fact or opinion?

Had lunch with a friend today, and we got to talking about our communication pet peeves. It's so much fun to talk with him, because he can listen to my ten minute meandering attempts to explain something, sit back for a second, and respond with a perfect encapsulation of my meaning in one sentence. I love when that happens!

He hit the nail right on the head with this one: Oh, you are talking about when people can't tell the difference between opinions and facts.

Here's an example: Someone says, "It's cold in here," and the other person says, "No, it's not!" and they go back and forth arguing, not realizing that 'cold' is actually an opinion!

A fact would be: "It's 60 degrees in here." From there, we can each share our experience of that - one can be cold, the other can be comfortable, and there's no need to argue, because we don't need to agree. We can simply respect each other's opinions and personal experiences.

Luckily, I rarely if ever hear this kind of exchange in my circle of close friends; they are an ultra self-aware and self-responsible bunch. I am far more likely to hear "I'm cold" than 'It's cold" from them.

But when I'm out in public and I overhear opinions stated as facts all over the place, it seems kind of amazing to me that people ever manage to understand each other. Right/wrong, good/bad, appropriate/inappropriate ... are all opinions!

And I do love talking in great depth about opinions. I usually find other people's opinions fascinating when they are different than mine. I enjoy hearing what led them to that conclusion, what experiences have contributed to the formation of their opinion, and I usually learn something new. But none of that is possible if they state their opinion as a fact. The conversation and process of getting to know each other just sort of comes to a dead end.

(LOL - here I am, just days after that last blog post of mine about not putting it in my pie, and I'm putting it in my pie! I write about what I most need to learn, see?)

Oh, wait, that reminds me of one more communication pet peeve -- might as well get 'em both off my chest in one post -- misunderstanding statistics and research studies. It doesn't seem to be common knowledge that correlation is not the same as causation.

Let's say you read in the newspaper that 7 out of 10 teenagers who attempted suicide had played a certain video game in the week before their attempt. All we can tell from this is that there's a correlation between the two activities. It does not prove that the game CAUSES suicidal behavior. For all we know, suicidal teens just happen to find that game especially appealing. Could be that suicidal thinking causes video game playing.

What difference does it make? Well, for one, people sometimes use what they think is research based information to override their intuition, inner guidance, or personal experimentation. i.e. I know I always feel great when I eat an egg for breakfast, but this study says eggs cause high cholesterol, so I'll have cereal instead. (Except that another study has shown that high cholesterol is actually related to eating refined grains and sugar! So now what do I eat?)

Another risk of misinterpreting statistics is that we could be barking up the wrong tree. Pulling video games off the shelves is not going to prevent 7 out of 10 teen suicides. When misinterpreted research tell us there's an identified cause for a problem that upsets us, society often invests heavily in that solution and closes off other possibilities.

So every time I hear anyone saying A causes B as if it is a fact, I am compelled to question it. And almost always, it's actually a correlation, not causation, that shows up in the research studies.

It's the ol' chicken and the egg dilemma. We may never know which came first. Which is fine with me! I'm much more interested in hearing the basis of your opinion than pointing out that the statistics don't actually verify your statement as fact.

Allright, that's enough of that! I'm heading to my real kitchen to make a real pie for my friend's birthday celebration tomorrow. Out with pet peeves, in with peaches!