Let's talk about opinions.

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Let's talk about opinions. Anonymous 11/30/14 (Sun) 11:38:09 No.495

Opinions are something very unique; in that no matter how many people are backing you up, there's bound to be someone who'll disagree with you.

It's also unique in a sense that one will always think of their opinions are the correct or the best one, unless of course they have their own doubts of their own opinions; in which they might change their own views if they identify another idea to be more correct than theirs'.

One might tolerate other opinions, one might even appreciate other opinions, but one will still disagree with the other opinion.

One who stands on the white side will get opposing voices from the black side, and vice versa. One might try to be on both sides to have the best of both worlds, but they will be scorned for being two-faced and hypocritical. One might say it's safer to stand on the neutral grey area, but still they will be called out by both the black and white for indecision. One might think it's wiser to stay silent, but others will call them out for not voicing out their minds.

What do you think? What exactly is the closest thing to a "perfect opinion?"

Anonymous 11/30/14 (Sun) 17:50:55 No.498

>>495
You're basically taking a roundabout way to talk about what is basically epistemology and theories of truth.

So long as we are finite, most of what we believe is mere opinion backed by other opinions of "qualified" persons before us.

It's all like, your opinion man.

Anonymous 12/01/14 (Mon) 18:08:44 No.504

>>498
I think you're right that this is a question of epistemology. Here's my take on it:

An opinion is a hypothesis, which can either be true or false. The goal of any discussion must be to approach the truth. This is most efficiently achieved by eliminating hypotheses which are demonstrably false.

For example, two people are arguing about the shape of the earth. One claims that it's cubical, the other that it's flat. Together, they work out testable consequences and predictions which must follow from their opinions (both agree that it must have at least one edge). They agree to travel in one direction. They discover that they end up where they started and that no edges have been observed. Both opinions are rejected and they work out that the earth is probably a sphere - until they discover that its rotation makes it an oblate spheroid. Rinse and repeat.

What I'm getting at is this: Useful opinions are ones, which produce testable claims. Bad opinions are untestable. If there is a black/white scenario like the one OP describes, work out the predictions of both sides and see which (if any) holds up to facts.

Anonymous 12/01/14 (Mon) 23:29:55 No.506

>>504
You misunderstand what an opinion is. When someone says, "My opinion is…", they're not talking about a testable hypothesis unless they specifically state so. An opinion us an unqualified statement, a claim that the person who states it knows they have no evidence for other than Y said so in X theory, or muh feelings.

When you ask me what my opinion of something/someone is you may as well ask how I feel about it/them.

Anonymous 12/02/14 (Tue) 08:46:26 No.507

>>506
Maybe I should have specified, that I was trying to determine what constitutes a useful opinion.

Anonymous 12/15/14 (Mon) 02:49:38 No.553

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I have a feeling that you haven't read any serious philosophy. Either that or you haven't read the Greeks.

Opinions are useless. An opinion is something that isn't argued for, verifiable, or based in fact; it is an inclination someone has, based on either their emotions, their limited experiences, or their personal preferences. Plato talks about a Justified True Belief when showing what the difference is between knowledge and an opinion.

But, even if you're someone who doesn't care about the Greeks, the correspondence theory of truth is so ubiquitous in philosophy ever since Descartes that I still don't see why you decided to start a thread about fucking opinions. Opinions, as I said before, aren't based on reasoning; when we say something is logically truthful, we mean that the claim someone has made is in correspondence with how things actually are in the world. Opinions are formed without this consideration; they're just assumed to be right.

Fuck opinions. They have no place in useful discourse.