My Reaction to Opinions

Opinions are of two types, but I'm not sure which one is the default.

When I was going to school I heard one of those pithy sayings that I maybe wrote down but don't remember very well. It was one of those elitist things that either made me feel better about myself, which is unlikely, or inspired me, which also isn't likely. All that I do remember about it is it saying that for the classes of students (undergrad, those with a graduate degree, and those who've earned a doctorate), each was qualified to have a level of opinion on a subject. I think those with a doctorate were entitled to hold a theory on something, but I don't remember the others. Someone may or may not have been able to hold an opinion, but I don't recall what level of study would give you that.

So, that's pretty useless since I'm only guessing you need a bachelor's degree for one, a master's for the next one up the chain, and a doctorate for the highest, but I don't remember if there was anything for people without college degrees or what the earned levels were.

Fortunately, that's not the point.

All I do remember is that at one level you were allowed to have an opinion, Now, that might be considered very snobby, but we do use the same word for two very different things. Opinions, without qualification are contrasted with either informed opinions or uninformed ones. When you hear someone talk about an uninformed opinion you can be pretty sure that they mean opinion to be an informed one. By the same token, when someone talks about informed opinions, plain old opinions are implied to be of the uninformed variety.

There's nothing wrong with that, but I'm going to try and be my usual anal self in the future and avoid using the word opinion to mean the uninformed ones. We all say that we have opinions about everything, but what I think we have, instead, is simply reactions. Those can come from our guts (or lizard brains) or from years of study. From now on, I hope to restrict the word opinion to the more elevated ones and understand that what most people mean by opinion is just a reaction to something.

There's nothing judgemental in that, nothing that discounts anything. We're all, every day, confronted by hundreds, thousands of things that we've never studied but maybe, at best, just heard about. To all of those, I have a reaction. I think an informed opinion (an opinion) is something much more rare and entails knowing the plusses and minuses, the pros and cons, and often not having even reached a decision on the matter.

But that's just like my opinion, man.