Some opinions are are pure speculation, and some opinions can be about: i) facts that aren't true that they believe are true, i) facts that aren't true that they know are not true, but express them as opinions. Perhaps there is not a meaningful distinction here. but I wanted to explore it.
If one holds that opinions do not equal truth, and there is merit to that, there seems to be something more that a dichotomous is/isn't situation. For example, if one holds the above (truth <> opinion), and one holds that the holocaust happened, then it implies that they are also quite open to the holocaust not happening. I choose this example because there appears to be so much evidence of the holocaust that not having an opinion that it happened seems odd to me. Yet holding that ones opinion is equivalent with truth is frought with problems. In thinking abut it, a bit more, I guess a framework I use in parallel things is also applicable here. For me, opinions are working hypotheses, of which I am willing to reject any and all if better information or insight appears. That doesn't imply that one hypotheses is as good ad its alternative. Some working hypotheses may have a very high probability of being true (in my opinion -- a bit of a recursive loop). Others afe 50/50. Others 10% probability, with nine other hypotheses with similar weights. [for those on email, disregard my adjacent prior post. I deleted it and rewrote it here.]
