What is an opinion worth?
Yours? Mine?
The US Bureau of the census estimated that on October 1, 2004, the total world population would be 6,395,935,316. We would have then 6,395,935,316 opinions about any particular subject. Or about what anything is. How about it? That is more than 6 BILLION. Now, as I revise this on December 31, 2007, the same agency reports that its estimate of the world population is now 6,640,917,686. As you can see, it has increased a lot. I won’t redo all the math, because I’d be very busy; the figures below should make the point. If you would like to see the updated figures, here’s the link:
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html
Of course there are groups, some very large, who may all agree on any given topic, but it is highly unlikely that any two persons would agree on everything.
Each of us is then 1/6,395,935,316 of the earth’s population. In percentage terms, every swaggering narcissist, every corporate CEO, every college professor, every student, every homeless person, every Schlemiel (Yiddish for a person plagued with bad luck), and each of us on the whole planet, regardless of who we might be, represents 0.000000016% of the population of the world. If all opinions are of equal value, to be fair, don’t you have to at least entertain the notion that the other 6,395,935,315 opinions are of a value equal to yours? So, to you, maybe you like a picture of a fast car. In another culture, despite the pernicious homogenization of tastes and thought worldwide, someone might likely prefer something else. It is pretty hard to guess what that might be now; tastes and opinions still vary widely.
If you can’t allow others’ opinions to have weight equal to your own, you must think that you are special. If so, how could you go about substantiating that belief? If you can’t, you are living in La La Land, but probably we all live there, because each of us is centered in the self.
I did some calculating and found that if I had a whole lot of Mac Pismo laptops identical to the one I am typing on now (I know, it is ancient, from 2000), and if I were going to be ONE SINGLE PIXEL on the screen, there would need to be 116 x 116 or 13,456 of these laptops to have enough pixels available in their screens at 1024×768 pixels per screen (786,432/screen) to approximate the world population. If you take the standard dimension of a football field as 6400 square yards (including about 10 feet into each end zone), and the world population at 6400000000 allotting one square yard per person (that is not much space to conduct one’s life, now, is it?), it would require 12.5 football fields. If you were to reduce the available area to one single football field, each of us would have about 1/800 of a square inch in which to live and conduct our affairs.
Now, each pixel, each 1/800 square inch — is the CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE in its own OPINION because that is its frame of reference. So, should we give it any particular credit for having opinions? Taking it out of the abstract, and placing it on ME, my capacity of opinion is about 1/800 of a square inch on the football field of the world.
I am in danger of the tight end stepping square on me. So much for my precious opinions.
NOW, In MY OPINION: opinions, yours, or mine, are worth just about that much. Since they are encapsulated judgments, they are dualistic; that is, they hold themselves up as being “true”, which means that the opinion of some individual in ours or in some other culture, is “false” by subjective definition.
Opinions get us in trouble. People are killed by opinions. Usually, that is, — other people’s opinions. Other people would be “us” for a lot of people in the Middle East right now.
Here is a question: What is the difference between opinions and beliefs? Is there any?
