"The art of forming a well-structured opinion is usually tackled in high school in classes like English Language Arts, Social Studies, or Civics. These courses often teach students critical thinking, persuasive writing, and how to analyze different perspectives. They learn how to back up their opinions with evidence and present their arguments clearly."
As I think that some contributors on this bullboard failed their class, I decided to show some example about what is a good opinion and what are good arguments.
If I say somehing like "I think that the shape of this Navel orange (the fruit) is a square".
This is an opinion. I can brag everywhere about it until someone challenges it: "Hey, I think you are wrong as an orange is a three dimensional object and the square is only two dimensions. And from what I learned in school, an orange will correspond more to a sphere than a cube".
I could then go back and verify the arguments served by the challenger and adjust my vision about the orange or stick to my opinion and propose an argument to justify my vision by saying "Well, on my side I only know what is a square and a triangle and it's definitely not a triangle"
In the above statements, the opinions and arguments were:
First side:
- Opinion: The orange is of square's shape
- Argument: it's not a triangle
Second side:
- Opinion: The orange is a sphere
- Argument: it's three dimensional and is categorized as such by geometry standards
The first person has several options to pursue the debate. Some people, the ones that do not accept to be challenged, react this way:
- Ignore the arguments of the challenger
- Change the topic without accepting that their argumentation is poor
- Attack the person by using childish name calling and such
Those behaviours are clearly indicating that if people can't reject an argument with solid facts, by challenging the argumentation instead of using personal attack against the challenger, they have lost the debate. And the challenger's opinion is the one that stands until someone arrives with a better argumentation.
Instead, what is expected from someone that is smart enough to see that his arguments were poor, should accept it and thanked the challenger for making him see that he was wrong.
Let's finish this crash course with a list characteristics of what makes a good opinion:
- Well-Informed: It’s based on accurate and relevant information.
- Logical Reasoning: It follows a coherent and logical structure.
- Evidence-Supported: It includes facts, data, or examples to back it up.
- Balanced View: It considers different perspectives and acknowledges opposing view points.
- Clear Expression: It’s articulated in a clear, concise manner.
- Consistency: It remains consistent with other stated beliefs or values.
- Objectivity: Free from emotional bias, ensuring a fair and impartial viewpoint.
So, seeing excuses like "DumbDiDumb does not accept others' opinions", "His posts are useless and soooo long", "He is a pumper" and such, well it just proves who's opinion is the strongest.
And Oh, In my OPINION saying that a post is long does not qualified as rejecting it for consideration. My ARGUMENTS are that it takes some text to provide the arguments backing up opinions. Also, if I take my challenges to one of the contributor's posts, I put the effort of grouping them all together, trying to present them in a more clear and concise way (point 5 in the list above) before challenging them.