Controversial opinions

[Callid]

Statements like "My opinion's part of the majority, so your opinion is less credible" have no place in intellectual discussions. I couldn't care less whether or not you're "part of the majority". If it's a one on one discussion, the majority has nothing to do with it.
I'll try to rephrase it better - If a person (whose opinion is shared by the "majority") tries to make a point, he can't base it all on the notion that most people think the way he does. He can use it to support his point, but otherwise, it's just lazy.

Agreed. The number of people who agree with a point is irrelevant to the logistical reasoning behind the point. I've mainly heard this kind of thing crop up in religion-based argument; direct quote in one case of "heaven must exist because millions of people believe in it", which makes about as much sense to me as "Sam and Dean Winchester must be lovers because thousands of fangirls want it to be so". I try to stay a million miles away from both groups equally.

It works even less well if you apply it to any time.
"Millions of people for thousands of years thought slavery is OK, therefore it is OK."
"Millions of people for thousands of years thought killing someone of a different skin color/religion/what-have-you is OK, therefore it is OK."
"Millions of people for thousands of years thought men should have power over women, therefore men should have that power."
In fact, you can probably make the last argument without having to go back in time; there aren't that many first-world people compared to the rest of the world.

[Walnutdinosaur]

Walmart or Target?

[kkslider5552000]

Walmart or Target?

Neither

/least controversial opinion

[Vylash]

Nausica and Kiki's Delivery Service are the only good Studio Ghibl movies

Kingdom Hearts is an atrocious, nonsensical series

Nintendo is an amazingly dumb company (actually i don't think that's too controversial)

[kkslider5552000]

Nintendo is an amazingly dumb company (actually i don't think that's too controversial)

In terms of trying to stay relevant in America or the internet, agreed.

As a company though they're clearly the only ones that still know how to make a profit out of their major titles. Though that's more a middle finger to how impossibly dumb AAA gaming has become.

[Pmofmalasia]

they're clearly the only ones that still know how to make a profit out of their major titles.

I wish that were true. Unfortunately, it's not, which is why we still get, for example, the same Call of Duty game every year. Yeah, it's an overused example, but there's a reason for that.

[Walnutdinosaur]

Nausica and Kiki's Delivery Service are the only good Studio Ghibl movies

I disagree. There are at least five more I can think of. For example Grave of the Fireflies,Totoro, and Spirited Away.

[bash7353]

I can't believe I'm only just now finding this thread. Hope nobody'll mind my attempt to revive it.

Here we go:

Statements like "My opinion's part of the majority, so your opinion is less credible" have no place in intellectual discussions. I couldn't care less whether or not you're "part of the majority". If it's a one on one discussion, the majority has nothing to do with it.
I'll try to rephrase it better - If a person (whose opinion is shared by the "majority") tries to make a point, he can't base it all on the notion that most people think the way he does. He can use it to support his point, but otherwise, it's just lazy.

Agreed. The number of people who agree with a point is irrelevant to the logistical reasoning behind the point. I've mainly heard this kind of thing crop up in religion-based argument; direct quote in one case of "heaven must exist because millions of people believe in it", which makes about as much sense to me as "Sam and Dean Winchester must be lovers because thousands of fangirls want it to be so". I try to stay a million miles away from both groups equally.

It works even less well if you apply it to any time.
"Millions of people for thousands of years thought slavery is OK, therefore it is OK."
"Millions of people for thousands of years thought killing someone of a different skin color/religion/what-have-you is OK, therefore it is OK."
"Millions of people for thousands of years thought men should have power over women, therefore men should have that power."
In fact, you can probably make the last argument without having to go back in time; there aren't that many first-world people compared to the rest of the world.

Agreed. However, the part I have a bigger problem with is the usage of the word credible. It's not possible to rate the credibility of an opinion. Disregarding the possibility you wanna assess if the person championing it really believes what they're saying, using the word doesn't make any sense. The only thing one can rate an opinion on I can think of is how informed it is. You can't objectively say if one opinion is better than another, that's what differentiates opinions from facts.

This is controversial here, but so far I'm not planning to vote for independence for Scotland next year. There just isn't enough information on what would happen next. True, healthcare and education work better here than in England since being devolved to Hollyrood, but the vague promise of North Sea Oil money isn't really enough to make me go "WHOLE NEW GOVERNMENT AND ECONOMY AND EVERYTHING LET'S GO". I mean, what'll happen to our already damaged links with the EU? Will we go on the Euro or will we still have a pound? Please, for the love of god, don't let us go on the Euro, the Euro's shite...

