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This article is about the general concept. For the legal concept, see Legal opinion. For the Nirvana song, see Opinion (song).
Look up Opinion in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
An opinion is a person's ideas and thoughts towards something. It is an assessment, judgment or evaluation of something. An opinion is not a fact, because opinions are either not falsifiable, or the opinion has not been proven or verified. If it later becomes proven or verified, it is no longer an opinion, but a fact. Accordingly, all information on the web, from a surfer's perspective, is better described as opinion rather than fact.
In economics, philosophy, or other social sciences, analysis based on opinions is referred to as normative analysis (what ought to be), as opposed to positive analysis, which is based on scientific observation (what materially is). In mathematics and logic there can be no opinions about some claims, equations, and arguments, because often these kinds of statements are either valid or invalid, and true or false, and not open to contradicting opinions.
Historically, the distinction of proven knowledge and opinion was articulated by some Ancient Greek philosophers. Plato's analogy of the divided line is a well-known illustration of the distinction between knowledge and opinion.
Robert Webb, half of the Mitchell and Webb comedy duo, identified the phenomenon of idle opinion. Mitchell and Webb had come in for considerable criticism in the UK for their Apple Mac commercials, which contrasted the Mac with the PC. Webb noted that the vast bulk of the criticism happened during office hours, when people should have been doing their jobs. After 5pm each day, the criticism in blogs and Web chatrooms dried up. His conclusion is that idle opinion consists of views that people don't hold strongly, or indeed that they may not hold the view at all. 'Critics' just want to be part of a discussion, rather than do their daily grind.
[edit] See also
Egocentrism
Philosophy
Politics
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