That's not your opinion. You're just wrong!

Описание: This video is presented by Jayde Lovell & Bec Susan Gill, Directed by Mizanur Rahman, Edited by Emily Lin.

Thank You: Daria Epakchi, Emily Lin, Kevin Cunningham

We encourage everyone to read the article, "That's Not Your Opinion. You're Just Wrong", by Jef Rouner (published in the Houston Press, 23 July 2015) which was the inspiration for this video.
Read: http://www.houstonpress.com/arts/no-i...

JAYDE
I spend far more time arguing on the Internet than can possibly be healthy.

BEC
We get a lot of really angry, really uninformed comments on SciQ. Things like:

KEVIN
“Women don’t belong in the Military”

EMILY
“Climate change? It’s not caused by humans - it’s because of the sun. Duh”

MIZ
“I don’t have to vaccinate my kids if I don't want to”

DARIA
“Your Uber video is just taxi company propaganda”

MIZ
“Planned parenthood are profiteering by selling baby organs”

JAYDE
Now I thought we had to respect these views, because, hey that’s your opinion. "That’s your belief. And because they’re opinions or beliefs, they can’t be challenged - that somehow, Opinions can’t be incorrect because they’re personal".

BEC
But what we’re starting to realize there’s a big difference between opinions and preferences.
What a lot of people claim are “opinions” are just an excuse for being dead wrong. Adding the words “this is my opinion” or even “these are my beliefs” does not give you licence to say stuff that is, frankly, dead wrong.

JAYDE
"Opinions and beliefs have become a shield to protect the racist, the sexist, and the misinformed from having to pay respect to facts".
So I’m here to say today to say “no that’s not your opinion. You’re just wrong”.

JAYDE
So before you say you’re above the laws of argument because those are your opinions. Ask yourself. Is this actually an opinion? And if so, how informed is it?

BEC
Opinions are supposed to be more like preferences.
I think peanut butter should be added to everything, I don t like ball sports, and I think Donald Trump is way too orange.
"These are just our opinion. They may be unique to me alone or massively shared across the general population but they all have one thing in common; they cannot be verified outside of the fact that I believe them. And there’s nothing wrong with an opinion on those things - have all the opinions you like".

JAYDE
The problem comes from people whose opinions are actually misconceptions. If you think vaccines cause autism you are expressing something factually wrong not an opinion. "The fact that you may still believe that vaccines cause autism does not move your misconception into the realm of valid opinion".

BEC
Now scientists often don’t like saying this, because in Science we’re told that there’s no facts, there's just theories with lots of evidence, that maybe one day are proven wrong. Like the idea that the earth is flat, that was an obvious fact to anyone with eyes in the fifteen hundreds - yet it got proven wrong. So we don’t like stepping on other people’s ideas, even if they’re wrong.


JAYDE
Sometimes there genuinely are areas of science and technology that are up for opinion. I think whether or not there’s a god is one of those because there’s not enough facts to make a really clear indisputable case either way. We can only guess at the answers, Hopefully in an educated manner.

Take gun control for example. The overwhelming evidence suggests people who own guns are considerably less safe than people who do not own guns. People who have guns in their house are way more likely to shoot themselves or others, so owning a gun do not not make people safer. Yet many people believe it does. And sure, these people will hat tip to facts by citing a study or two that supports their case, But by choosing to look at just one or two studies they agree with, they’ve reached a narrow opinion based on a narrow set of information. You’re choosing to be ignorant of the information that’s out there.

SOURCES
http://www.houstonpress.com/arts/no-i...
http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepti...


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Produced by Jayde Lovell and Bec Susan Gill. ScIQ is a partner of the The Young Turks Network.
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