I think it’s important to recognize when you don’t personally have enough knowledge to make a judgment. Then you have to decide whether to take a position based upon your own knowledge of the subject, take an agnostic position, try to GET enough knowledge yourself, or defer to believing others who you judge to have the appropriate knowledge. We don’t have time to garner all the knowledge on every issue ourselves, so we have to do a combination of these things.
Final recommendation. Refrain from re-posting Facebook memes…
“I think the sky is red”
if I understand #36 correctly, the statement “I think…” is always a factual statement because it’s either true or false you think that, not a matter of opinion. If we are out someplace together and you tell me you think the sky is red, I’ll believe you think that even if I’m looking at a blue sky. But my first reaction will be that you’re mistaken. ( I’m not going to believe you are deliberately lying unless you have lied to me before.) Then I’m going to remember that dress that blew up the internet a few years back and be a whole less certain who is right or wrong.
A fact is a statement that can be proven true or false. An opinion is an expression of a person’s feelings that cannot be proven. For example:
This week pipe bombs were sent to U.S. politicians and CNN (Factual statement)
Pipe bombs were a “false flag” operation sent to U.S. politicians and CNN to influence the Nov elections. (Opinion statement)
I got them all right. I realized quickly to not worry about whether the statement was exactly correct. Like the budget question. No idea if healthcare is the biggest portion but it didn’t matter.
I’m probably the median age, proudly and unapologetically am a conservative republican.
In my view, something cannot be a fact unless it is true. I did not detect “false facts” in the quiz, but I did it pretty fast.
There are always layers of complexity and qualifications that can be added to statements to make them more accurate, so I suppose I usually allow some leeway for “facts” that are mostly true, but could use some qualification to make them really accurate. For example, “The sun rises in the east.” Does that mean precisely due east, or can we allow for “east” as a general hand-waving direction?
I think that one is a fact statement. Specifically, it’s a statement about the actual motivations behind the sending of pipe bombs. It’s a prediction that may have as its basis some opinions, but it’s still a fact statement.
My spouse wanted to point out that the sun does not in fact rise. He also gave the example of the statement, “There are planets in other solar systems,” as something that was opinion in the past, and is now fact. My view is that the latter statement was factual, but with truth status unknown in the past.
You would be correct. Either there are or are not other solar systems with planets. Not knowing which does not make it an opinion, although we do use the word in that way, which is perhaps why it gets confusing. I would prefer “theory” or “conjecture”.
I got them all right, and it said “You scored better than 73% of the public and the same as 26%.” Scary that only 26% of the people taking the quiz can tell fact from opinion.
This title and the discussion here are misusing terms. The whole exercise is about “factual statements” not facts. Factual statements can be proven true or false. A fact is something that is true.
However, the exercise also wasn’t trying to trip people up. The budget question was correct but remember that people paid taxes for that social security and medicare over many, many years. Now, that’s a fact. 
Phrasing an opinion as if it were a fact does not actually make it a fact. Something that is based on speculation and conjecture, without anything factual to support it, is actually not factual.
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.
How much territory did ISIS have to lose to make it significant? Saying they lost some territory puts the statement clearly in the factual category. Stating that the amount they lost was significant sure sounds like opinion. (even if it was 90%)
Yeah, I’m glad I was not the only one who thought what is “significant” is an opinion. If they want to talk about a % or something quantifiable ok, but many can disagree as to what constitutes “significant.”
Please stop maligning our state’s birth certificates as well. Thanks!
@doschicos made the correct distinction in #70. The article asked:
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.
People are getting too hung up on the subject matter in the statements rather than evaluating them by the proper logic constructs:
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“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.
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“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.”
@ChoatieMom: I disagree about point 1. “I think little green men live on Mars” is a factual statement about a person’s beliefs. I think you could reasonably understand the sentence to tell you something about someone’s opinion, but I’m not sure that makes it an opinion statement. Contrast, “It would be great if little green men live on Mars,” which is an opinion as it expresses a value judgment.
By definition, “I think” is a belief statement. It goes no further than that.
My take: factual statements are anything that is either true or false. “I think about X” would be a factual statement whether or not it is true.
“I think too often about X” would be opinion because it is on a sliding scale. “A is greater than B” is factual for math, opinion for quarterbacks.
Sure, but a statement about beliefs can still be a statement of fact, rather than of opinion. For example, “I believe the sky is blue” is a statement of fact regarding the state of my beliefs. It can be false (i.e., I can believe the sky is red) or it can be true. Contrast, “The blue sky is pretty,” which is a value judgment I make about the sky, and therefore is an opinion.
A good way of analyzing it is to see if the statement would be contradicted by someone else holding the opposite view. So, if person A says “the sky is blue” and B says “the sky is red,” that’s a contradiction because they both can’t be true. But if person A says “the blue sky is pretty” and B says “the blue sky is ugly” then there is no contradiction–they’ve just come to different valuations.
My understanding after consulting with Dr. Google is that statements about beliefs can’t be proven true or false. Feelings and thoughts can’t be verified or observed, that is why they are considered opinion statements rather than factual statements.