Rational Opinion-Forming

Uncertainty differentiates opinions and facts. In truth, there always exists a degree of uncertainty in any assertion. The overly skeptical among us point out that the only reason why we believe China exists is that other people have told us it does, and even if we traveled there, you cannot know that the place we actually went to was China, per se. The blurred line of where facts end and opinions begin further confound the question. Are “facts”, like the existence of China or photosynthesis, only those for which there is no disagreement outside of the solipsist circles? Can we also include historical events, such as the Appollo Moon Landing, which a sizable portion of westerners may disbelieve? Where exactly one draws the line is immaterial so long as one applies it consistently. The important thing is that uncertainty differentiates fact and opinion.

Let’s say you’re “line” is 99.5%, which would mean you are okay with believing something you take as fact to be false one in two hundred times [aside- that isn't quite mathematically true, as only the marginal -i.e. those that have exactly a probability of 99.5%- would be wrong one in two hundred times, but that is only important pedantically. this is for illustrative purposes.]. The probabilities to which you’ve assigned a theory, whether it is 99.9999999999% that the world is not flat or 75% that Obama would be a better candidate than McCain, have a specific statistical definition. They are known as a subjective, or Bayesian, probabilities. Even if you do not explicitly assign a number to how sure you are of any opinions, a truth-seeking mind invisibly thinks in such a matter.

This comes into conflict with how many pseudo-intellectuals view logical fallacies. Certain fallacies, such as guilty by association, appeal to the majority, appeal to authority and correlation does not imply causation do not firmly push an argument in one direction or another in any circumstance. However, this in turn does not mean that they should not affect your view at all. Subjective probabilities are all about bringing all relevant information into your mind, assigning the information weights, and coming to a conclusion. The reasonably strong (although not perfect) scientific consensus on global warming means something, even to an informed adult who can understand the literature and formulate a real opinion. The logical fallacy tells us wisely that the weight shouldn’t be infinite, but Bayesian inference tells us that it musn’t at the same time be zero.

There are times when all the evidence we’ve got in either direction are functions of intuition and “fallacies”. Proving or disproving the existence of God provides a watershed of such arguments that, while not argumentatively rigid, do mean something. Rather than listing them, I’ll point here and here. How much weight an individual places on each should determine the direction of their belief, which in turn results in a subjective probability.

The “wobbliness” of each proof does not necessitate agnosticism, but is very instructive of the uncertainty we share in forming any opinion at all. Analogously, this wobbliness appears in questions such as abortion, where we must weigh the fetus’s right to life against the woman’s right to her own body, whatever either of statements really mean. It doesn’t imply that we are to form no opinion whatsoever.

Informally, when we formulate opinions internally, some logical fallacies stop being fallacious. However, there are certain heuristics that appear to hold subjective meaning, but in reality mean literally nothing. Rather than bits and pieces of extraneous information that could conceivably point to truth, such as invoking the opinion of the masses, they are lies. Primarily,

1. Confirmation Bias. To selectively choose history and events that match preconcieved notions, rather than forming opinions through empirics or reason. Thomas Sowell refers to confirmation bias in the scope of empirics as “a-ha statistics”, providing the excellent imagery of a reader perusing the entirety of the newspaper for the few facts that he can point to and say, “a-ha, I knew it all along!”. Evidence to the contrary is subsequently considered chance.
2. Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “Narrative Fallacy“. Wikipedia gives a very incomplete reference, so I’ll go into more detail on this one. It is the notion that humans look for history to fit into an easily explained narrative, rather than an inconcievably complex entity whose infinite factors and caprice bend in whichever direction for no other reason than they do. Taleb cites, as a starting point, an Italian academic who enjoyed one of Taleb’s earlier works and describes how well it verbalizes the role of randomness rather than reason in success. He then goes on to explain how Taleb could only see this through his upbringing in Lebenon rather than white, Protestant America. Taleb initially agrees, only to realize that such an explanation is ironically against the very role of randomness he argues. Locking onto a single explanatory variable, rather than accepting the existence of multitudes of reasons, gears an individual to a singular, simplistic understanding of what is true, one inflexible to any further incremental information. By perversely believing that whatever chosen variable is the entirety of the truth, he closes himself off to any further information.
3. Monday Morning Quarterback.  Taking past events as inevitable and providing baseless, haughty commentary. By itself, it isn’t all that dangerous besides being absolutely asinine, but when combined with a couple shots of confirmation bias, truth gets thrown out the window altogether. If you go through life thinking that everything is predictable, selecting for the instances that you may have possibly predicted it, all conversation stops and everything in the future becomes an exercise in reinforcing the opinions you already had.
4. Demonization. By ascribing the viewpoints of another to evilness rather than the argument they actually make or resort to pure epithets, no one is getting anywhere. If you actually start believing such perverions of truth (see: Bush), you’re going to think perpetually that half the country is evil and/or stupid. To categorically demonize a point of view is to shove your head in the sand.

These four aren’t the only failures in forming personal opinions, but they are the big ones. Their commonality is their desire to simplify the world into discrete, predictable events inevitably falling in tune with the grand score of life, rather than the cacophony we actually live. Evaluating events and facts as they occur, rather than fitting them to something we can readily understand, is the only way Bayesian reasoning can actually work.

There isn’t anything wrong with taking a piece of information that we honestly believe under consideration. To stuffy logicians, these pieces may be irrelevant, but in the real world of uncertainty, they aren’t. Yet, when our minds stop doing the interpreting and weighing of these facts, and instead ignore or force new information into preconcieved ideals, we lose everything. Subjective probability is the only way the human mind can understand the world, but even such forgiving standards are blemished by certain caveats.