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Uninformed opinions are harmful

By Daily Bruin Staff

Feb. 28, 2002 9:00 p.m.

  David Burke Burke is a fourth-year
political science and English student. E-mail him at [email protected].

You’ve all heard the saying, “Opinions are like
assholes, everybody has one.” Well I never liked that analogy
very much and I think I have a better one. Opinions are like germs.
Everybody has millions, they are constantly sharing them with each
other, and the opinions contaminate almost everyone they
touch.

At UCLA, students form a lot of opinions based on the
information they receive in their classes. Professors are not
exclusively fact-spewing robots ““ they are biased people! In
the communications studies major for example, many students who
take classes about media bias think they know a lot about the
subject.

But all these students really know is what a few sources, likely
including a biased professor, think about the media. Most of them
have never worked in the media and they never will; yet they feel
comfortable disseminating their opinions to others as if they are
deeply rooted in facts and first-hand knowledge.

Political science students go through a similar process. There
are many liberal political science professors at this school and
more often than not they put a positive spin on liberal ideology
that is bound to rub off on some of their students come the next
election day.

Some opinions are more harmful than others ““ we are not
just talking about pizza topping preferences here. We are talking
about opinions that are legitimately harmful because they play a
role in establishing public policy and electing public
officials.

I’m just going to take the gloves off and say it: an
enormous number of people’s opinions are harmful because many
of them are uninformed, and thus outright stupid. People think they
know enough to form a valuable opinion about an issue, when in
reality they don’t even know enough to make an inkling of a
valuable opinion. And when people use their uninformed opinions to
make decisions, we run into problems.

Let me give you some examples. Recently my friend and I were
involved in a classic political argument between a liberal and a
conservative. Eventually he said that “lobbyists essentially
decide who becomes President.” When I asked him for his
rationale he said, “Didn’t you see all those lobbyists
celebrating at the Republican Convention?” He honestly
believes that!

Does that sound like a well-grounded opinion to you? It sounds
like he just picked up his opinion from a magazine article or from
what somebody once told him. I feel fortunate to know many
intelligent people with whom I can discuss things, but too many of
them have very strong opinions that are not based in the realm of
facts and first-hand knowledge.

Let’s take another example: George W. Bush. Our President
gave us a perfect example of an uninformed opinion having a huge
impact when he referred to certain states as an “axis of
evil.”

Millions of people who heard the State of the Union now believe
that Iran, Iraq and North Korea are all “evil” and
allied against us. They don’t know this is true, but many
Americans accept it anyway solely because the president said
it.

That is not an informed opinion.

I’m only 20 years old but I know that no state can be
“evil.” It would be more informed of me to say that
Bush and his speechwriters constituted an “axis of
stupid” than to believe what the President actually said.

It is scary that many well-educated people and a vast majority
of the American public make important decisions like voting for
elected officials based upon their uninformed opinions. One of my
friends’ rationales for voting for Bush was that Al Gore does
not listen to his advisors. Of course he knows that! He just
watched “Saving Silverman” for the third time while
winning the 2001 NHL championship on beginner level by exploiting a
glitch in his computer game! The only people who know whether or
not Al Gore listens to his advisors are Al Gore and his advisors.
Unfortunately, lots of other people think they know things like
that too, and make important decisions based on these baseless
assumptions.

Be smart enough to know what things you are ignorant about and
what things you actually know something about. As long as you are
engaged in the process of combating your ignorance, you are a
friend of mine ““ and not a threat to society.

So if you are voting in the upcoming primary election on
Tuesday, make a distinction between things that you actually know
and bits of second-hand knowledge you pick up randomly that may not
even be true. If you do not make that distinction, you will be
doing a great disservice to yourself and to society.

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