“The sky I am looking at right now is blue” is a statement of fact. It is either true or false, and is objectively so.
“I think blue is the nicest-looking color” is an opinion. It cannot be true or false, and is completely subjective, depending on the person making the statement’s personal outlook.
“In my opinion, the world is flat” is not an opinion. Tacking “IMO” in front of something does not turn it into an opinion; if it is a statement that is objectively right or wrong, then you cannot protect it by claiming that it is your opinion; it is still objectively right or wrong (and if you have to protect it by calling it your opinion or belief, it is usually going to be wrong).
While this doesn’t quite apply as much to SDMB, it still pisses me right the fuck off, especially in religious debates that cross over into science. I feel my blood starting to boil every time some idiot says something like “IMO evolution didn’t happen”. That’s not an opinion, that’s a statement of fact which is false. Shut up and deal with it. :smack:
“I think blue is the nicest colour” is a fact - it’s a statement about my opinion, not the opinion itself. “Blue is the nicest colour” is an opinion. Hope this helps.
The fact is blue is the nicest color, in my opinion. But in my opinion, the fact that blue is the nicest color in no way takes away from the fact that it’s a matter of opinion.
If I were looking through a blue-tinted window my opinion may not reflect fact, but the fact that it is my opinion remains a fact, in my opinion.
My favorite example of this on the SDMB is when Lobohan got on my ass in a thread about denying facts, and when I asked him which facts those were he said “global warming, universal health care,” and something else I can’t remember that wasn’t “a fact.”
Um… What? The existence of global warming, the effectiveness of universal health care, etc… Those are all facts. There’s nothing subjective about them, they are either true or false. Just because the jury is still out doesn’t mean it is an opinion.
Well, and this is where we start to get into trouble. To take a non-controversial example, how about the statement “P!=NP”. This is a statement from computer science.
The statement is either true or false, there is no doubt about that. Thus, it is a fact. On the other hand, no-one on Earth knows if it is true or false. In my opinion, it is true.
"In my opinion, P!=NP" is a statement of fact. It is definitely true. *My opinion *is not a matter of opinion, but a matter of fact.
Reno Nevada nailed it. “The mean global temperature from year x to year y” is a statement of fact, but we currently don’t have any objective way of determining whether it’s true or not. We can only make observations and support the opinion that that statement is true. Also, once ýou get to anything dealing with AGW that’s more complicated, you are definitely in opinion territory (eg, “The temperature increase was caused by humans”) or policy argument territory (eg, “The US should work to reduce carbon output.”).
On UHC, the statement “UHC is effective” is opinion pure and simple unless you define “effective” in an extremely detailed manner, in which case Ýou may arrive at a factual statement that we can’t determine is true or not. And, of course, the interesting aspects of the debate are policy arguments, not factual statements.
