -Noam Chomsky
Good point, I give you the 2008 Presidential election as proof.
Well, we have to be specific about it. On many issues, statistical data, research and history tells an entirely different story than popular opinion. An entire election is far too broad to make a case for it not being based on facts or not, as there are many, many variables. You have to break it down from issue to issue.
"It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them." -Noam Chomsky
Opinions more often come from emotions, not logic.
e.g. "We should force citizens to pay for the health care of other citizens, because it's the right thing to do." or "Non-whites are inferior." out of anger.
If opinions had foundation, they'd be facts.
~ Charles Stover
The information sources Americans have been gravitating towards since 1996 have increasingly lesser amounts of the type of objective "facts" that used to be presented by people with journalism degrees. The resulting very distrubing trend is...biased information being written by biased authors presented as "fact" by biased pundits on a biased news source to a biased audience. This creates nasty inbred thinking that is most often damaging to enlightened societies.
The only thing we can do is practice our logic and critical reasoning skills on every piece of information presented to you, because I don't know where to go for information you can be sure is unbiased these days. If you eliminate all media sources and just get your political information from CSPAN, you're still hearing biased rhetoric from biased politicians.
If you get your information from biased cable news, blogs, or talk radio, and come on this forum and stand behind what you heard as objective reality...don't look now, but you may have far more bovine scatology in your head than you do "facts"
So no, popular opinion rarely tallys with facts. At least in the political world. Now! the disciplines of Math and Chemistry are filled with facts that tally with popular opinion.
Last edited by Goldwater; 07-22-2010 at 10:34 AM.
Posting Permissions 
