Please stop fact-checking my feelings

In defense of opinions

Prefer to listen? You’ll find an original audio recording here. ⬆️

My kids, many years ago. My guess is at least one of them had feelings. (Shared with their blessing—this one makes us all laugh.)

In Defense of Opinions

I wish to address a deeply troubling issue, one of relevance to any spine-bearing person alive. The demand for facts in support of a position is a scourge that must be suppressed. Despite concerted efforts to eradicate this troublesome and dangerous behavior, we continue to encounter individuals who present evidence as proof of what they believe. How ridiculous.

I personally know a man who was accused of swiping the last two slices of pizza, the ones his wife was eyeing for lunch. She points to the marinara smear on his pajamas and the empty box on the porch, noting that he ate twice as much as she did when they shared the pie for dinner. He maintains that he can’t be responsible for what happens in the middle of the night, and he is done talking about it.

I am writing today to defend the sanctity of opinions. To heck with considered judgments burdened by their reviews of existing data! An opinion need not entertain competing explanations, weigh probabilities, or accept that available information may not point to certainty. Opinions are so much more nimble than that. It’s marvelous to witness how they form without needing to know much about a topic and when met with a counterargument, especially one rooted in facts, how they double or triple in volume.

An opinion is one of civilization’s greatest achievements. It is portable, requires no specialized equipment or skill and can be ready to use in seconds. Opinions can accommodate feelings, hunches, vague recollections, something your brother-in-law experienced in 2017, or a middle-of-the-night refrigerator raid. What makes an opinion so liberating is that there is no need to know, only to think you know. Once an impression is in place, defending it comes naturally.

Facts, on the other hand, are annoyingly specific, prudent, and careful. Such a constraint to the sharp-witted opinion holder! There is a growing cultural failure to appreciate how unpleasant information can be, always asking for the distinction between knowing and suspecting. Opinions are not just sure of what happened but also why it happened, who is responsible, and the very sort of people who would do such a thing. To interrupt this gratifying succession with facts is to pierce the heart of individualism.

Thanks to the tireless work of the opinionated community, nuance is not what it used to be, but it still turns up in certain circles. Warning signs include phrases like “in some cases” and “the evidence suggests,” and before you know it, there are caveats, discussions, and the acknowledgment that something might be complicated.

Let us not imagine that facts and opinions are the same. Any fool can tell you they most certainly are not. A fact is tethered to what can be demonstrated while an opinion depends only on the convictions of the person holding it, instilling it with zombie-like defenses. Facts have obligations, opinions have spirit. Facts can be proved, opinions can be offended. And an offended opinion is remarkably capable of fighting off doubts as it pushes on in search of affirmation and respect. An opinion doesn’t want to know about exceptions. It wants to know why you are determined to make everything so difficult.

There is no greater threat to the rights of the opinion-holder than the other side of the coin. We have opinions because we don’t want to waste time and energy on understanding. We want to simplify and streamline, making a determination long before an explanation is complete.

We must not be encumbered by clarification, stymied by subtlety, or thwarted by truth. To expect such is a direct attack on our uncivil liberties! Why should we replace our opinions with positions that take reality into account?

Together, we can build a society in which everyone is simultaneously an investigative journalist, judge, historian, epidemiologist, engineer, economist and eyewitness to everything. Why should knowledge be centralized among those who are well-versed? Isn’t that elitist?

Here, then, is the call to action: The next time you are presented with a fact, do not engage. Carry on, exactly as before, certain that your perception reflects your values, your identity, your algorithm, the person you believe yourself to be. The other guy may have reality on his side, but you, friend, have something even more durable. You have made up your mind!

B.S.
Stubborn Gulch, U.S.A.

Spotted at the Meow Wolf exhibit in Santa Fe, NM, 2023

~Elizabeth

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A clarification, now that you’ve made it all the way through, and because we are wise to not make assumptions these days: I don’t think facts are a scourge. Quite the opposite, actually. But it’s impossible to not notice how often we treat strong feelings as all that’s needed to settle a debate. I do it, too. It happens with everything from leftover pizza to the size of a crowd at a parade. The scale changes but the instinct is the same. And it’s not a one-sided tendency. The urge to defend a position is human, not partisan. It’s just easier to see when the other guy (or gal) is doing it.

I hope you’ll feel like spending a few minutes with me and others in the comments on this one. Nothing means more to me than getting the chance to learn more about your ideas and ideals while you’re there.

• What’s the dumbest hill you’ve died on, facts be damned?

• Can you remember a time when facts changed your mind?

• Do you know someone who is especially good at hearing both sides? (Hearing not being the same as agreeing.)

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No matter how you come to the page, I’m grateful for your presence.

Afterward:
I like to close with one small idea, because I believe that collective action adds up and just might make a difference. But today, two ideas.

Try this:
If you want a slightly bigger-brained companion to this week’s nonsense, Big Think shared a piece yesterday arguing that our grip on objective truth is tangled up with print literacy, offering that as we drift from reading and writing toward more oral, visual, algorithm-fed culture, our hold on shared facts may be loosening right along with it. Worth a read if you’ve got ten minutes.

I can’t overlook another unintended connection, though, in Dolly Parton’s passing yesterday. Her Imagination Library has mailed free books to kids from birth to age five, in five countries, for decades, one of the better real-world answers to a “print literacy is fading” problem anyone’s come up with. Consider this your nudge to donate, or just go put a good book in a kid’s hands.

See you soon!