How about now? I understand last week or so they unveiled their official plan of what an independent Scotland would look like, didn't they?

In general I think there are way too many independence movements in the world right now. Whether it is Scotland wanting to succeed from the UK, Quebec from Canada, Catalonia from Spain, Texas and/or some other states from the US or Belgium talking about the possibility of splitting in half, the people advocating seem to think it'd solve problems it's ultimately not gonna solve.

There's one move for independence that I wouldn't mind seeing realized, though and that's the possibility of the UK leaving the EU. Their behaviour in terms of their membership is something that increasingly pisses me off. They've already had their precious "British rebate" Thatcher pushed through for decades and now Cameron wants to opt out of the Schengen Agreement and close down the borders for people from Bulgaria and Romania. It increasingly looks like the UK identifies less and less with the European idea that the EU was founded upon, so at this point I really don't care anymore.

I don't really have any evidence to support that, but maybe Scotland feels closer to the EU than the average Brit. If the UK actually decides to leave the EU we might be able to keep an independent Scotland as a member state.

Controversial opinion:
The friends I make on the internet are REAL!
I hear so often from others, that they "aren't your real friends because you never saw them"...

I don't necessarily disagree, but even as someone's whose been part of a decent number of fan communities and the like since 2003/4, I still can't help but find the concept of internet friendships odd. I don't even have an explanation why anymore. My internet life and real life are honestly often pretty consistent in terms of saying whatever to whoever happens to be around.

I guess the whole thing eventually comes down to what you consider having a good time. Some people would rather meet their friends in a pub and talk about stuff, others would rather go do some physical activity with them. Just like that some people enjoy having contact with people over the Internet, others feel there are important aspects lacking.

Personally, I find it hard to believe when people say they have a closer friendship with someone online that they've never met than with friends they see and talk to on a regular basis in real life. It's possible to have online friends, but it is different.


Now to one controversial opinion of my own (which is not to say that what I've said above isn't controversial already):
The United States of America is far away from being "the greatest country in the world" as many Americans like to say. In my opinion, the US is, in fact, out of all the countries in the world that call themselves democracies, easily the most undemocratic, religious, conservative and arrogant. Not necessarily in that order.

[kkslider5552000]

that opinion isn't controversial, just tryhard and boring

[Conan-chandesune]

that opinion isn't controversial, just tryhard and boring

It's not tryhard and boring to all of us, yes?? In many media, i hear that NYC is "the greatest city in the world" which again i do not like or agree with (It's baseline propoganda, i think). You can't just go and say, ok this city is no.1, this no.2 and so on. I think if someone is (needless to say, stupidly) arguing this, then many cities like London, Dubai etc. would make a compelling argument.

[Jd-]

Now to one controversial opinion of my own (which is not to say that what I've said above isn't controversial already):
The United States of America is far away from being "the greatest country in the world" as many Americans like to say. In my opinion, the US is, in fact, out of all the countries in the world that call themselves democracies, easily the most undemocratic, religious, conservative and arrogant. Not necessarily in that order.

About as valuable as saying: "The Harry Potter series is far away from being "the greatest series in the world" as many Potterites like to say. In my opinion, the Harry Potter series is, in fact, out of all the series in the world that call themselves epics, easily the most spurious, boring, snobbish and haughty. Not necessarily in that order." It's too easy--it's softball. It's really hard to take seriously, to put it bluntly. Relying on meager buzzwords, especially, really doesn't help anyone view your opinions in a serious light.

Some advice: Wide-reaching generalizations about 300 million people and the most diverse society in the world is more of an insult to humans in general than it is to any one country. In the future, if you want to gain any sort of traction and appear to have a developed perspective not born out of a feeling of general dissatisfaction with one's own existence or simple inferiority and inadequacy, target one facet of things you dislike, such as a specific government institution, instead of venting like it's a YouTube comments thread. Despite not agreeing with your opinion, while playing devil's advocate I could have expressed that in a far more effective manner that actually held some sort of merit. It's best to stay away from generalizations or your voice will be readily glossed over (which isn't to say it should be, but it's going to be).

