It troubles me when I comment on something about which I am not completely knowledgeable. Ideally, I would have all the facts about a particular subject before I wrote a single word. Not only that; I would be so thoroughly educated about the subject as to be able to defend my position against all attackers, with that education being the result of a rigorous scientific study of the subject. I would know the subject inside and out, having asked and answered all the questions that might come from all positions on the subject. To me, to be less prepared than that feels a bit like being a fraud.
Unfortunately, I am no polymath. Additionally, time constrains the level of education I can obtain on the variety of issues I wish to address. Even if I were to limit my efforts to just one subject – say, “global warming” – I would never be able to review all the available literature and still work a full-time job. Multiply that by many subjects and it becomes apparent that any such efforts at education are futile.
Obviously I am not the only person with this problem, but rarely does it stop people from expressing marginally informed opinion as fact. Those marginally informed opinions are then adopted wholesale by those who are not even marginally informed and those opinions congeal into hardened dogma unshakeable by actual fact.
What is a person to do? Surely the answer is to rely on the experts – those people who have devoted their lives to a particular subject and are the authorities with whom to be reckoned. If this is so, why is it so easy to find experts in possession of indisputable facts on opposing sides of an issue? Surely one must be right and the other wrong? Good luck trying to figure that one out without gaining the level of education that the experts have. Even at that, all too often I have seen experts look at the same set of facts and come away with two entirely different interpretations of those facts.
So much for a brief sojourn into epistemology. As for me, I do the best I can. I try to be objective. I consider myself to be a skeptic – someone who needs to see the facts to accept something and who is willing to change his view when presented with new facts. Still, I cannot deny that I am guided and influenced by a certain outlook on life. Merely considering myself a skeptic illustrates that. I can only hope that my life’s philosophy aids me in my efforts to view life objectively and guides me in separating truth from falsehood. There’s not much else that most of us can do.
Addendum: This is also why you should assume that everything you read is only an opinion and is subject to verification. Anyone who takes one account of a subject as “the truth” is sure to find himself blabbering apologies when a critical analysis is done of that account. Then again, human nature seems to be that most people are loathe to offer apologies and would rather stick to their original belief regardless of contrary evidence. When reading this blog, as well as any source, anywhere, it is “reader beware.”