Is that Just Like... Your Opinion, Man!?!

In a world of endless hot takes and internet debates, does truth even matter anymore? This episode dives into the difference between opinion and knowledge—how we justify beliefs, what counts as real understanding, and why not all opinions are created equal. From the Dude’s laid-back wisdom in The Big Lebowski to centuries of philosophical debate, we break down why some ideas hold more weight than others. Tune in and learn how to separate fact from feeling in a world flooded with misinformation.

opinion vs. knowledge, what is truth, philosophy of belief, justifying beliefs, misinformation and truth, critical thinking skills, The Big Lebowski philosophy, subjective vs. objective truth, epistemology explained, are all opinions equal.

Transcript

You find yourself online at 3:00 a.m., deep in a personal fact-finding mission, and you stumble across a heated debate on your favorite info-gathering site. This debate is between a person who posts regularly and you've seen them before and generally like what they have to say. Some rando person, you don't know at all. Your influencer drops what you consider to be a solid rebuttal to that hater's point, but the response just says, that's just like your opinion, man. You feel the urge to jump on the thread and reply, but what can you say back? This sounds like a thought-terminating cliché, and it probably is. I mean, of course, it's just your friend's opinion, but does that really matter? What if it's a good opinion? All opinions aren't created equal, right? Some deserve more consideration than others. Thanks for joining us again on American Socrates. I'm your host, Charles M. Rupert. In this episode, we'll explore what makes one opinion stronger than another and why that matters and everything from politics to grocery shopping. We'll break it down practically using relatable examples and even touching on how the internet has made this messier than ever. So sit back, relax, get ready to learn how to sift through the noise, challenge your own beliefs, and have better opinions so that when you open your mouth, you don't just excrete a vowel movement all over everyone. OK, I promise. I'm done with the jokes. Let's kick things off by addressing a fundamental truth. I believe we can all agree on. Not every opinion carries the same weight. This is an easy truth when we think of other people's opinions, but it's kind of hard when it comes to our own. In a world where we feel we're being insulted whenever we are disagreed with, the idea that our opinion might not be a good one feels injurious. But the reality is that some opinions, those grounded in evidence, expertise, sound reasoning, are simply better than others. At the same time, all of us seem to hold the belief that everyone is entitled to their opinion. So does that mean people are entitled to be wrong or harbor false beliefs? Can I defend my opinion that one and one makes three by asserting that I'm entitled to my own way of thinking? I don't think so. And I wager you don't either. Many of us reach for this sort of categorical shift when reason turns against our opinions. So what does it mean to say that everyone is entitled to their own opinion? Well, what I think we really mean when we say this is that everyone should have the right to express what they believe, even though it may turn out to be entirely wrong and in desperate need of correction. All of us harbor some pretty crappy opinions from time to time. Me, you, everyone has some belief that we act on, we defend, we spread around that is dubious at best, and easily shown to be false at worst. And it can feel pretty harsh to be corrected when we're wrong. Or what is the same thing. We also feel pretty crummy about having to tell somebody else that they're wrong, especially in a kind and loving way. It's just hard to be able to have someone else's tell us that we're making a mistake. I think brownstones are ugly. That's an opinion. I mean, no offense if you have to live and work in a brownstone building, but there are ugly. There's nothing redeeming about them aesthetically. And all the flower boxes in the world couldn't save one from my impression of them as a warty old onion skin. Now, look, you might want to disagree with me, but you'd be wrong to do so. You might go ahead and try to defend these eye-gouging horror shows by saying something like, no, no, no, no, no. They're beautiful buildings. Or you might say, that's just your opinion. Other people can think differently than you. And how could I ever prove to you that brownstones are objectively, factually, grammatically, in arguably ugly? And if I can't prove it to you, the Brownstones are simply the worst architectural mishap to ever befall humankind, why is it so hard to just say we have to agree to disagree? Well, the truth is, we can't, mostly because brown stones are just terrible. All right, I'm making a little light here. But seriously, the principle of non-contradiction tells us brown stones can't be both ugly and charming. So the principle of noncontradiction just holds that you can't take two things that are diametrically opposed and hold them as beliefs at the same time. You can't believe that today is Tuesday and also today is Wednesday. Like, that's not a possibility