Do you know the difference between a fact and an opinion? The sad reality is that most Americans don’t. In a poll conducted earlier this year, Pew Research Center discovered that when asked to label statements as either a fact or an opinion, most had a good deal of difficulty.

Although the majority of participants were able to get at least six out of ten correct, that’s hardly a great rate considering it’s not much better than choosing randomly between the two options. Let’s not even get started on the approximately 25 percent of Americans who got almost all of the answers wrong.

For all of the groups’ differences, one thing liberals and conservatives have in common is that their partisanship colors what they consider facts. When Democrats read commonly held opinions by liberals, they were more likely to identify them as facts. The same went for Republicans who looked at typically conservative opinions. Additionally, the converse was true—when partisan-types read actual facts that seemed to support the opposing side, they labeled them opinions.

You see the problem there, right? Americans have allowed their political identification to skew their perception of reality. If there are people who believe that an opinion is suddenly a fact just because they agree with it, or they dismiss an actual fact as an opinion because they don’t like it, how are we ever going to reach any kind of consensus?

Those who received the top scores on the test are most likely to possess one or more of these traits:

Tech savvy – Americans who are the most comfortable surfing the internet and using the latest digital gadgets

Faith in the media – Americans who believe that the mainstream media usually reports the truth

Political knowledge – Americans who regularly follow political news or just have a better than average sense of how the government works

For the rest of the population that doesn’t fall into these categories, we’ve got a major problem. When people think whatever they happen to believe constitutes a fact, there goes a reasonable chance at having a meaningful discourse.

http://www.care2.com/causes/well-that-explains-it-americans-cant-tell-the-difference-between-fact-and-opinion.html


I found the test here:

http://www.pewresearch.org/quiz/news-statements-quiz/


I missed the one about illegal immigrants having rights under the Constitution, I did not know that was actually a fact and incorrectly marked it as opinion.

When facts are partially given, then one might as well be giving an opinion.

partial facts can also mislead, but they are at least still facts.

For instance, I can say the man ripped the woman's clothes off. That may be fact.

but without more detail, the fact may mislead others to picture a rape, when it might have been consensual. But it would still be a fact that it happened.
how have you been Dodo?

Woohoo.!..can’t wait till the 18th..President Trump is coming to my home town.!..it will be nice to see him in the flesh.!..I will be able to hear him speak in person and thats a fact.!..live prefomances are the best way to form an opinion.. :) ..Missoula is the liberal capital of Montana but we are a great community..I sure hope we can show how wether you are red or blue..we can agree to disagree and enjoy having a standing President in our hometown.!..first time since 1954.!

okay.

totally agree

collectively the breakdown of family and community roles and unity and quality education and the replacement with promotion of greed and narcissism and the reality tv/instant gratification/emotionalism of modern culture, has taken its toll in a not so positive way.

When one has an agenda, one becomes selective with the facts that one presents.

It's funny how we once believed that we were receiving "quality education" only to find out that what we were taught wasn't true..or what the media has been telling us was the truth only to find out it was the Mockingbird singing lies..or that what the government was telling us was lies..You want "quality education" one has to eventually come to the conclusion that they must educate themselves using many resources then make up their own minds..rather than being so naïve as to believe what we are being told is the truth...Break Free of the Matrix ..when we come to the realization that a lot of what we've been told and what we've been taught have been lies..alot of our schooling was meant to dumb us down and to assimilate into the collective of PUPPETS...mind control is slowly being destroyed through the internet..PLUG IN and WAKE UP...

Wisdom is built from experience.
As we age, we gain experience that causes some of us to have more wisdom than others.
Our wisdom allows us to take things as they compare to the experiences we have had in our lives.
The problem happens when we are told or experience things which we have never experienced before. There is no wisdom built to access.
Without 'knowing better' we tend to take things at face value until we learn otherwise.
This is called gullibility.

When we are repeatedly gulled into false beliefs, we become skeptical of 'face value' assumptions.
As we are exposed to inaccuracies we stop trusting the sources.
We assume all information from those 'untrusted' sources are lies.
The Boy Who Called Wolf syndrome.
Some of us, after repeatedly encountering untrusted sources, then consider all sources untrusted.
This puts a dampener on learning new things without experiencing those things.

The practical application of what I am talking about can be found at any dating site.
People that have repeatedly been hurt in relationships have difficulty trusting anyone new.
Their 'wisdom' is lop-sided.
It changes how they interpret those they encounter.
They need proof of a negative in order to accept another's disclosure.

For instance, If you are sure that every man will hurt you because so far every man you have opened up to has hurt you. How can I prove to you that I will not hurt you? It might not be in my nature to hurt the ones I love. If you never give me a chance to not hurt you, you will never actually gain the wisdom of the experience...Your skepticism prevents you from gaining wisdom.

The same can be said about anyone or any situation, including politics.
I don't care for Trump as a man. I don't like people that have his personality. I know that he isn't all bad so I try to isolate his actions according to the results. If, just because I don't like him as a man, I am skeptical of everything he does, I am confusing my jaded view of him with the experience that results and I will make inaccurate assumptions about everything concerning him. In essence, I'd be crying wolf.

It appears the home loan banks haven't learned from the 2008 fiasco. I've been reading about near zero down payment loans being made for homes. Some articles are using the terms I first heard during the 90's: good credit, bad credit, no credit at all.

Are we moving into a "Housing Bubble Burst #2.0"?

In my opinion the senate finance committee needs to engage the laws that were suppose to have been engaged during the Obama era.

Well I took the quiz. I got all 5 of the opinion ones correct. I missed one fact one, got the rest. Go me!

The best and worst thing with democracy is that every man has the right to an opinion.

I took the poll and was surprised I got them all correct. I don't usually get into Politics, Don't watch the new or current events. I barely listen to the radio. So how I got them all right I will never know. LOL

I'm watching the CNBC National Business Report (as I write) and it is being reported that some of Wall Street's short term up's and downs are what they call "financial noise".

Financial Noise, they are reporting, they feel is a result of computerized (artificial Intelligence: AI) trading. this is not people selling stocks for loss of confidence but AI programs interpreting news events as major world financial problems and automatically selling stocks.

Of course, AI programs make responses depending on how the program's information was initially taught.

Even major news agencies are writing news articles using AI applications. How they interpret and publish these news articles depends on the "View " of the programmer.

Can it be that our society will be completely polarized, not by current events themself, but by how these AI programs interpret and publish the news? Is what we are hearing and reading really what happened?

Jamal Khashoggi has always been defined as a journalist. Jamal Khashoggi was an adviser to the Saudi ambassador to London, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, a former long-serving intelligence chief. Then, in 2005, when the prince was appointed the Saudi envoy to the U.S., Khashoggi joined him as a media aide.

Jamal Khashoggi was an insider to the royal family. This doesn't justify his murder but in that part of the world to take a stance against the kingdom can be very unhealthy. The question is:

"why hasn't the media informed the USA people about his political connections"?

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I firmly believe, that before many centuries more, science will be the master of man. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Someday, science shall have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide by blowing up the world.

Henry Adams
1862