Opinion of the Obvious Does Not Equate Fact

I see a lot of posts on ATS with words like: proven, fact, evidence. Then, once I've opened the thread I read some useless observation that claims to be actual fact, without citation or evidence to back up ones claims.

Boards with the most offenses that I notice are 'Political Madness' and 'General Conspiracy'. Wouldn't it be awesome if the mods were able to tag threads with an [OPINION] tag, much like the [HOAX] tag in the thread title?


Now here's a common scenario. An OP will be made with claims of fact without citation or evidence. A reply will be made asking "where is the evidence?". If and OP has made one of these two responses, it's an immediate FAIL with an attempt to troll (intentionally or otherwise). The 2 typical responses are...

A) "Why should I prove it is? Prove that it isn't"

and

B) "Do I need to prove something that is obvious? (insert analog here)"

For the A's, realize that your opinion is just that, and state that it is your opinion, logical or not. There's no reason to be ashamed for having an opinion. For example "It is my theory that birthers work for Obama, and here's why". This is a discussion forum, you may find that others share your opinion. From there, a theory can be placed together, and eventually maybe evidence that the theory can be fact. Any OP claiming opinion as fact and not doing this can expect to be trolled, laughed at, and called out.

For the B's, here's a conversational analogy to get you thinking.....

Steve: "The sky is blue, it is obvious, I can look up, and see that it is blue, therefore it is true"

Colorblind Bob: "What? Thats ridiculous, it is not obviously blue, when I look up I see purple, therefore it's just your opinion that it is blue"

At this point, Steve has 2 options. He can either be a douche bag and keep going with his 'it's obvious' argument, OR he can wise up, and show Bob that it's not just his opinion, but prove that the light seen in the sky is actually blue because blue in the electromagnetic spectrum has shorter wavelengths making it easier to pass through the atmosphere and into your eye hole. (Rayleigh Scattering). The 2nd option leaves Bob a little more educated, and Steve seem a little less douchier.

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So my point, if I ever had one, I suppose would be this. Have some humility when expressing your opinions, and learn to recognize that you opinion, no matter how obvious it may be to you, is just that.... oh, and try not to be a douche bag.

Unfortunately there are few members who actually do the book work and put in the time to actually educate themselves on the topics they find interesting. Rather than study up on a particular topic, visit websites and educate themselves with supporting evidence for the arguments they claim to have; they instead chose to blindly attack other people in an effort to flame a thread into mods closing it.

People respond to a sensational title and not to substance; while the educated and those willing to learn will read everything on the subject before becoming the douche that you pointed out.

Then there are those individuals who reply to posters by making assumptions or snap judgements based on their own biased opinions and beliefs when 95% of the time the original poster's message had nothing to do with the side-tracked rant they proceeded on. I can't tell you how many times I've had people respond to my posts with random BS without actually reading it in its entirety and attempting to understand it.

ATS is supposed to be comprised of people striving to DENY IGNORANCE, but instead, newer members skip the hard stuff and go straight for the gravy.

They end up looking like idiots, go figure. Season members must look past this ignorance and realize that everyone has to start somewhere and it is up to us to sort the newbies from the true trolls so we can DENY IGNORANCE.

King

reply to post by Kingalbrect79


Well said.

Yeah, while I did harp on bad OP's, you're right about the posters who reply a little too quickly. I can't tell you how many times I've come across replies by people who have obviously not gone through the content of an OP. And you're right, they look like idiots.

Then there are those who are quick to point something out, as if they were the first one with a light bulb going 'ding', that has already been covered in the threads first few pages. I mean, if I come across a 70 page thread, I'm probably not going to go through all posts, but I at least go through the first few pages to see if my thoughts or questions have been covered already. It's just common sense in my opinion.