Opinions Considered Unimportant
Jens O. Meiert, January 22, 2008 / October 4, 2008.
This entry is filed under Uncategorized.
I recently needed to think about opinions and that they are probably for people who cannot argue or for topics that are irrelevant which would basically mean that they could be considered “interesting” but also unimportant. This might sound abstract at first but some examples may help in clarifying this thought:
- Colors:
- Preferring one or another color seems to be a very nice example for an opinion, and such an opinion is pretty much irrelevant when it’s just about favorite colors. However, a color discussion in professional web design must not deal with opinions when it’s about color blindness or contrast issues, for example – it should deal with facts and probabilities. I doubt that participants still saying “I prefer this one though” can argue or help such a discussion. And when n suitable colors have already been revealed, we’re dealing with basically irrelevant things again, unless some clever guy knows proof for certain cultural or emotional advantages of one or more of the selected colors.
- Clothes:
- Favoring a special brand is cool but basically means an irrelevant opinion, too. When you’re asking somebody why she wears a certain piece of clothing, an opinion (“I just like it,” poor argumentation) will be useless. Some facts (“this skirt increases the likelihood of some wuss buying me a drink by 290 %,” kidding) might very well make you consider doing the same thing, because opinions don’t count and don’t change minds. (Arguments do.)
- Design:
- Let’s not talk about that anyway, from my point of view the popular definition of design (that tends to confuse it with decoration) is screwed. However, people just saying that something “looks nice” cannot argue, and it’s not important at all, either. When one of your friends explains to you how and why the appearance of the new DVD player helped him using it, however, you made it beyond opinions and will benefit from more substantial talk.
- Sports:
- Nobody really enjoys hearing “my favorite club is (unequal to own favorite club or even sports)”, or does anyone? It’s probably neither important nor an example for great argumentation. Argumentation can make sports discussions really interesting but might turn them red as well observing quite deep beliefs when it comes to favorite sports, clubs, players, moves, and so on – but, beliefs are different than opinions.
- Politics:
- From my point of view, politics is the most beautiful and a very special place for opinions since you can barely get rid of them. So while you cannot really say that political opinions are unimportant, argumentation is often difficult since there aren’t few cases where you just cannot really argue; how do you fortify your opinion (shooting some arguments) concerning prime rate when you just cannot really predict its impact on the economy. Political opinions appear to suffer from poor provableness, so people are forced to use opinions instead of arguments. This situation together with insufficient information is likely to be responsible for poor decisions and the effect that democracies do manage to prevent “the worst”, but rarely achieve “the best”. At least this is how I sometimes judge the situation.
The whole problem appears to be about the definition of “opinions” and associated concepts, like facts or beliefs. While opinions per se are indeed important (and freedom of opinion yet critical), in essence they’re probably not. Especially in professional discussions, arguments count, not opinions, so the least we can do is get rid of opinions at work.
Admittedly there are posts where my reasoning has been better. I didn’t want to start all over again though, hoping that the basic theory is clear and benefits from some fresh arguments.
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Comments
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On January 22, 2008, 15:21 CET, Jens Nedal said:
I would like to add some thoughts.
Opinions are personal and mostly have an immediate value to the person who articulates them. For the environment opinions represent the view of said person, but does not yield an information that can be translated into meaning for the environment.
Arguments on the other hand are the articulated translation of the persons opinion into a language that the environment can understand.
So, opinions are not unimportant per se, just to the environment.
As soon as individuals need to communicate the use of arguments would benefit the understanding between those individuals immensly.
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On January 25, 2008, 13:02 CET, Jens Meiert said:
Interesting, Jens, I guess you’re right, that helps the definition of opinions and arguments. Probably it’s the luxury of opinions that they do not contain arguments …
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On January 27, 2008, 7:54 CET, Lazar said:
I want to add two things:
‘people just telling that something “looks nice” cannot argue’
Although this is sometimes true, it is far from unimportant. For example, people were asked to select one of two exactly the same images (with only difference being the size of pupils), and most (maybe all?) selected the one with wider pupils. Importance of their opinion is obvious. Even prostitutes in ancient times were using special drops to make their pupils wider and make them more attractive to clients. Maybe politicians are using similar in their political debates! Viewers may not understand what they like about politicians, but what is important is that it works!
Hmm, I kind of like that politicians and prostitutes are in the adjacent sentences!
:O)
I also want to expand on what Jans wrote.
For example, I have proved Pythagorean theorem many times, but at this very moment, I probably couldn’t do a proof of it—wouldn’t have an argument. That does not mean that my opinion that it is valid is unimportant. In the similar manner, I make my opinions about politicians based on certain facts I learned about in the past, that I cannot remember at this very moment. That does not mean I should just ignore my opinion.
Also, there are people whose arguments and opinions I have heard in the past, and were (most of the time) appealing. Hearing today their opinion (without arguments) that is opposite to mine will certainly make me interested to find out more about arguments behind it, or if person cannot recall them (example from above), I will try to research the issue on my own.
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On January 28, 2008, 12:51 CET, Jens Meiert said:
Lazar, thank you, great remarks!
For example, people were asked to select one of two exactly the same images (with only difference being the size of pupils), and most (maybe all?) selected the one with wider pupils.
Well, but people could certainly argue that they didn’t “like” some person despite their pupils, right?
You know what I mean, I don’t necessarily think that this falsifies the theory above.For example, I have proved Pythagorean theorem many times, but at this very moment, I probably couldn’t do a proof of it – wouldn’t have an argument.
But what would be an opinion about that? What I find especially interesting about this example is that there might be cases where opinions cannot exist at all. It’s hard to have an “opinion” about “1 + 2 =”, or am I wrong? (Thinking …)
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On January 29, 2008, 21:00 CET, Lazar said:
The thing about pupils experiment is that most people cannot even detect that difference in images, but only can say which one they like more (or dislike less!).
Opinion, in my opinion, is something that is shaped by all your past experience, and that you may not be able to find all the supporting arguments at the very moment, whether because they are forgotten, or unconscious.
…
Even 1+1 = 2 is opinion. There are a few paradoxes that make you at least think about arguments behind this оr similar opinions.
Zeno’s are maybe most appropriate for this occasion. Many people for a long time could not find a contra argument for his paradoxes, and yet, their life experiences were providing them with opinion that there must be something wrong with it. Inability to think of what’s wrong does not mean you should just give up, and stop moving!!
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On February 26, 2008, 8:59 CET, Rebecca said:
Just a comment on this:
“[opinions] are probably for people who cannot argue or…”Cannot or WILL NOT argue, I might add.
But possibly even more often, we may hear opinions from people who can and will argue… i.e., people who WANT TO argue, and who have learned over the years that often a good way to get into an argument (or discussion) with someone is to spout an opinion about something!
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On December 5, 2008, 3:30 CET, miryam said:
Good remarks, talking about colors, is important to say is a subjective matter, however, as you say, even if everybody has different tastes, in graphic design, a good designer knows how colors work well with each other, and that every color should be studied before applied, not just by hazard, but because it will transmit a right message, and because it is been identified with the final user.
