Dilbert, by Scott Adams
Wally encapsulates a lot of people…too many. We all know people like this, they have “strong” opinions on many things: Abortion, same-sex marriage, politics, and religion. The problem is that they seem to be impervious to any reasoning whatsoever.
Wallys don’t like to argue about their opinions; like debating, or how people passionately disagree with one another in the comment section of a controversial blog. I mean they have no desire to come to a conclusion for their opinions and they sure don’t want to hear reasons for yours, they simply adopt an opinion. In fact, the person I know and have in mind as I write this has interrupted me more than once with: “can’t I just have my opinion!?” when I tried to dig a little as to why they thought what they did.
This kind of passive thinker actually bothers me more than someone who holds polar opposite views from my own. Even though my ideological opposite wont likely change their mind, they at least have taken some time try to ground their opinion with some semblance of reasoning. Wallys on the other hand not only have no qualms about their superficial reasons, they seem to vigorously oppose any attempt to inject reasoning into their decision process!
Opinions on life’s important issues deserve to be thought about in an investigative manner. One’s views on abortion, same-sex marriage, politics, and religion, for example, all have real life consequences.
Questions for readers:
- How do you feel about people like this, am I being over-sensitive?
- How do you deal with people like this?
Sifting Reality 
This kinda people usually bother me in a different manner. They take a stand without having proper background about the topic and cooking up their own version. Am experiencing this for past few months in my new project. we as a team usually go for break and lunch together. And we do discuss some political , cricket etc topics, we usually have two sides for such issues as always. but while discussing some take up my side and few the opposite. Those who just support start arguing with a complete new as well as absurd reason behind the opinion they are supporting. They don’t even listen to the reason from us why we originally came up to it. They take it up to a complete different level of stupidity and make a joke. These people really beat the frustration out of me. I might be having different reason to hate passive people, but the point we both make is they better shut there mouth instead of supporting a opinion without any strong ground.
As far as your questions are concerned, its a genuine feeling/frustration. And i just try to avoid raising any such topic in there presence.
Wow, how close minded. Only a racist bigot homophobe could possibly think that one ought to think… That’s what I think anyway :).
Questions:
1. Some liberals ask the same questions. In their mind, to be pro-life is to be “uninformed” regarding human development; to be against same-sex marriage is to be “bigoted;” to be conservative is to be “reactionary;” to be Christian is to be “brainwashed.”
They believe they’re informed and that you and me are ignorant. So I don’t feel debates like these are useful, because each side has their own “I’m right, because…” rhetoric. It’s hard to get to the bottom of the B.S. sometimes.
2. I point out the facts and support them as best I can. Take abortion, for example. I point out that unborn children are just as human as anyone else, and I support this with biology books, developmental psychology books, and so on. Sometimes, if the pro-choicer is somewhat intelligent, they’ll offer an article written by a partisan biologist arguing against the humanity of the unborn. Who wins? Explaining to them that their biologist is simply bias doesn’t work, because they’ll accuse my source of bias. It’s a never-ending battle.
So I focus my attention on fence-sitters, hoping to convert them. I do, from time to time, spend a minute humiliating pro-choicer – but that only serve the purpose of entertaining me and other hardcore pro-lifers for a minute or so.
Ugh!! Yes! I’ve encountered this so often. For me, the most frequent offenders are people I know who claim to be Christian, but hold views that are decidedly unChristian, but defend them because it “feels right” to them. When it’s pointed out that their opinion runs counter to what Christianity stands for, they talk about what “Christianity means to me” – and it’s all about how they feel. No intellectual rigor allowed!
Here’s an article I just bumped into. I thought I’d post it before reading. Not my normal tactic, but I have an opinion, based on the headline, that it will be interesting and relevant… http://theconversation.edu.au/no-youre-not-entitled-to-your-opinion-9978
Jason
I’m not talking about forming an opinion on insignificant subject. I thought I made it clear that it was important topics, like the ones I listed. I even contemplated stating that I wasn’t talking about frivolous topics, but figured no one would bring up the trivial. I guess I was wrong. I should have stated the obvious. Thank you for making me regret not being more specific. I had thought my readers were smarter than to offer something like forming opinions based on headlines. Thank you for making me realize that I do need to spell it all out.
When someone says ‘that’s just my opinion’, I generally take that to mean, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore”. I generally try to respect that, but there are lots of circumstances that pushing further might be relevant. It’s just important to recognize the person’s attempt to change the subject.
Sometimes it’s more like, “Well that’s my opinion and you should respect that.” That kind of response requires some push-back. The person is of the opinion that their conviction on the matter should hold weight in an argument. Other than for purely aesthetic or personal choices, facts, expert consensus, impact on others, and other types of evidence hold weight in an argument. A person’s opinion, no matter how strongly-held, is evidence of nothing other than that the person holds a strong opinion.
So if a person wishes to have an opinion and leave it at that, then fine. If a person wishes to hide behind their preconceptions and feelings to defend against learning something or worse to create social pressure or public policy, then that warrants strong opposition.
What we musn’t do is confuse having an opinion with having evidence. We also shouldn’t try to belittle someone’s disagreement with ‘just an opinion’. Hopefully this article doesn’t advocate for using the ‘just your opinion’ response to try to shut our eyes against mountains of evidence that contradict our own opinions.
I haven’t come in contact with anyone who offers an opinion without any justification for it whatsoever. I usually get the “it’s just my opinion” attitude more in the form of, “I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree” after they’ve come up short in responding to my questions, objections or challenges regarding their opinion. But certainly there must be occasions when someone hasn’t given much thought to an issue beyond a superficial look and an opinion forms all by itself based upon that quick glance. Not everyone takes the time to really dig into every issue most others would regard as important.