Undecided Voters are Uninformed and Disengaged

Many commentators have suggested that undecided voters’ opinions are better understood not as deeply held, thought-through beliefs, but as a sort of verbal Muzak. You say, of a candidate who has given many policy specifics already (and whose opponent speaks in word salad), “I need more policy specifics,” because it sounds better than “I don’t know what policies I want.” You say “The candidates just attack each other” because it sounds better than “I don’t actually know wha...

 Opinion is Not Necessarily a Good Thing

We live in a civilization that believes that opinion per se is good. This can be seen in the very derivation of the word, which comes from the Latin opinari, meaning to think. It is a fundamental tenet of our civilization that thinking is good, a noble process which is one of the few things separating us from the base animal world. I too believe that thinking is a noble calling and that it is necessary to have opinions for the sake of the kind of thinking that can lead us to a better world. ...

 The Worth of Opinions are Determined by the Facts of Thei...

I submit a body of facts which cannot be invalidated. My opinions may be doubted, denied, or approved, according as they conflict or agree with the opinions of each individual who may read them; but their worth will be best determined by the foundation on which they rest—the incontrovertible facts.

 Better to Be Wrong Than Impartial

But, as Bacon has well pointed out, truth is more likely to come out of error, if this is clear and definite, than out of confusion, and my experience teaches me that it is better to hold a well-understood and intelligible opinion, even if it should turn out to be wrong, than to be content with a muddle-headed mixture of conflicting views, sometimes miscalled impartiality, and often no better than no opinion at all.

 Science Builds Up, Opinion Does Not

Signs also are to be drawn from the increase and progress of systems and sciences. For what is founded on nature grows and increases, while what is founded on opinion varies but increases not. If therefore those doctrines had not plainly been like a plant torn up from its roots, but had remained attached to the womb of nature and continued to draw nourishment from her, that could never have come to pass which we have seen now for twice a thousand years; namely, that the sciences stand where t...