It seems to be a rather widespread notion these days that “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion,” and on the face of it, I agree. But behind this notion lurks the further belief that all opinions are equal, mine is as good as yours, and I can easily dismiss yours with, “That’s just your opinion.” And on this point, I could not disagree more. In some cases, one’s opinion really doesn’t matter to anyone else. In my opinion corn is much tastier than carrots, but with the exception of my wife who does the grocery shopping, or my restaurateur when I order a side dish, no one cares. However, if I keep insisting to my circle of friends that corn is definitely better than carrots, I soon find the circle getting very small. How can two opinions be compared? Perhaps by their truth value. If two people arrive at opposite conclusions from the same set of public facts, at least one of them must be wrong. If m...
My alarm clock goes off every morning at eight, except for the few times when I have a breakfast date. Usually I wake up about an hour before that, or at least I partly wake up. It is important that I remain in a “not quite awake but not quite asleep” state, because I consider that time as the germination period for whatever seeds happen to have blown into my head.