A sign of stupidity
For me, a long time ago, a good indicator of a person’s foolishness and narrow-mindedness became their possession of an opinion they are ready to fight for and defend. A typical indicator phrase is: “I think so.” That’s it. Time to flush it away. Arguing is pointless. You have to agree, nod along, and look for ways to validate that person’s opinion. At least to extract some benefit from their presence in your world. Otherwise, you might as well just walk away.
Often, people with “opinions” refer to pluralism “I respect other people’s opinions, so you should respect mine too. If you don’t respect my opinion, then you’re rude, uncivilized, and not worth talking to. A principled and uncompromising jerk, and all that. By the way, everyone usually thinks according to their own level of depravity, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”
The most interesting part is that there is opinion, and then there is fact, knowledge. Facts are stubborn things. A theory is worth something when it has predictive power. People with an opinion possess no knowledge, cannot work with facts, and defend with all their might the inviolability of their model of the world — or rather of their own little world with fairies and goblins, with astrology, homeopathy and “spiritual practices.” The very demand that other people’s opinions be respected is incorrect. An opinion should not be taken into account at all. Nobody’s, including your own. Half-educated people have opinions and treat them as the primary thing when defending their point of view. They simply do not have the knowledge that forms the point of view of people who are educated, informed, experienced and wise.
Semi-educated people, for example, cannot understand at all why. synthetic theory of evolution true, but creationism — No. They only see the tip of the iceberg — the phrases coming from the speaker, and they haven’t spent 10 years on their own education to truly understand where facts end and opinions begin. They will argue passionately, trying to disprove Darwin’s theory, without even listening to the arguments that… Darwinism In fact, he is not right, and no one disputes that with them.
If you show facts to a person who holds a strong opinion, they won’t take them any more seriously than just a counterpoint in a debate. They’ll start to get personal, ask loaded questions, deny the reliability of the source of the facts without offering a more credible one by their own standards, nitpick the wording, and ignore uncomfortable logical conclusions. And finally, as the most unassailable argument, they’ll inevitably ask, “So, do you recognize anyone’s opinion other than your own?” and walk away with a sense of victory, revealing that they themselves don’t acknowledge anyone’s opinion but their own, which supports their little world and justifies their actions.
Such people with an opinion believe that their views on how the world is arranged and their right to deny facts are the same kind of thing as their right to their own view on their preferred color, food, blogging platform, make of car, style, sexual preferences and taste, about which, as everyone knows, there is no arguing. That is, for them the choice between two theories comes down to a spinal-cord “like it — don’t like it,” simply because they have no other criteria for judging truth. They did not learn any at school. They could not, or did not want to.
The aggressive variety of opinion-holder is particularly dangerous. The last hope of humanity remains the theory of evolution, mentioned above for a reason, which may deny people with an opinion the chance to reproduce successfully. Perhaps that is precisely why they so often reject it? For there is an opinion, after all, that you do not need a seat belt behind the wheel, that vaccinations do children more harm than good, that homeopathy is better than conventional medicine, that veganism is a blessing and that celibacy is the road to success in life.