Dontcha hate it whenever you present your thoughts with airtight reasoning or impeccable proof that something is or ought to be the case, the reason why something is going on or the reason why things must change, and then your meticulous demonstration is damned with the faint praise that it is merely just “yer opinion?”
Yes, it just happened.
A rather fine handwave, a pooh pooh, a scoff that dismisses the validity of your conclusions. It also alludes that your opinion is just as good as anyone else’s, and no better, despite the tools of logic or evidence, because knowledge is now subjective goo. Relativist shit like that implies that there are only opinions, or everything is a matter of opinion and there’s no way to judge between them. The reduction of all discourse to a level playing field also reduces knowledge, or true justified beliefs, to a smorgasboard of opinions that individuals can pick and choose from, according to their personal desires/biased beliefs/ignorance.
When it comes to opinions, democracy is the best method, but when it comes to knowledge, democracy is a liability that equalizes everything, for the knowledge of expert has little to nothing to do with the popular opinion of the general populace.
Unfortunately certain deafiez (as well as other intellectually lazy people) are prone to use this sort of strategy whenever they are confronted with an alternative to their convictions and one that is doubly potent and persuasive. Since the lazy person do not want to discuss the actual reasons (or lack of) behind his own convictions, he choose to assuage his intellectual pride by pulling the relativist card. But when that happens to me, I grow irritated at how I’ve wasted my energy and time with this tedious and facile relativist – he who is more than likely too scared or too embarrassed to even bother taking the discussion anywhere except have the last word with typical conversation stoppers – and inevitably, I grow disappointed with such pervasive sophistry among the general public.
There’s a big difference between knowledge and opinions. The truth of knowledge does not depend on the person, because they are objective, which means others can arrive at the same conclusions independently, and they are public. Knowledge must be justified independently of the original person who conceived of that particular concept. Whereas the truth of opinions are private and they depend on the person, since they are subjective, dependent on passions, tastes, inclinations, or desires that vary from individual to individual. An opinion need not be justified by any stretch of the imagination. The reason why somebody likes a certain thing is not amenable to rational standards.
Why do I prefer Seire R cigars?
True knowledge comes from history, from authority, from the experts and from the practitioners. Anybody can form an opinion about something without ever experiencing it, studying it, or observing it. An opinion is something easily arrived at, but knowledge takes years of practice, years of study or training. One is easily gained or dropped, the other is difficult and worth keeping.
Opinions are like assholes, cuz everybody’s got one, but very few actually do know something.