for human beings. So logically, brownstones are either ugly or they're charming. They cannot be both. Is there any way then that we can resolve this? Well, we've already tried to argue that things like beauty and taste are in the eye of the beholder, right? That this is not an objective opinion. It is a subjective opinion. So when we tried to move the argument from the realm of objectivity to that of subjectivity, we ran into the problem of the principle of non-contradiction. Now, we could just ignore the principle and say something like, yeah, opinions can contradict each other. But what if there were stakes involved? Like, if you and I I were looking to be roommates somewhere and I refused to live in the brick and mortar equivalent of a Karen haranguing some unpaid clerk and you think these buildings are cute. This is going to be a problem. I am going to refuse to live there, whereas you're okay with it. Now, we can't agree to disagree. That's just not an option here, because we have to come to an agreement on where we're going to live if we're going to live together at all. So let's take a different example, climate change. On one side, we would have thousands of scientists publishing their peer-reviewed studies, using their instruments, their tools, their methodology, building a cohesive picture of how human activity is warming the planet. On the other, we might hear someone casually dismiss all of this as just the weather. Now, both are opinions, but they're far from equal. One is supported by data, analysis, expertise, numerous different opinions coming together to form a consensus. The other one is just sort of a single person's wish and prayer. The same goes for art. Imagine walking through a museum with a trained art historian. They might look at a painting by Monet and explain how his brushwork captured light in ways that revolutionized impressionism. Meanwhile, you could overhear someone say right behind him, what's the big deal? It's just a bunch of blurry seaweed. Again, both are opinions, but one is going to help us to see deeper into the artist's skill, and into the historical context in which they were painting. The other is just what generic microwave pizza is to Pequod's in Chicago. Why does this distinction matter? Well, think about your own life. Whether you're buying a car, deciding on a new job, or even choosing a recipe to cook. Opinions based on knowledge and experience will serve you far better than a random hunch. Getting opinions right is about saving time, making smarter decisions and avoiding unnecessary frustration. You want to know what is objectively right or true, even if there is no reliably objectiveive standpoint to view things from. your interests are best served in assuming that there is an objective truth. And then honestly and disinterestedly, trying to determine what it is. One way to do this is to ask yourself, what evidence supports this opinion? If there's none, it's worth thinking twice, but before relying on it or sharing it. Consider the source of your opinion. Does it come from someone with expertise in the area, or does someone sharing their hot take? Of course, the internet has made all of this harder than ever to tell strong opinions from weak ones. So it's worth taking the moment to look at the role of bias and how misinformation spreads, making it all the more crucial to evaluate what we hear. The internet, above all other things, is ground zero in the War of Opinions. The environment where opinions are born and shaped matters almost as much as who is sharing them and who is receiving them, especially online. The other internet has made it easier than ever to share ideas, but it also created an artificial reality of what we might call internet facts, which often stand in complete contradiction to real facts, which makes it a breeding ground for misinformation, bias, and echo chambers. Let's pause here and speak for a second about facts. The idea that there are absolute objective facts seems a little silly to me. The only thing that appears so unquestionable in knowledge are pure ideas. Math is a good example of that. I don't think any of us would say that someone espousing the idea that one in one is three is giving us truth. It just makes no sense. So when we deal with abstractions and only with abstractions, we can find this sort of certitude. We can come to these sorts of consensus where we all agree on what makes sense, what doesn't make sense, so on. But if our facts have anything at all to do with the real world, then we're going to face much more uncertainty. So rather than call these sorts of things facts, I'm going to call them factual statements, which just means that these are claims that are made about the real world that most people, virtually everyone in a certain domain agrees that they are true. This means that facts are in themselves sort of a matter of opinion. Something is a fact to us when it is generally recognized as true. Something cannot be a fact in the sense of a factual statement if there is significant dispute about it. Facts and opinions look a lot alike because both are merely statements. It's just one has more consensus behind it than the other one does. All right, back to our main thread here. Bias. Bias is part of being human, and