Hacker News Reader

Comment by jonnybgood | Hacker News Reader

I keep seeing on HN about how most Americans simply don't care about this issue and it being the reason there isn't more of an uproar. However, I have a different take: They have a different opinion than you. It's not that they don't care, are brainwashed, or "lost", it's just that they have a different opinion on the matter. Now I'm not saying they are right or wrong, but let's keep in mind that their opinion is just as valid as yours.

View on HN

> It's not that they don't care, are brainwashed, or "lost", it's just that they have a different opinion on the matter.

Opinions don't magically drop down from heaven like mana. Just because an opinion is there doesn't mean we can't ponder how it got there.

> Now I'm not saying they are right or wrong, but let's keep in mind that their opinion is just as valid as yours.

"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" --- Isaac Asimov

They have a right to an opinion, but that does not necessarily mean that their opinion is valid. From Wikipedia on Validity: "an argument is valid if and only if its conclusion is logically entailed by its premises."

Wouldn't that make it a proof and not an opinion?

"Government officials are vulnerable to corruption, therefore unchecked surveillance is prone to be abused and should not be implemented."

This statement's conclusion does follow from its premise and it's a valid argument, but not a proof.

It would make it an argument, which I guess you could say is a subset of opinion. A proof goes back to an argument and shows that its conclusions must follow from its premises.

The implication of course being that these people got their opinion from a different set of premises. Which seems to be jonnybgood's point: some people are approaching this from a completely different starting position and direction, and it's not obviously invalid.

Personally I worry about how long this takes to resolve; if it takes too long, there might be enough social value drift no one will be upset by this sort of thing anymore. And that will be a much harder to fix starting point. Well, I would consider it a state worth fixing, at least.

argument != opinion

Reply on news.ycombinator.com