The other day I attended a talk hosted by Greater Boston Humanists on "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds" given by a Melanie Trecek-King, an associate professor at Massasoit Community College.

I shan’t rehearse her argument here, but there are two points from her talk I wanted to pickup on: (i) the conspicuous avoidance of using the simple word opinions in referring to what she calls ‘subjective beliefs’ and (ii) there is an equivalence relation between one’s identity and certain opinions — nay, “subjective beliefs” they hold.

For clarity according to her, subjective beliefs are claims that cannot be proven false; and she tosses in a few examples few examples, "cats make better pets than dogs," and "[kittens] are cuter than babies," both with which I agree and any who disagrees are wrong and evil for thinking otherwise. 😁

At the time of writing, my blog post is doing a disservice for those who need a review on Trecek-King’s argument to which I hope and trust the GBH will upload the recorded video of her talk accessible to the public at some later date.

Going off Trecek-King’s claim about the equivalence relations between certain held opinions and particular people’s group identity, I want to push further toward realizing the danger when ‘subjective beliefs’ dominate.

It is not the case that the exchanging of facts fail to persuade because facts are ignored or contradicted but rather facts are devalued compared to opinions.

Sometimes opinions do map onto reality as in "my team will win the next game," which either is true or not when the game happens. Such instances and (a Western cultural mindset, do I want to attribute?) reenforces the misapprehension that all statements have a truth value. An implicit premise people hold is opinions must be either right or wrong when in fact opinions are neither.

Second, the opinions one holds are 'right', 'good', 'correct', or whatever whereas contrary opinions are ‘bad’, ‘wrong’, or stupid.

More recent is the egregious examples in which subjective beliefs attain inflated value to the extent of superseding facts and history

When opinions influence public policy, opinions gain a moral force which has implicit an excluded-middle disjunctive truth value.

Opinions used as the basis for social or political policy necessarily pits opposing opinions, and by extension according to the talk, those whose identities subscribed to one subjective belief or another against each other. Well enough for anyone having an opinion or not on topic X but when X becomes a central political issue all the sudden what was one innocuous opinions become a matter or life and death. Our democracy permits everyone has input, of equal weight, regardless if anyone’s opinions is ‘bad’, misinformed, or irrelevant.

Until recent, politics was downstream of culture; now the current runs in reverse. Politics has infective so many aspects of people's lives creating derision within innocuous, apolitical camps, for example the Knitting Wars (I invite one to Google or watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGjl6VhXs4w) which resulted in a dissolution of an online knitting club over the lack f BIPoC representation. Matt Walsh's advocacy journalistic documentary "What Is a Woman?" was poised for distribution well before Justice Jackson was asked that faithful question. When Orwellian obfuscation upends well established facts ('truths') e.g. what is a 'woman' and words, e.g. recession, are redefined in real time, trust and faith in once accepted facts ('truth') shatters the basic foundation on which any can agree. More troubling than selective sharing or withholding of particular facts or whole cloth fabrication for misinformation is reconstituted meaning of ordinary words. If we cannot agree on what is a 'woman' what hope for any communication, let alone an exchange of ideas and opinions? The destruction of logos leaves persuasion by ethos and pathos. No wonder socio-political discourse is in shambles.