Evidentiary Foundations and "Opinions"
May 29, 2009
This pisses people off, but it's illustrative:
The next time someone says that global warming is occurring, ask them:
1. Who are the leading experts on global warming?
2. What are their backgrounds?
3. Have their climate models made accurate predictions about future events?
4. What were those predictions?
5. If so, have these predictions been statistically more accurate than a lucky guess?
Yes, you will offend people at cocktail parties! Yet if people can't answer any of those questions: What business do they have having an opinion on global warming?!
Ask me who I think will win the World's Series. I don't know. I don't care enough to know. Other than mixed martial arts, I don't watch sports. I wouldn't even know it was baseball season if I didn't leave two blocks from a stadium.
Yet imagine I said that, "The Cubs will win the World Series" this year but didn't even know who the players on the Cubs were. How ridiculous would that be?
That is how ridiculous most people are when it comes to most things they have opinions on. They don't even know who the players are, let alone the statistics on the players.
Amazing!