Instead of looking at “opinion” I’d rather look at “wrong” and the meaning of that.
Until someone thinks that something is “wrong” or “right” that something is… just there.
Right or Wrong is based on some sort of value or belief system helping individuals to make decisions in life. You can apply these systems to anything, really. OK, if you say, the sun is wrong, it becomes kind of useless, because you cannot change what the sun is doing. Same goes for most of the natural world. We usually don’t say a lion killing a zebra is wrong. But how about a cat playing with a mouse before killing it? Are we stepping in, thinking that it is wrong what the cat is doing and should be stopped? So, it seems to me Wrong and Right apply to things that can be changed, by us. Opinions? Well, if they are not against our value and belief system, who cares. If they do, however, and we can do something to change them, they can become wrong.
That just off the top of my head, which is full of right opinions.
This debate appears to have started because I called the politician a halfwit - which one poster found unacceptable - while the villain of the piece was a loony (which IMO is possible but relatively unlikely - punching someone is not the sole diagnostic criterion for being a loony). Opinions are usually some combination of surmise and fact - we fill in the blanks between what we perceive to be the facts, and come to a conclusion. We can fill in the blanks with other facts, or with stuff we made up. We might also ignore certain facts in order to reinforce our preferred worldview. So perhaps opinions can have greater or lesser validity depending on what someone has used to plug the gaps, and what facts have been discarded.
I don’t know if I can give you a dictionary definition, but the point I was making was that there is a difference between calling someone, say, “a creepy pedo guy”, and saying “this man is a pedophile and he has had sex with underage people”.
The first is an opinion, and the second is an allegation (or statement/claim of fact). The first cannot be held up in court (at least in most courts). The second can be considered slander/slur if proven to be a lie.
Similarly, calling someone a “halfwit” or “loony” is an opinion, whereas saying something like “this man’s IQ is only 50” or “this man has been diagnosed with mental conditions” is an allegation.
I’m not sure I see the difference. If I call someone a “creepy pedo guy”, I am essentially making factual claims about him: he is creepy, and he is a pedo or has some such characteristics.
Perhaps you are, but most people wouldn’t take it that way if you say it that way, and most courts certainly wouldn’t take it that way either. They would simply consider it your own opinion that you are sharing (however baseless it may be).
Most people wouldn’t think you were trying to make a serious allegation.
I don’t know, it’s kind of ambiguous. Creepy may be subjective, but “pedo” has definite connotations which can be factually correct or incorrect when applied to a particular person.
Can you please test your theory for us, maybe go to one of the politicians who are out and about at the moment and call them a “creepy pedo” on camera.
If people accept its just your opinion then nothing will come of it.
True. Opinions can contain factual information which can be correct or incorrect, but the important distinction I was making in my original post is the emphasis or purpose of the statement.
When you called the attacker a “loony”, it was implied that was simply your opinion, and that you didn’t actually know anything about his mental condition. Sure, his mental condition can be verified, and your statement could turn out to be false, but that wouldn’t automatically mean you were being slanderous. You were simply stating an opinion.
When Elon Musk called that guy a “creepy pedo guy”, he was sued for slander, but the lawsuit didn’t go anywhere because it was obvious he was just name-calling/stating his own opinion of the guy. He wasn’t making a serious or specific allegation about anything he might have done.
No need. Elon Musk already tested it. He called someone a “creepy pedo guy” (which is why I used this example in the first place) and he was sued. The court’s final verdict was that he was free to share his opinion of the guy, as nobody would have taken that statement as a serious allegation.
So if that politician who was discussed in this thread were to see this thread, and see that someone had called her a “halfwit” (and assuming there was no apology or deletion made afterwards), do you seriously believe she can successfully win a defamation suit if she provided an IQ test result proving she is smart?