it's not always a bad thing. Bias serves us as a mental shortcut, helping us quickly process information. But when we're not careful, bias can lead us to overly value it opinions that reinforce what we say already believe. Even when those opinions don't hold up to scrutiny. For example, confirmation bias, the tendency to focus on information, that supports our views, can make a weak opinion feel strong or vice versa. Imagine you were searching for evidence to prove that you live in a computer simulation and can fly if you just learn how to rewrite your programming. I'm sure somewhere on the Internet, there's a video proving all of that to be true. By doing your internet research and finding your internet facts, you might ignore mountains of evidence and even your personal experience to cling to what a YouTube video confirming what you really, really, really want to be true. The Internet doesn't create this problem for humans. It just exacerbates it. Algorithms on social media are designed to keep us engaged, often by showing us content and lines with our existing beliefs. That's why if you click on an article that contains conspiracy theories, your feed might suddenly be flooded with more of the same. The so-called crunchy granola to alt-right pipeline is the result. You know, one day you're looking at how to juice cleanse, and the next, you're an anti-vaxer preparing to blow up a water treatment facility because fluoride-treated tap water makes people gay. Opinions formed in echo chambers, where contrary evidence is never even admitted and questions are not tolerated, create the feeling that good evidence has been gathered when it very much hasn't. Consider the spread of misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Wild claims about vaccines or treatments often went viral, far, far, faster than accurate information from knowledgeable sources. This wasn't just harmless chatter. It influenced real-world decisions from public health policies to personal choices. People died needlessly as a result of forming bad opinions. Everything from drinking bleach to underplaying the health risks of the disease itself costs lives. There are steps we can take to navigate the flood of information on the Internet and hopefully separate the wheat from the chaff here so that, you know, when you form opinions, they are opinions worth sharing. The first thing you could do is check your sources. Before you trust an opinion, look into where it's coming from. Is it backed up by evidence? Who's saying it? Why are they saying it? What's their motivation? What do they get out of this? Do they have a special experience with the subject? How would they know what they claim to know? By being skeptical of our sources, we can often find our way to better information. Two, you could diversify your information diet. Follow some people or outlets with different perspectives. It can be uncomfortable, but it's the best way to challenge your own way of thinking, to get out of the echo chamber your process in. Look, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. And so even the wildest of conspiracy theorists probably get something right every now and then. Three, before you share something on the internet, ask yourself, am I spreading something true or just something that feels true to me? Little hesitancy and a little reflection could go a long way in cutting down the misinformation on the Internet. The point of all this is simply to once again, cool your jets on how right you think your opinions are. I find the Internet to be the land of a thousand mouths and not enough ears. As Matthew Pryor once said, they always talk who never think and who have the least to say, don't be that person. I want to turn now to the role of dialogue. How open, thoughtful conversations can help us to sharpen our views and to understand each other better. We've all been in conversations where someone's opinion feels immovable, as if they've built a fortress around their beliefs. But here's the thing. No opinion gets better in isolation. Dialogue, real, respectable dialogue, is where opinions grow stronger, or sometimes necessarily fall apart. Many people do everything they can, not to have their beliefs challenged. Or as James Lowell put it, the foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion. We feel safe in our opinions, right?? We don't want to feel attacked, but avoiding challenges also makes our opinions incredibly fragile. They're like antique Christmas bulbs. Just a whiff of pressure, and they crumble in your hand. Dialogue is the pressure test then, for these opinions. Dialectic is actually the better word for for it. A dialectic is a conversation with two opposing sides, each trying to carve away at the other until whatever's left is held by both sides to be the truth. This process is the crucible, where we find out if our reasoning actually holds up to other people's scrutiny. When you share your opinion and someone challenges it thoughtfully, it forces you to explain your reasoning, to address their counterarguments, and sometimes to admit you don't know as much as you thought you did. All of those are good things. Growth happens when you realize, oh, maybe I need to rethink this, or even, maybe I no longer know what I thought I knew. There