Lissa: I’m not sure where your knowledge comes from, but the point I’m trying to make here is that unless you’ve literally seen everything with your own eyes, all your information comes from other people, right? I have an ‘informed opinion’ on the war in Iraq, but unless I’ve broken into CIA headquarters and read classified documents, or gone to Iraq to look for WMD myself, I’d have to be ignorant by your definition.
I think the missing link in this conversation is logic, which you have to apply to the information you receive, and I should have qualified my answer with that. You can trust the reporters at the Washington Post or Don Rumsfeld or Hans Blix, but what your really doing is forming an opinion based on the input of several people. The height of ignorant arrogance is believing that the information you have selected to believe based on the trust you place in a source’s integrity is somehow correct based solely upon your trusted opinion.
Personally, I don’t trust any single source. I’ll read articles in conservative and liberal publications, as well as religious and secular ones. I read magazines geared to certain idealologies and age groups, such as the AARP magazine, and the one for the NRA. I’ll watch C-SPAN and the * 700 Club, * as well as the traditional news outlets. I’ll listen to NPR and AM talk radio shows such as that of Rush Limbaugh. I read books on political theory and international relations. When it comes to social issues such as abortion, I’ll read literature issued both by the Right to Life Council and NOW. (I may not agree with the stance of a particular group, but I want to know what they’re thinking, and what points they have to offer.) Before deciding on an issue, I’ll read, (on average) at least 20 different articles from different sources.
You’re correct in saying that I can’t break into the CIA and read the source documents, but I can read a lot of them on the internet, such as the IAEA reports. A lot of pertinent documents are not classified. Again, I do not put my entire faith in any document or report, but will look at it from several different viewpoints and read confdlicting analysis.
You can never be 100% certain of anything in this world, which is why I never set any of my opinions in stone. However, through careful research from a varitey of sources, you can get a pretty good general impression.
My objection was to folks who don’t bother to do any research into a situation, and take the word of a friend as the gospel on a situation, or a slanted report in a single publication. Hell, all publications are slanted. It’s by looking at an issue from many different slants that you discover where your opinions lie.
Lissa: Cool.
Lamia: Same here. I’m an engineer and prone to thinking and speaking in very precise terms, which infuriates some of my relatives. General flow of conversation:
“What do you think about X?”
“Well, I know this and that fact, I’ve observed this and that directly, I’ve read thus and such, and my opinion is that X is more likely to be good/bad/true/false. Of course, I may be wrong.”
Back on topic: I’ve made one big opinion change in my life. Due to a slightly flawed upbringing, I was left with the conviction that people are bad, and I now think that people are good. This was very difficult because I did so without necessarily believing in the concept of a soul or a god-like-entity (the jury’s still out on those subjects). So I had to do so though endless conversations with people, lots of reading, staring at my navel for extended periods and going through both sides of many arguments in my head. It took about 25 years to effect this change. Even so, I can’t think about the subject without attaching a huge list of caveats and definitions of terms. People who talk to me about it usually give up after a few hours.
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Sorry, I should read through the six pages of search results on “Clarence Thomas” before I write this, but to shortcut: I was disappointed during Clarence Thomas’ nomination when he repeatedly claimed never to have formed a firm opinion on the subject of abortion. I believe that a person could reach his age without having arrived at an opinion on such an important subject, but he never really elaborated on why he so firmly didn’t have an opinion. I was hoping his testimony could help point out some pro and con arguments, since I was still trying to figure out my own opinion, but he just laid out his non-opinion and left it at that.
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