I was recently in a class where a few of us lowly undergraduates were discussing our opinions on transgenic medical techniques and therapy. Controversial, vaguely defined, budding science that everybody seems to have a strong, emotional opinion on… even if it’s the first time they’ve heard about the subject. There were a lot of statements that started with “I just think”, “well it’s just my opinion” or “I just feel like”. After the class, some rather annoyed students were discussing the speed at which some of their opinions were shot down during the discussion and how that was unfair and discriminatory that was. How can my opinion be “wrong”? After all, everyone is entitled to their opinion, right?
Not really. I should qualify that, we’re all entitled to think or believe what we want; mostly because there’s not really a way for anyone to govern that. That said; it takes a lot more than ‘just feeling’ to make an opinion worth having. Opinions don’t really fall into “right” and “wrong” categories, but you can have a “bad” opinion; they might be unsupported, incoherent, or simply irrelevant.
The trouble is that we’re accustomed to a paradigm in which having an opinion, and calling it our own somehow entitles us to hold it without challenge. This is absurd. You can hold your own opinion, but I can still think that you’re wrong, and I certainly don’t have to be quiet about it (and knowing me, I probably won’t be).
We all hold opinions about everything. They are the basis of the assumptions and decisions we make, they tell us what we think is the best choice. They are founded on our knowledge and our experiences, and they are constantly changing. Some are better founded than others; more defendable, universal. We have better reasons for holding them.
There’s the rub. We can hold opinions that we don’t have much reason for holding. Every time I see a person I’ve never met or a photo of a place I’ve never been, I have an ‘opinion’ of that person or place. I’ve got some basic reasons for feeling the way I do, but they’re pretty weak. I would never try to argue the validity of my opinion. I probably wouldn’t even say it out loud. I certainly would not expect anyone to agree with me. Most importantly, these are the opinions that are easily changed. Someone who knew that same place or person better than I did or had more relevant knowledge than me would have a better opinion. I could learn something from them and edit and update my viewpoint. Knowledge is in no small part about striving for good, well supported opinions on as much one can. We have to recognize when we hold opinions for no good reason, and why this makes them no good opinions.
This is why knowledge depends on discussion. If we want to expand your breadth of experience and the depth of our beliefs, we have to talk about them so that we can develop reasons for holding them. Encouraging people to challenge the opinions of others is a way to develop both of them, and we’re unfortunately going to discover that we hold a lot of bad, unsupported opinions.
Here’s the best way to catch yourself: When we start sentences with “I just think”, or “I just feel”, we’ve already qualified the rest of your sentence as not particularly well supported. We are disclaiming responsibility for the statement we’re about to make. It’s saying “please don’t challenge this”. Let’s try to say “I think”, not “I just think”. We shouldn’t settle for holding opinions that we can’t defend or support.
We should invite the discussion and risk the potential upheaval of our beliefs. What is left standing will be much more valuable.
When I was little, I thought my dad knew everything. He’s one of those people that can make you feel instantly idiotic. A real tear-down-the-foundations-of-your-belief-system kinda guy. One logical fallacy, generalization, or incorrect factoid and you’d be shut down faster than an independent coffee house next to a Tim Hortons. Nothing competes with a litigator or reasonably priced coffee.
A couple of years ago, I was talking with him about how stereoisomers can have completely different properties even though they are made of exactly the same elements. What? Is that not what everyone talks to their parents about? My father the irrefutable lawyer said “No I don’t believe that”. Not “oh really?” or “Are you sure?” Simply “no”.
It is precisely because my father is not an idiot that he looked at his then eighteen year old daughter’s second-year-university face and said to himself “nothing she says can be thought to have any factual accuracy”. It sounds harsh, but quite frankly, if I had been looking at me, I wouldn’t have taken anything I said to be of consequence either.
Just the other day, I was watching bad daytime television (it happens sometimes) when a talk show came on. The show had some kind of resident GP to consult on all things “health” related. He was being interviewed about a new study that had just come out about the effects of cellphones on developing brain cancer. I already told you, it was bad television. Cancer research itself is complicated. Hypothetical cancer research on the long term effects of cellphone usage when there is no good data set or correlates is, well, absurd at best. Yet, the show’s GP made some staggering conclusions about radiation and the sterility your phone is BBMing to your testicles in your pocket.
For the record, the most likely way your blackberry will kill you is if you twitter while driving, or if you keep answering it while you’re at dinner with me and I ordered a steak that came with a big knife.
What amazed me (okay it wasn’t amazing, it was expected and a little unfortunate), was how much everybody hung off of the doctor’s words. I’m not putting down GPs, they are great at getting you the phone numbers of specialists who will actually help you. I’m only being a little facetious, that’s precisely what they’re supposed to do! If a GP knew as much about an ailment as the specialist, they’d be the specialist. Just like I wouldn’t ask a 300 pound person (even if they were a doctor) about weight loss or my genetics professor about Greek philosophy.
If it had been someone with a PhD in chemistry who told my father about stereoisomers, he probably wouldn’t have said “no”. To him, I was about as reliable as Wikipedia; a vessel of mindless regurgitation of popular dogma.
So check your sources. Follow the funding, motivations, and platforms of the people you’re relying on for information. Information goes down better with a few grains of salt. Just because it’s in print, in a journal (there are “academic” journals about clairvoyance), or narrated by Morgan Freeman doesn’t make it infallible, no matter how soothing the baritone may be.