may be no more philosophical phrase in any tradition than that one. I mean, there's this part in the first book of the Republic, where Socrates is questioning Polmarchus. He's trying to get at the root of his argument that justice is doing good to friends and harm to enemies. And Socrates says, Isn't that what you meant? And Polmarchus admits that, no, it's not what he meant. Nor does he really know what he means. But it's still his opinion that justice has something to do with helping friends and harming enemies. In that moment, when Polmarchus went from being sure he was right, to not being so sure, even though he wasn't ready to give up his opinion quite yet, he had become a philosopher. He had taken a step towards the truth by admitting that his opinion was not as solid as he believed it to be when he first stepped into that conversation. He had moved, and in moving, he grew. All progress requires movement. An intellectual progress requires movement in one's opinions. But real dialogue, real dialectic, starts with listening. And I don't mean just waiting for your turn to speak. I mean truly hearing what the other person is saying. This could be tough, especially if you disagree and your blood is boiling. Hot blood always clogs the ears. But asking questions like, what makes you think that? Or can you explain your reasoning? Can open the door to meaningful discussion instead of just bickering? Let's return to that heated topic of global warming. pun intended. Instead of shutting someone down with facts, try asking, what are your concerns about the solutions being proposed? You might discover that there resistance isn't about denying science, but about fear of economic impact on their razor-thin budget. I mean, to working-class people who are often a paycheck or two from ruin, climate policy that might increase energy costs might sound far more disastrous than global warming, which is distant. And not until the future will it bring any damage. Of course, now, if we do that, we're not just debating climate change. Well, we're starting to have a real conversation about economics, values, the environment, all of which are perfectly valid. Often behind, then, the seemingly intractable arguments are emotions connected to beliefs that we might not even be fully aware of. If a disagreement is going nowhere, it's time to stop. and move back towards someone's assumptions and their feelings. Only then can we move forward again from a place of agreement, towards a place, that place of initial disagreement where we started. There's this back-and-forth movement to a dialectic that. It's not constantly forward. Sometimes we have to stop and say, like, what are you assuming here? Because your assumptions don't seem to be the same as mine. The philosopher, John Stewart Mill, argued that the clash of ideas is essential for uncovering. truth. When your opinion goes unchallenged, it becomes stagnant. But when you engage with opposing views, you're forced to reconsider, to refine. And sometimes completely reshape your stance. This is why great thinkers like Socrates asked questions instead of delivering lectures. They wanted to uncover the best ideas through dialectic. So let me offer one last time some advice for doing this. Start with humility, right? Remember, you might not have the full picture when you begin. And neither does your opponent, and that's okay. This is a process about growth, not about being right all the time. Be curious. Approach disagreements as opportunities to learn, not battles to win. Be ready and open yourself to the idea of being wrong. When we lose an argument, we grow. In this way, you can see your opponent not as the enemy, but as the rock against which you're sharpening your mettle. No, when to walk away. Not every conversation will be productive, and that's okay, too. If your interlocutor proves untrustworthy or contrarian or even belligerent, you don't have to feed the troll. I'm giving you permission right now to simply walk out of any conversation you don't feel is helpful to anyone. Opinions, like muscles, only grow stronger when we use them. And dialogue is the gym where that happens. So think about how all of this, the importance of better opinions, navigating our bias, and engaging in dialogue, can impact your daily life. Because the internet, for all of its problems, is the House of Opinions. And honestly, if there is a sound of freedom, it is the tumult of opinion. The next time someone hits you with that thought-terminating cliche, well, that's just your opinion; remember that opinions aren't created equal. Think critically, ask questions, seek evidence, and keep your biases in check. On social media, take a moment to verify before you share things, because spreading misinformation isn't harmless. Feel free to leave a comment on my page, but if you're going to do so, please put some thought into it so that you can share your opinion in a spirit of growth. Thanks again for listening to American Socrates. If you found today's episode interesting, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone you think might also love a little wisdom in their life. Join us next week as we re-examine the issue of diversity, equity, and inclusion by asking the question, do we need more hands on the elephant?