Also, really glad to see this topic back.

[mangaluva]

I don't think Frozen is racist, but I think Disney is.

A lot of people keep saying that Frozen being another Disney movie about white princesses is whitewashing, but I'm calling bullshit on that because the movie is about Norwegian nobility. However, I do think Disney needs a lot more movies in their canon that aren't from European fairy tales. Believe it or not, Europe is not the only place where people have ever told stories to children. What about traditional tales from African tribes or Aboriginal Australians or Koreans or Vietnamese or Tibetans or Peruvians or Native Americans? What about a movie with a Native American girl from an actual Native American story rather than a story about white people meeting Native Americans?

From what I've heard from people who've seen it, Frozen is a much better movie than the ad campaigns make it out to be, and is not in and of itself racist, but as part of a larger canon of predominantly white movies that are shown throughout a world where the majority population is not white it is a little... repetitive.

[bash7353]

First of all, let me apologize not just for the way I've said what I've said, but also for what I've said. I didn't mean to generalize about the population of an entire country, nor to offend anyone living there.


Secondly, as I feel misunderstood in a way, I'd like to clarify:

I live in Germany. The US presidential election last year got a lot of media coverage, special programs on election night while the results were coming in (which was the middle of the night for us). There were a lot of news reports about the candidates during the campaigns, not just after it's become clear that it was going to be Obama vs Romney, but even throughout the Republican primaries. It almost received the same scrutiny German election do. That happens for the US, but rarely for another country. If, say, France has a presidential election the news coverage is not nearly as thorough, and I'd say that - due to our close ties - what's going on in France is more important to the German public than US politics. And it's not just Germany. The entire world looks at who is going to be the president of the US, while virtually every other federal election in the world is just covered by their national media.

Then I see a bit of a double standard. When European politicians visit countries that some might compare to dictatorships they are sure to point out (or sure to be criticized if they don't) that in order to achieve closer ties with the EU and its members, compliance with human rights, freedom of the press among other things are required. One of the major things that's often responsible for preventing close diplomatic relations is capital punishment. Yet, for some reason, the US don't have to worry that its policy on the death penalty is going to damage relations to its European friends.

Watching television while in Canada really surprised me. I kind of expected a lot of US centered shows like American TV series, but I found the amount of time the public news network devoted to events occurring in Canada astonishingly small. At the same time, most stories reported from the US. I guess due to their geographic proximity it's more understandable, but I think it underlines that apparently the rest of the world thinks "The US is the centre of the universe." as a Canadian friend of mine put it.

In short: There seem to be many people out there, and I don't mean Americans, that believe there's one set of rules applying to the US and another applying to the rest of world.


Thirdly I'd like to say a sentence or two about the four words I used earlier:

- conservative
I do believe that the US is more conservative than most other countries, especially compared with Europe. But while I don't agree with many conservative viewpoints, I don't mean to imply that that's a bad thing.

- undemocratic
There are quite a few aspects in the US that in my opinion aren't really democratic. I'm thinking of the 2000 presidential election when the Supreme Court finally decided there wasn't enough time to count all the votes, independence between a state's population and its representation in the Senate, the filibuster (though I understand there were some changes to that recently), using an electoral college system for presidential elections rather than voting for that position directly or through Congress.

- religious
Many countries - and I think the US is one of them - have a provision in their constitution forbidding religious influence in the legislative process and in general I think that's a good idea. I may be wrong, but it seems politicians in the US don't take it as serious as they do in other countries.

- arrogant
I'm not gonna try to defend that. I can only apologize a second time for saying what I said there.

[miakakiri]

First of all, let me apologize not just for the way I've said what I've said, but also for what I've said. I didn't mean to generalize about the population of an entire country, nor to offend anyone living there.


Secondly, as I feel misunderstood in a way, I'd like to clarify:

I live in Germany. The US presidential election last year got a lot of media coverage, special programs on election night while the results were coming in (which was the middle of the night for us). There were a lot of news reports about the candidates during the campaigns, not just after it's become clear that it was going to be Obama vs Romney, but even throughout the Republican primaries. It almost received the same scrutiny German election do. That happens for the US, but rarely for another country. If, say, France has a presidential election the news coverage is not nearly as thorough, and I'd say that - due to our close ties - what's going on in France is more important to the German public than US politics. And it's not just Germany. The entire world looks at who is going to be the president of the US, while virtually every other federal election in the world is just covered by their national media.

