I pit people who can't tell the difference between fact and opinion

Slow down, you’re gonna strain yourself. The fact is that the vast majority of the people who have the expertise to judge the information we have are in agreement. You stand against them. You’re the idiot who thinks his uninformed, moronic opinion carries weight.

We spend the most and get 37th place results. That’s factual. You can make up excuses for why this is the case, but the fact is that ever other industrialized nation is doing it another way and spending less and in most cases getting better results.

You don’t accept that because it goes against your childish ideology.

And of course…

While I can agree with the OP that it is annoying when people conflate opinions and facts, I’m not sure that the OP’s definitions of them is good enough. I think the P=NP question is an excellent example of why objectivity isn’t the best line between them because, as that poster said, it is objectively either true or false, but no one knows the answer, but a lot of people have opinions about it (though, overwhelmingly on the not equal side).

I think the thing is, they have different meanings in different contexts and people have a tendency to use them as attacks. If, for instance, someone doesn’t like someone’s argument, they might emphasize that their opponent’s position is just an opinion. Or if someone wants to strengthen their own argument, they might assert it as fact. If someone doesn’t want to go through the effort of defending their position, they might say it’s just an opinion, etc.

At what point do facts and opinions cross? Using UHC as an example, a fact would be stating statistics based upon how other groups implemented it and what their results were, but the moment that one asserts that, because of those statistics, it will or won’t work in a particular setting, it is now opinion. It is opinion based upon facts, but it is still opinion. It doesn’t become fact until after it is implemented and there are statistics to analyze, but even then “good or bad” or “worked or didn’t work” are placing value upon facts within a particular context, and that makes those evaluations opinions.

Or to give probably a slightly less charged example, consider something like sports where the facts are utterly indisiputable. You can compare someone who is widely considered to be an all-time great against someone else in the same position who is average. You may be able to bring up tons of stats that all show the all-time great as superior, and even though the overwhelming majority of people will agree with you, you’re still placing value upon the facts. In short, a lot of people seem to believe that a widely held opinion, even one that is unanimously held, somehow is fact; it isn’t. That’s a logical fallacy.

That said, it does get confusing when statements are made about opinions. For instance, saying player A performed better than player B in stats X, Y, and Z is a fact. Saying player A is better than player B because of his performance in those stats, is an opinion. However, stating that someone believes that player A is better than player B, based on those stats, is a factual statement about an opinion, but that it is a fact, and even if it is true that someone hold’s that opinion, even if he is an expert, that doesn’t mean that it logically follows that the assertion of the opinion is a fact or that it is true. That’s also a logical fallacy.

Either way, it seems to me that usage of both terms gets fuzzy, and popular usage as emphasizers or de-emphasizers has made it worse, not too unlike how “literally” can now be used as an emphasizer too, thanks to popular usage. So, I personally avoid using any of them unless I’m clearly using them in their denotative sense; otherwise it just creates ambiguity.

“The vast majority of the people who have the expertise to judge the information we have are in agreement” is a factual statement once you narrow down who those people are and what they are in agreement about. And it may even be true for certain values of both of those. However, that doesn’t say anything about the truth value of what they agree on. IMHO, the consensus was manufactured precisely for people like you who take the existence of a consensus as proof for the truth value of the underlying issue.

“Better results” is an opinion. As I’ve said numerous times to you, you are conflating the health of a population with the quality of its health care. A populaton could hae the best health care system in the world and be the unhealthiest in the world because everyone is on heroin (or McDonald’s) or whatever.

Nope, you are the one with the ideology here. I’m open to looking at facts and seeing where they take me. You pre-judge wich facts ýou will look at based on whether they fit into your pet narratives.

Deleted. Already covered.

Uh huh. So if it was shown that the health of a population and the quality of health care was better with UHC, you’d be all for it? Somehow I doubt it.

Another point brought up by this is that facts really don’t matter all that much–opinio is what matters. A court’s verfict of guilty or not guilty is an opinion, which has consequences independendent of whether the defendant did it or not, which is a factual statement that we can’t determine is true or false.

Similarly, with global warming and UHC, the facts don’t matter, all that matters are people’s policy positions, which are born of Þheir opinions, which are sometimes based (however loosely) on facts.

This is why I think it’s rather stupid for some of our more dumbass members to constantly harp about how I or conservatives or right-wingers or whatever “ignore facts.” Those harpers don’t realize the extremely subordinate nature of the role that actual facts play in anything that matters.

Do you think that a society must adopt every policy that can be shown to lead to a healthier population and better health care?

No, we understand perfectly the subordinate role facts play for people intent on maintaining their delusions.

Every policy? No. Policies adopted by the rest of the industrialized world that seem to be working much better than our system? Probably.

Do you realize that “much better” is an opinion? Are you sure your policy positions are more based on facts than are those of people who disagree with you?

What Rand is trying to do is hide behind, “It’s just an opinion” because he’s unable to accept anything that goes against his libertarian childish daydreams.

He was the same way in the waterboardingthread. It was established time after time that the consensus of professional interrogators agree that waterboarding isn’t a reliable way to get info. But Rand, like he is here, kept going on with, “It’s just your opinion that there is a consensus.”

He isn’t that stupid. He’s back peddling and trying to confuse the issue so you’ll stop responding. He’s too invested in his bullshit religion to let anything he believes ever be wrong. If he had a fucking ounce of integrity he’d admit it, but as it happens, if integrity ever touched RR, they would both disappear in a cloud of gamma rays.

Fair enough. I’ll just settle for “better” then.

Nope. I’m trying to fight ignorance and elevate the discourse, and idiots like you get confused and therefore think I’m just trying to confuse you.

The only thing in that thread establishing a consensus of professional interrogators is your repeated insistence that such a consensus exists.

No, that’s what you asserted. Tomndebb among others called you on your cowardly drivel, but you just kept grinding away.

You’re almost sad, if you weren’t such an evil piece of shit you’d be sympathetic.

? “Better” is an opinion as well. You didn’t realize that?

Less death, longer lifespans, lower costs.

Objectively better in countless ways.

Rand is right. Policies that improve the health of every American for less money per person aren’t ‘better’ if you value keeping the poor oppressed and undermining the country. Government-run healthcare isn’t ‘better’ if you value forcing people to work in jobs they hate by holding their insurance hostage.

It’s totally subjective.

It’s called a joke, son. Still, I imagine the vast, vast majority of Americans who could be bankrupted if there was ever a catastrophic illness in their family would consider it better than the current system.

Well yeah, since his ideology is objectively evil, I suppose that makes sense.