Factual opinion?

-

"I’ve just been feeling frustrated because I feel like you’ve been questioning a lot of my statements."

This friend's remark, during a sort-of-apology he made to me, puzzled me at first. Does he expect me to not disagree with his statements? Many of his statements are arrogant and sometimes delivered arrogantly too but that's besides the point. I sometimes question and/or disagree with his statements because of the content, not the mode of delivery.

There were some clues to this puzzle in this recent exchange: 

#1 

Him: I have never heard of a cluster where almost 50% tested are positive. TG must be breaking SOP and completely neglecting their workers health. And now they’ve overloaded our healthcare system. We can’t deal with 2684 covid patients appearing at once?!?

Me: Did our Health DG say that our healthcare system is overloaded?

Him: Ah, fair, that’s just my assumption. Maybe they can actually cope with 2684 cases appearing at once. ... I seriously doubt it, but fine, let’s see.

Him: I’ll offer you a bet at 5-1 odds, my RM500 against your RM100, that this is going to overload our healthcare system... interested? ;)

Notice that he didn't back his assertion and was so confident in it that he gave me good odds in the betting offer.

#2

Me: I'm going to shut you out right now

Him: Ok, sorry. The correct answer is no there has been no announcement yet about our healthcare system being overloaded.

Once again he was confident that his assertion was correct. It merely hadn't been officially announced yet.

#3

This was the next day, when he apologised for lashing out at me. I shall present parts that are relevant to this post.

Him: I sort of have a similiar point to convey, but the method and language I used was TERRIBLE and completely inappropriate

Him: If I could go back in time, (which I can’t! Must be more careful with words), I would say, “don’t you think I’m almost certainly correct? I feel unhappy that you are questioning my statement.” ... then again, it is true, it was just a conjecture, there really is a small chance that I was wrong.

Noticed that he believed that there was only "a small chance" that he was wrong and yet all this time he didn't provide evidence and/or analysis to back this assertion.

Conclusion

You know how we get upset over, say, someone trying to convince people that the Sun revolves around the Earth? Or at the nonsense that anti-vaxxers are sprouting? That's because we are protective of facts, not opinions.

Similarly, I'm guessing that this friend wasn't upset that I questioned his opinions but rather I questioned what he considered as facts to him. However, at least in this particular case, his 'fact' wasn't substantiated.

Guess who else treats his opinions as facts, without substantiating them? Donald Trump. 

Comments

William said…
After I identify such people, I stop commenting altogether. Hidup lebih bahagia.
November 29, 2020 at 12:49 PM
Jaded Jeremy said…
William,
Yes, I've decided to try this way too. My eyeballs will be getting lots of exercise haha. Problem is that we meet almost everyday and often he asked me what I think of his statements.
November 30, 2020 at 1:44 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark - character build (Part 1)

-
Here are the character builds for my current run (with the help of Ban): Kyrie Fellblade/Marked Counter: Slow Secondary passives: Execute, Life Font Fellblade itself is a good class because of the various conditions it can inflict and most importantly they can inflict Sleep. Iirc, the only other human class that can do this is Gadgeteer. Their passive Malice increases the chance of landing it by 10%. Fellblade pairs well with Marked because both use ATK and MND in their offensive abilities. Also, Fellblade's abilities are mostly short range whereas Marked has some long range abilities. Execute for more damage. Life Font is for suvivability. Ban opined that with two healers, there's no need for Life Font but I discover that it enables Kyrie to survive just enough for a healer to heal her up, after having received massive damage. Ban advocated for Marked/Fellblade for superior Speed (1.00 vs 0.92) and defense (heavy armor). I resisted this for a long time because I
Read more

Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark - character build (Part 2)

-
(continue from Part 1 ) Yates Anatomist/Wizard Counter: Cripple Secondary passives: Blessed One, Smart Casting Anatomist is the best healer in game due to the passive Legendary Healer, which also then boost the amount of self-healing by Blessed One. Although Ban thinks Anatomist's Dark spells are sufficient in dealing damage and so he suggests Alchemyst as Yate's secondary class, I choose Wizard for the following reasons: Quite often, demonic creatures have Dark immunity and other creatures have immunity to other elements. So having Dark, Water, Fire, Earth and Thunder spells enable Yates to cast the most suitable spell, especially when the enemies are vulnerable to certain elements. Flexible casting :) Smart Casting is useful so that I don't need to worry much about the positioning of the enemies relative to my other characters when using Mass Healing and the area effect damage spells. As stated in previous post , there "are so many devastating Skill ba
Read more

Strange expectorant

-
Image
An expectorant cough syrup helps you to prevent phlegem from going to your lungs by expelling it via coughing or so I heard from doctors and pharmacists. That's why for cough that's caused by phlegm, it is not advisable to take suppressant cough syrup. Given that's the role, do you expect it to be drowsy? It should be non-drowsy so that you will be actively coughing out the phlegm, right? Not this Unizet expectorant. The doctor told me that it shouldn't be drowsy and yet some of his patients (including me) reported otherwise. I read the detailed information (on the piece of paper typically stuffed inside the box) and nowhere it indicated drowsiness as a side effect. Strange, huh?
Read more