That does sound rather strange, though admittedly who winds up as president of the US tends to affect the entire world in some fashion or other. Not having spent enough time outside the US, I cannot really be more clear on that.

Then I see a bit of a double standard. When European politicians visit countries that some might compare to dictatorships they are sure to point out (or sure to be criticized if they don't) that in order to achieve closer ties with the EU and its members, compliance with human rights, freedom of the press among other things are required. One of the major things that's often responsible for preventing close diplomatic relations is capital punishment. Yet, for some reason, the US don't have to worry that its policy on the death penalty is going to damage relations to its European friends.

Policies on capital punishment vary widely from state to state, so that is a bit much of a generalization. Some states (e.g. Texas) have a tendency to use capital punishment a lot. Many 'red' states (typically rural, historical tendency to vote Republican, right-leaning) use capital punishment. A lot of 'blue' states (typically more urban, historical tendency to vote Democrat, centerist/left-leaning) have outlawed the use of capital punishment, or at least haven't actually executed anyone in 30-40 years.

Watching television while in Canada really surprised me. I kind of expected a lot of US centered shows like American TV series, but I found the amount of time the public news network devoted to events occurring in Canada astonishingly small. At the same time, most stories reported from the US. I guess due to their geographic proximity it's more understandable, but I think it underlines that apparently the rest of the world thinks "The US is the centre of the universe." as a Canadian friend of mine put it.

Having never watched TV in another country, I can't really speak to this. I rarely watch TV within the US anyway, especially the news, as it tends to be rather sensationalized and extraordinarily right-leaning. (Certain people go on and on about the 'liberal media', but I haven't found this 'liberal media' outside of the internet yet.)

In short: There seem to be many people out there, and I don't mean Americans, that believe there's one set of rules applying to the US and another applying to the rest of world.

I agree with you that this is unfair and nonsensical. I am not sure how to correct it.

Thirdly I'd like to say a sentence or two about the four words I used earlier:

- conservative
I do believe that the US is more conservative than most other countries, especially compared with Europe. But while I don't agree with many conservative viewpoints, I don't mean to imply that that's a bad thing.

I don't think 'The US is more conservative than most other countries' is an opinion, it's kind of a fact. What the US considers 'leftist' within our own government is actually more on the conservative side than what most other countries consider 'right-wing'. This contributes significantly to the backwards nature of so many governmental policies...

- undemocratic
There are quite a few aspects in the US that in my opinion aren't really democratic. I'm thinking of the 2000 presidential election when the Supreme Court finally decided there wasn't enough time to count all the votes, independence between a state's population and its representation in the Senate, the filibuster (though I understand there were some changes to that recently), using an electoral college system for presidential elections rather than voting for that position directly or through Congress.

Again, with the clarification that you're referring to the federal government, I absolutely agree. Except the bit about the Senate--that House was never intended to be representative of the population. If it was, small states would be squished in the federal government and get little if any say. The Senate gives each state an equal number of votes in order to ensure that the voices of small states get heard fairly. The House of Representatives is distributed by population, which gives the larger/more populous states a bit of an edge. Congressional representation is outlined in the Constitution and hasn't changed much (if at all) in the past couple centuries. While there have been some reforms to the filibuster system recently, they don't do anywhere near enough.

- religious
Many countries - and I think the US is one of them - have a provision in their constitution forbidding religious influence in the legislative process and in general I think that's a good idea. I may be wrong, but it seems politicians in the US don't take it as serious as they do in other countries.

Correct on both counts. There is I believe one reference to God/religion in the text of the Constitution itself, though off the top of my head I cannot recall exactly what/where. Separation of Church and State is established in the First Amendment. Right-wing politicians, however, seem to be trying to weasel their way into getting laws passed that basically state 'Christianity trumps all other religions and you have to follow the rules for it'. This is especially true with respect to the debate on reproductive rights.

- arrogant
I'm not gonna try to defend that. I can only apologize a second time for saying what I said there.

Bit of a generalization, yes, but there are reasons that the 'Arrogant American' stereotype exists. One of which being the term 'American' used to mean 'from the US' when it actually references two full continents.


I would add something of my own, but I have to finish getting ready for work.