It's Not Fake News, It's You

For legal purposes, the opinion of someone who has either not first considered the presented facts of a matter or whose opinion pays those facts no mind is worthless. This is implicitly endorsed by the legal process itself, which requires that opinions be rendered only in consideration of presented facts.

The law does not excuse anyone from this requirement of first considering facts, no matter how "smart" or "educated" that person is:

If you think about it, though, there is really no good reason for this to not also be true of any opinion.

1. Two people consider the same facts but reach different opinions (as conclusions, often because of the space 'between' available facts, which the thinker must decide how to fill-in, or the different perceptions of the 'meaning' of those facts).
    
2. An opinion reached despite the absence (or meager presence) of any material fact (example: matters of faith).
    
3. Two people consider the same facts but reach different opinions simply because they each have some differing motivation for the conclusion they reached to be accepted as true (example: public policy debates, where disagreement often has less to do with "what is" and more to do with "what ought to be").

Let me give you a hypothetical example so that you don't quickly write me off as a modern-day Sophist.

Suppose there is a guy named Peter who is trying to take half of the assets belonging to a gal named Phoebe. He is doing so by claiming that Peter and Phoebe were married two months ago and that the law in the state in which they live (and were married) says that Peter and Phoebe must treat all assets as co-owned, marital assets upon marriage. Today, Peter is asking for a divorce following the revelation last week that Peter cheated on Phoebe with another person. The question is, what should the court do: split the assets as Peter demands or something else?

Now, two observers of the case might consider all of the same facts I've already stated in the paragraph above and reach different conclusions as to what the court should do. Neither observer has observed any other fact. However, they have each reached different conclusions because they have drawn different interpretations from those facts.

For example, from the fact that "Peter and Phoebe were married two months ago," one observer might take this to mean that a marriage ceremony occurred two months ago, while the other might take it to mean that a legally binding marriage actually happened two months ago.

From the fact that Peter claims "that Peter and Phoebe must treat all assets as co-owned, marital assets upon marriage," the two observers might either buy this claim as valid or not if one observer wishes to ask a few more questions before treating this claim as valid: was there a pre-nup, for example. The question of there being a pre-nup or not is not a newly observed fact; rather, it's a question one observer wants to ask, and have answered, before reaching a conclusion on this point. So, put another way, while it is technically true that there is no evidence yet that there is not a pre-nup, this observer understands that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and understands that this would be a reasonable inquiry to make before accepting this fact's consequences prima facie.

Finally, one observer may empathize with Phoebe and hope for an outcome that punishes Peter, simply because of this observer's stance on Peter's infidelity. In doing so, this observer may opine that the court should not split Phoebe's assets with Peter, not for any factual or legal reason, but instead because this is a way for Peter to "pay for his sins."

In each of these three examples of disagreement, the intellectually honest thing for each observer to do is to admit why he thinks what he thinks. Rarely do people do this anymore. 

But if you are uncomfortable with someone asking you how you reached your opinion--like a high school math teacher asking you to show your work--then you might consider what this discomfort could be symptomatic of--that, perhaps, your opinion is not credible, that it only adds to the noise without making any contribution, and that you know it.

Some tips:

• they tend to be willing to change their opinions in light of new evidence (facts) or convincing interpretations;
   
• they don't start with the conclusion and then begin the search for ways to potentially justify it (example: "I really like this president, so there must be some facts that support my desired conclusion that he did not abuse his power");
   
• they don't play defense against your request to explain how they reached that opinion by saying something such as, "this is my opinion, and it is my right to express my opinion" (which is, BTW, an irrelevant retort, provided that your request is not a claim that the person had no right to express his opinion);
   
• they can tell you how they reached their opinion, and also point out where their opinion is based merely on faith or interpretation rather than fact;
   
• they don't attack the person issuing the request by saying something such as, "who appointed you judge and jury of opinions?" (which, again, rather than being relevant to the request is an attempt to deflect the request by suggesting rhetorically that your have no right to ask someone how he arrived at his opinion; for clarity, it is my 'opinion' that one need not wait for appointment to ask another how he reached his opinion);
   
• they don't make statements that can be construed as a fact-based conclusion--which can be disproven by fact/evidence--but then defend the statement as 'opinion' in order to not have to give account of it (to be clear, it is my 'opinion' that declining to give account is a perfectly fine response, but it does leave people wondering why the opinion-giver would be so loud about his opinion yet so shy about his basis for that opinion).

If you say that the president is being impeached for a crime he did not commit, then it appears (to me) that you are stating a legal conclusion: that his actions fail to meet the elements of the alleged crime. Now, there is a range of meaning here.

You could mean, for example, that 'having considered the available evidence, it is your opinion that some of the key evidence is not credible and that, due to that evidence being discredited by you, you have reached the conclusion that there is no remaining evidence to convince you that the crime occurred.' In this example, you would be somewhat emulating the legal process of adjudication.

