Opinions, Hypothesis & Questions

I recently heard some opinions expressed with absolute confidence and certainty and they set my synapses crackling which then launched a string of thoughts, unwinding in a sort of uncontrolled and undirected domino effect. Not so much about the specific opinions themselves but about opinions in general.

First I thought that you really can’t have an opinion without knowledge, an opinion should be the end result of a learning process, and that unsupported opinions are so much hot air. The less you know the more questions you should have, resolve the questions and then you can formulate an opinion, right?

However this led to a side observation, that I better pose as a question (having no real evidence to support it as an opinion), on the relationship between the strength of an opinion and the knowledge underpinning it: is the relationship inverse? the stronger the opinion the thinner the knowledge base supporting it? Of course I find this particularly valid when I happen to disagree with the opinion. But then to disagree with an opinion, even an unsupported one, I  would also need have a significant knowledge base, wouldn’t I?

If we could only harness the energy in all the hot air generated from arguments unsupported by knowledge... and it would be renewable since the world seems to have a huge and always multiplying supply of fools. Maybe there is some geothermal energy technology that we can build into the many houses of congress, senate and parliament around the world and connect them to the electrical grid...  but I digress.

I then tripped over a reflection on the often quoted concept that the more you learn the more you realize how little you really know, and this seems to imply that the more knowledge you acquire the more questions you should be asking. Again apparently leaving no room for opinions, only for hypothesis.

So without going into a debate on the nature of knowledge (and faith, a particularly touchy subject) which has and will continue filling books, I dare hypothesize that opinions are particularly valueless. We should be asking questions, hypothesizing, acquiring knowledge, proving or debunking our hypothesis (i.e. asking and answering questions), adjusting our hypothesis based on the outcomes, and debating them again, in a continuous and ongoing knowledge seeking process.

Holding an absolute opinion would appear to require possessing absolute knowledge and this would land in the realm of gods, and I would hypothesize that that is not our element.

So if you find yourself passionately defending or debunking an opinion, stop, take a breath (or two) and start formulating questions, honestly and without bias. Focus on seeking knowledge not validation, and eschew opinions because we probably are not gods and we definitely don’t want to be fools.