quote:
Meh, a lot of people can have the opinion that they believe sea serpents exist but there are only a few people who can have the opinion that they know it's a fact that sea serpents exist because they have seen with their own eyes the evidence that sea serpents exist.

I am one of those few people who know it's a fact that sea serpents exist.

quote:
Ugh, I'm trying to tell you that "opinion" is not the right word to use here.

You also told me:

quote:
...an opinion is not a fact at all.

I provided you with the definition of opinion which is, "a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge."

That means an opinion can be based on fact or knowledge which means that opinion can be a fact.

quote:
Well, you'll have to excuse my incorrect assumption.

You should get your facts straight so you don't make incorrect assumptions.

quote:
In my defense, the quality of your 2004 video looks like it was shot in the 80s.

I know you haven't examined my 2004 video as close as I and several other people have.

The quality of my video is good enough to contain enough data that proves for a fact sea serpents exist.

quote:
Yeah, 20 yards is pretty close for a giant sea serpent sighting. IMO.

Do you think 20 yards is so close that it would be impossible for someone to mistake a known animal or a inanimate object for a 60+ foot long sea serpent from only 20 yards away?

quote:
You don't need to apologize to me for your own ignorance.

quote:
Then please pardon me for being ignorant of your own personal life experiences.

I've made it clear many times at this site that my and my brother's first and closest sighting of a sea serpent was on February 5, 1985 and that our first video was taken in 2004 from a distance of at least a mile away.

I also gave a link to my blog where those facts are also mentioned.

I can't help it if you choose not to learn or remember those facts.

quote:
It doesn't matter if everyone on the planet except me believes that sea serpents don't exist. It's still a fact that sea serpents actually exist even if they haven't seen any evidence for the existence of sea serpents.

quote:
We can't call it a fact without (much) more evidence. What we can say, though, is that your claim is a statement of fact (as opposed to a statement of opinion).

Meh, when an unknown animal actually exists then it is a fact that the unknown animal exists even if no one knows it's a fact that the unknown animal actually exists.

quote:
Since you agree with that statement then when "mountain lion" is replaced with "sea serpent. you must also agree with the statement.

quote:
Sure. If you say "I saw a sea serpent", that is a claim that can possibly be proven. If, instead, you say "I saw something that looked like a sea serpent", there is no way to dispute that. If it looked like a sea serpent to you, there is no way to prove or disprove that statement. It is an opinion.

I have never said, "I saw something that looked like a sea serpent". I have always said, "I saw a sea serpent" and I also said, "I am 100% certain that what I saw was a sea serpent".

When describing what the animal looked like, I have said the closest animal that it looked like was a dragon which is supposedly mythological.

quote:
It's all in the phrasing. Words have meaning, you know. Yeah, some definitions are up for interpretation, but there's a pretty clear difference between "fact" and "opinion".

Some opinions are based on ignorance while other opinions are based on fact or knowledge.

I'm specifically talking about an opinion that is based on fact or knowledge which means the opinion may also be a fact.

quote:
A claim that we can send a man to the moon is in no way an opinion. There is a very straightforward way to test the claim: send a man to the moon.

If someone were to say "I think we can send a man to the moon", that is an opinion. It is subjective, a statement based on what that person thinks. It may be possible to change that person's opinion by presenting or discovering new facts, but we can't test the opinion. We cannot falsify the opinion, because a person's thought is the person's thought. It is simply a fact that the opinion exists.

If someone says their opinion is "we can send a man to the moon" based on scientific facts or knowledge then their opinion can be tested.

quote:
Some opinions don't deal with what is subjective such as when scientists had the opinion that we can send a man to the moon because their opinion was based on actual scientific laws and facts that were known at the time.

quote:
Just because you call it an opinion doesn't make it an opinion. As I hope you are starting to understand, it depends on whether the phrasing is subjective or objective.

Again, an opinion can be subjective or objective.

If an opinion is based on ignorance then the opinion is subjective but if the opinion is based on fact or knowledge then the opinion is objective.

If before I had a close definitive sighting of a sea serpent I said, "sea serpents exist" based solely on my own ignorance then it would be a subjective opinion but if I said, "sea serpents exist" after seeing a sea serpent expose its entire body except for its tail above the surface of the water only 20 yards away from me then it is an objective opinion based on fact and knowledge.

quote:
The definition of opinion is, "a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge."

That means an opinion may be based on facts.

quote:
Absolutely. If you were to go around spouting opinions that are not based on facts, then most would just call you a crazy person.

Then you are admitting you were wrong when you posted:

quote:
...an opinion is not a fact at all.

An opinion can be a fact.

quote:
My opinions, and those of most of us, are usually based on facts. That does not change the fact that they are opinions.

When your opinion is based on facts then your opinion may be a fact depending on whether your opinion is based on extrapolating the facts correctly.

For example, when my brother and I had our first sighting of a sea serpent on February 5, 1985, the fact that we just saw a sea serpent made us have the opinion that we couldn't be so lucky that we would see the sea serpent the only time the sea serpent ever entered SF Bay and that it would re-enter SF some day in the future.

Based on that objective opinion, we staked out the area at the same time of day and year for several years.

Sure enough, our objective opinion was a fact because the animal returned to SF Bay during the same time of day and year as our first sighting.

1 ...

Report Post

Posted by Korkstand

Member since Nov 2003

28745 posts

Posted on 9/29/17 at 3:32 pm to DawgfaninCa

I will add more later when I'm not on my phone, mostly because I just like giving you hell about sea serpents, but the gist of it is you are assuming that any claim based on facts is itself a fact. This is simply not true.

It's really not that difficult. If a claim can be verified, measured, observed, or is in any other way objective, then it is a statement of fact.

If a claim is subjective, as in based on views, feelings, or any other unmeasurable thing, then it is an opinion. What actual facts the opinion is based on is irrelevant. An opinion is one's interpretation of information. An expression of something internal, which is obviously distinct and separate from the facts or information that opinion itself is based on. The opinion is its own entity. Do you understand this?

2 ...

Report Post

Political Talk - Replies to Post

Return To Board

Page 1

Return To Board