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David is an occasional blogger, software engineer, Nintendo fanboy, liberal, news magazine addict, voracious TiVo user, and bibliophile. He was born in St. Louis, grew up in southern Indiana, and returned to St. Louis to attend Washington University. He hasn't managed to escape yet. He's a fan of free wine tastings, too many tv shows to name, and eating out. David makes his living developing web applications used internally by his employer. He doesn't blog about work because he's heard too many stories about that causing workplace troubles. There's more on the about page. |
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5 December 2001 - 9:21 pm
It is often important to remember that prefacing a statement with the phrase "in my opinion" does not make the statement unarguable. Saying "in my opinion" does not mean that someone can't dispute what you are saying. The argument that you are entitled to hold any opinions you'd like is certainly valid, but I can still dispute factual inaccuracies in your statement regardless of whether you couched it in terms of an opinion. For example, one could certainly say "In my opinion, one plus one equals pi." However, when I try to correct what is clearly a factual error in your statement, your entire argument should not hinge on the phrase "in my opinion." If you can't make any arguments to support your opinion beyond the argument that everyone is entitled to an opinion, you probably shouldn't be making the statement in the first place.
And that's all I have to say on that. If none of it made sense to you, don't worry about it; it made sense to me and that's all that matters.
Posted by on 5 December 2001 at 9:19 PM
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