Alternatively, you could mean that you do not believe that the crime occurred given the motivations of the people charging that it did--and nothing more than that. This is, unfortunately, where much of my Facebook feed seems to live: they question the credibility of the accusers--or perhaps merely their political motivations--and then they conclude that the crime must have not occurred, based only on that, and not at all on any of the available facts or evidence. There are problems with this. One is that the accusers' motivations--or even their political purposes--might be completely irrelevant to the charge, or at least to its required adjudication. Sure, it might explain why they did the work to issue this charge, and it might even warrant an extra degree of scrutiny when you later consider any evidence those same "politically motivated" accusers put forward, but it does not, by itself, lead to any credible conclusion as to whether the crime occurred. Indeed, opinions arrived at in this way demonstrate the very same motivations and bias of which the accusers might be (and probably are) guilty.

Here's an even worse path to the opinion that the crime did not occur. You say that the crime the current president is now being accused of is the very same (or similar) crime a past president was guilty of--the past president being from the party of the current president's political opponents--and that, since he got away with it, so should the current president. There is actually nothing useful to salvage on this path. It's just plain-ol' bad reasoning. Stop it.

You can either undermine public discourse, or you can help to build it back up.

For some, helping to build it back up might entail doing solid research on a topic and then disseminating the evidence you find to other people. It might also entail explaining the opinions you derive from available evidence--or being willing to explain it when asked. Or, in some moments, it might entail actual debate--not the "my brain is bigger than yours" kind, but the "let's use our disagreement as a tool to both get closer to truth" kind.

Moving forward, I encourage you to think about it like this. There is no such thing as an opinion whose effects are neutral (and, to be clear, I'm excluding the "I have no opinion on the matter" position). If you issue an opinion, consider how it might affect someone in your audience, how it might inform him or mislead him, how it might help or hurt us all.

The goal is not to agree. The goal is to use disagreement to find truth. If you use it for any other purpose, then the problem we all have is you.

Further reading on current impeachment issue...

• "Abuse of power is not a crime." The words we use today to refer to crimes differ from the words people used around the time the U.S. Constitution was written. So a useful question to ask on this issue is whether abuse of power qualifies as a "high crime," some other kind of crime, or no kind of crime--the permissibility of abuse of power notwithstanding.
   
• “Whether it is a crime or not makes no difference for purposes of impeachment. Asking a foreign country to provide campaign dirt in exchange for weapons is an abuse of power and precisely what the Framers (of the U.S. Constitution) believed would justify impeachment.” Does it matter whether what the president did--as proven, rather than as alleged--is a crime?
   
• How do the impeachment charges (and evidence) against Trump now compare to the impeachment charges (and evidence) against Nixon in the past?
   
• When does exercise of legitimate presidential power become impeachable abuse? 
   
• Does it matter whether the president's intention was to benefit himself personally? Or does it only matter the likely effect (since his request does not appear to have granted), that he would have benefited personally? Does it matter whether he arguably placed national interests below his own personal interests intentionally, or is the likely effect mostly what we're concerned about?
   
• Is withholding aid for any reason a national security issue? if so, does it matter which kind of aid and the particular circumstances?
   
• "Some experts say the fact that the aid to Ukraine was approved by another branch of the U.S. government makes this a clear-cut case of abuse of power." This, for example, is an opinion; but it's core, underlying basis is stated along with the conclusion; what's missing, however, is further explanation as to why this fact leads one directly to the conclusion that withholding what had been previously approved implies ulterior motive.
   
• Look for non-polarizing examples of US public figures who have faced similar charges in the past. Robert Morris is one. He was essentially the financier of the American Revolution and later became a member of Congress. Back then, there was little in the way of public credit, and there was very meager resources. So Morris largely used his own, to both the good of the fledgling nation and himself. "Morris was the subject of perhaps the first congressional inquiry into self-dealings. He was exonerated by Congress when he was able to show that he had not profited inordinately from the arms contracts, though he actually had." What do people think about this non-partisan episode today, and how does that reveal any bias you have about the Trump episode?
   
• To anyone who says "that impeachment and removal decisions amount to pure politics, as opposed to a set of legal determinations made by a political branch," ask them how they reached that conclusion?
   
• Does the apparent political motive of the president's accusers specifically discredit any of the available evidence, or matter at all? You may remember the Duke lacrosse rape case in Durham, NC, in which the politically motivated prosecutor, Mike Nifong, pursued a case long after the original evidence had been discredited. Nifong did this because (a) he wanted the free publicity for himself in advance of the next election and (b) wanted to bolster his resume with Durham voter's (as his position is one filled by election). The key in that case, I think, is that he pursued charges after all credible evidence in support of those charges fell away, to the detriment of course of the accused lacrosse players, and that, by doing so, he put his personal interests above his public interests. There is a parallel to be drawn here, albeit not entirely of course, but at least in part. The question for the current impeachment issue is: does any credible evidence remain? If so, then it would be hard to argue that pursuing impeachment was against public interest, to the extent that it is among the accusers' public duties to hold various actors accountable when called for.

It is generally a good practice to select and answer at least one critical question before you form and issue an opinion on an important matter. One upside of doing this is that you can then point to precisely that question, and your answer, when/if anyone asks you how you formed your opinion.

I have provided some possible questions you might ask, but you could conceivably come up with dozens more. Let me know if you come up with some good ones you wish to discuss.