Young versus old people in quiz about statements of fact versus opinion

[ChoatieMom]

@doschicos made the correct distinction in #70. The article asked:

Test your ability to classify 10 news statements as either factual or opinion.

We were not asked to determine whether the statements are true or false but, rather, whether or not the statements as presented/constructed were provable by facts and thus factual statements or opinion (beliefs). It’s a pretty simple exercise.

For example, if I state that “I think little green men live on Mars”, it is obviously an opinion. I can’t know that, there is no evidence of it. Just because I leave off the “I think” if I rephrase it as “Little green men live on Mars”, doesn’t magically transform nonsense into fact.

People are getting too hung up on the subject matter in the statements rather than evaluating them by the proper logic constructs:

1. “I think little green men live on Mars” is opinion because the statement as presented is about the subject’s belief, not whether the object is true or false. The object of this statement as presented is not relevant to the proper classification.

2. “Little green men live on Mars” as presented is a factual statement that can be proven true or false (whether or not we have the technology today to definitively answer). Leaving off “I think” does not make the statement fact (true), it makes it no longer about belief but factually provable.

However, @mom2twogirls, if you “can’t know that, there is no evidence of it” then it doesn’t follow that the statement is “nonsense.” If, in fact, you can’t know something, you can’t determine the non/sense of it. But, your first statement is not opinion because there is no evidence of little green men; it’s opinion because it was stated as so with “I think.”