Kids vs Unions

[PBzeer]

As I recall, Copernicanism was an unsupported opinion at the time.

An opinion is one's interpretation of available knowledge, which may derive from statistical fact, factual event or statement and/or personal experience. While statistical fact may say my model of boat sails best at X point off the wind, personal experience may show me it sails better at Y. Or, that someone else's sails best on Z. To simply call an opinion unsupported because it doesn't have published statistical grounding is contrary to critical thinking.

[craigimass]

Originally Posted by scottyt

i say give each parent the full amount per child that the public system gets to put the kid in private school. make the public system compete for the money and they will straighten out the problems. but once again the teacher unions would never allow it.

I think right now our laws require a free public education. That is it.

If we were going to even START down this road - heck, why not simply then make each person PAY 100% for the education of their kids....and then be done with it? That means if you have three kids in public school you pay $24,000 per year PLUS the other local taxes (trash, government, etc.) - of course, that is only your "property and school" tax.

No takers? Of course not. No one really wants to pay their own way (or very few). They want to take money from OTHER people and then have it either educate their kids - or in the case of PB's original post, they want to take my money and give 8K or whatever CASH to each kid.

So back to square one. The only thing that will ever work en masse is a public education. Heck if I'm gonna pay for your kid to go to bible study or a madrassa, etc.

[jackdale]

Originally Posted by PBzeer

As I recall, Copernicanism was an unsupported opinion at the time.

An opinion is one's interpretation of available knowledge, which may derive from statistical fact, factual event or statement and/or personal experience. While statistical fact may say my model of boat sails best at X point off the wind, personal experience may show me it sails better at Y. Or, that someone else's sails best on Z. To simply call an opinion unsupported because it doesn't have published statistical grounding is contrary to critical thinking.

Actually Copernicus presented a rational mathematical explanation of the heavens than that of Ptolemy. Galileo provided empirical evidence for the theory.

From Webster's online

opin·ion Listen to the pronunciation of opinion
Pronunciation:
\ə-ˈpin-yən\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin opinion-, opinio, from opinari
Date:
14th century

1 a: a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter b: approval, esteem2 a: belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge b: a generally held view3 a: a formal expression of judgment or advice by an expert b: the formal expression (as by a judge, court, or referee) of the legal reasons and principles upon which a legal decision is based

Critical thinking requires that opinions be supported.

Critical thinking gives due consideration to the evidence, the context of judgment, the relevant criteria for making the judgment well, the applicable methods or techniques for forming the judgment, and the applicable theoretical constructs for understanding the nature of the problem and the question at hand. Critical thinking employs not only logic but broad intellectual criteria such as clarity, credibility, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, significance and fairness.

Critical thinking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Opinions do not require statistical evidence, they simply need evidence, be it rational or empirical.

[wind_magic]

Originally Posted by PBzeer

An opinion is one's interpretation of available knowledge, which may derive from statistical fact, factual event or statement and/or personal experience. While statistical fact may say my model of boat sails best at X point off the wind, personal experience may show me it sails better at Y. Or, that someone else's sails best on Z. To simply call an opinion unsupported because it doesn't have published statistical grounding is contrary to critical thinking.

There is one truth, and 6,776,441,552 incomplete understandings of it.

People can misunderstand the truth for any number of reasons. Some people have perception problems, either because they don't have the organs to sense the truth with (they are blind, deaf, etc), or degenerative nerve conditions that don't get the information to their brains, or various mind disorders that make it impossible for them to comprehend what they are seeing (or in some cases to make them hyper-sensitive to information the rest of us can't even perceive). But even when the human animal is working perfectly we only have one perspective on the truth, our own, so we are only able to see the world from one vantage point which insures we will always have an incomplete understanding of the truth, though we may have flashes of insight.

People can also misunderstand the truth because they are unable to perceive reality due to experience. It seems counter-intuitive, but having more experience can actually cause you trouble sometimes. The human mind cleverly projects what it believes is going to happen into the future and uses that projection to filter out unwanted and unnecessary information to cut down on the amount of work it has to do. Stereotypes, assumptions, etc, are all related to this, it is a mental shorthand to help categorize things ahead of time that helps cut down on what the brain has to do, the brain simply couldn't work if it had to notice every single little bug crawling on the ground, speck of dirt on the windshield, and far off noise in a tree, though those things were very interesting to us when we were children because they were novel and we had not yet learned to filter them from our perception. Part of the practice of meditation is learning to open yourself up to those sensations to free your mind to develop new perceptions.

People can see the same thing and walk away with completely different explanations for what they have seen because their reality is controlled completely by their ability to perceive information, creating a model in their head. One person might look at a market chart and see that a stock is getting ready to rally and it is time to buy, another might look at the same chart and see an opportunity to finally get out, yet another might look at it and see it as some "business stuff" that is keeping their mate from going shopping, we each of us understand the world in whatever way we have experienced it up to the point of perception, and we use defense mechanisms to shield us from any reality we can't make sense of.

An opinion is just someone telling you what their "truth" is, their reality, based on whatever they've learned and whatever perceptions they have of the world. If what they say doesn't make sense, they aren't lying, usually, what they are saying really is what they believe to be true, so it usually isn't fair to say they are being dishonest. People simply perceive things differently, they look at the same objective truth and walk away from it with whatever non-sense is in their head, and when you ask them about it they report it to the best of their ability. When you ask them what is apt to happen next, they use the incomplete model in their head to give you their best guess, but nobody is ever perfect because none of us is omniscient.

Fortunately we are all (most of us) capable of learning, we can open our minds up to new possibilities, experience life in greater depth, etc, and create new patterns in our minds so that we can perceive things more clearly and gain a greater understanding and better model of the Universe. We might start out looking at a boat motor as an unfamiliar object that we have to pay someone to fix, but with the proper education, judicious use of time and energy, etc, we can end up with new ways of perceiving the world that allow us to hear problems with the motor simply by listening, or imagine what problems are happening inside the motor by the way it moves on its mounts. The same is true with most things in the world - so long as we are able to experience them and we are brave enough to try, we can usually come away with more knowledge and understanding than we started out with, and we can see reality more closely for what it is, and maybe even help other people to see too if they are willing to open their minds up to it.

I have no idea where all that came from, I was just sitting here reading this thread and started writing and it came out. Apologies!

[jackdale]

Originally Posted by wind_magic

There is one truth, and 6,776,441,552 incomplete understandings of it.

No apologies needed.

I agree with most of your ruminations. I would question your concept of "opinion". Opinions are usually based on value judgments, rather than perceptions of reality, although that can play a part. Opinions indicate that something is right, wrong, good, bad, better, best, etc..

As an aside, when I was a teenager, I wondered if others saw the world in that same way that I did. It turns out I see it differently than most; I am diachromatically colour blind. Blues are much more vivid to me and I have trouble distinguishing certain shades of green and brown. Reds and greens are no problem, thank goodness. I saw Peter Ustinov on stage in 1982 in a play, Beethoven's 10th." One line of the play struck me as very profound:

"There are many truths, and each has its own integrity."

Truth is evolutionary. Our understandings of the working of the universe have moved from angels turning the planets on wheels to string theory and beyond. The earth is no longer the centre of the universe.