The problem I have with having opinions

[aquarius]

They’re extremely self-limiting. As soon as I’ve got them, I’ve not got room for the rest.

[crow]

Well observed! Opinions are seriously un-useful. If you've ever stood back and gaped in bewilderment at the uselessness of people, this is one of the main reasons they are as they are.
Opinions sideline almost every higher capability of which humans are potentially capable.
Improvisation, adaptability, open-mindedness, creativity, all are rendered null by the adoption of opinion.

[Annihilation]

There is experience, knowledge, and opinion.

People talk a lot. "Finger pointing at the moon".

[crow]

Is that a hierarchic list? Would you place experience at the top?

[Humanicide]

Opinions are useful if one has experience and/or knowledge on the subject.

Otherwise, they're just superfluous statements.

[Annihilation]

Is that a hierarchic list? Would you place experience at the top?

Yes, but all three are necessary.

People that are trustworthy, knowledgeable, and communicative are the exception to the rule.

[crow]

I see opinion as whatever idea one prefers over whatever idea one doesn't.
Based purely upon one's feelings.
It has no basis in either experience or knowledge.
It is a mouth with nothing else attached.
You might say I have a very low opinion of opinion.
But that would be only partly true, because my opinion isn't an opinion.
It is what I know from experience, concerning the laughable nature of opinion.

[dead last]

Maybe we could say this: Experience is a structure, created by someone, brought into existence, in physical reality, from a formless, ethereal thought-realm. Knowledge is the blueprint that made it possible for the structure to be completed. Opinion is the ethereal thought-realm, from which comes ideas that can be forged into blueprints.

That makes sense to me. Many people consider the Opinion to be the end of the process. And they are so surprised when the Opinion is so easily compromised! They don't even realize that nothing is being destroyed at all.

[aquarius]

It’s the inflexible head-space that is the problem more so than anything. I’ve often found (even in myself at some point) that the opinion itself takes preference over formulating the opinion (and worse still forming new ones). This habitual faulty-thinking becomes so easily ingrained in the general population and is very difficult to overcome once it is, mostly because leaving their comfort zone would be in violation of everything (they think) they know.

[crow]

Good discussion. Refinement leading to yet more refinement.
How different from the leftist way of deconstructing everything to the point that coma-patients don't feel excluded.

[aquarius]

And now for a little anecdote:

Many years ago, a clever man at a nightclub observed that the well-presented aquarius looked somewhat out of place in his surroundings. He had no interest in broads, he had no interest in alcohol. It really might have been quite unsettling for anyone lucid enough to notice. He must be selling something, right ? But, no, not that either.

"Are you gay then?" 

"No!"

*spoken with evidently non-gay vehemence*

And then the answer, from an evidently well-seasoned reader of reactions:
"Look, I honestly don't care if you are, OK. - and I honestly don't care if you're not!"

 

[dead last]

Most intelligible information obtained from this thread - aquarius is gay.

[crow]

Oh well.
And it was all going soooo good

[aquarius]

Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn't. Perhaps it matters, perhaps it doesn't.
At any rate, I can't say the absence of psychological rigor-mortis isn't somewhat refreshing in these times.

[dead last]

There is a problem that goes deeper than appears on the surface. There is a distinct reason that people stop at the level of Opinion, and do not move toward Knowledge, and the eventual completion of the cycle, Experience.

The reasons are myriad; Disney, McDonalds, shopping malls, top 40 radio, and TIME magazine. These "resources" convince people that there *is* nothing beyond opinion, because opinion equals intention, and that's what really matters. It's the ultimate perversion of the "mind-over-matter" concept.