Legally Distinct From A Satement

 A brief note on conversational safety equipment

I’ve started noticing a phrase people deploy right before saying something they don’t want examined too closely. A small linguistic seatbelt, fastened immediately before driving directly into oncoming traffic.

I speak, of course, of the once humble “in my opinion.”

People no longer say this then offer their thought. They say it like performing a quick-save in Skyrim before looting a shop. It's become the conversational version of “in Minecraft,” except instead of protecting from the fuzz it protects from follow-up questions.

This is a real bummer too, because “in my opinion” used to perfectly perform it’s previous purpose.

Originally it existed to signify the statement lived in the the realm of taste, something subjective.
Movies. Music. Food. The kind of things where disagreement is expected and jovial, a realm free of spreadsheets and power point decks.

“In my opinion that movie is too long.”

Perfectly cromulent sentence. Nothing to fact-check, no studies required, no one storms out of Thanksgiving.

But it’s been smuggled into territory where reality very much has the last word.

“In my opinion that election was fake.”

“Vaccines cause autism, but that’s just my opinion.”

“In my opinion some people don’t deserve basic human rights.”

Those are not tastes. Those are claims. They may be correct, incorrect, or wildly detached from observable existence, but they are not the kind of statement where reality politely agrees to stay out of it.

And yet once the phrase is attached, the entire conversation undergoes a magical girl transformation, and disagreement becomes “invalidating” or “attacking.’

“In my opinion” used to mark uncertainty. Now it marks non-liability, less a qualifier and more a conversational EULA: by continuing this discussion you agree not to challenge the contents of the statement.

The trick only works because we’ve started treating very different kinds of statements as the same thing.

There are preferences, like how pineapple relates to pizza. Whether it belongs there is unprovable, and civilization will continue either way.

There are hypotheses, like “crime increases in hot weather.” Eventually reality weighs in, and in a sane society the matter can be settled.

There are factual assertions, like “fire is hot,” which are directly testable and generally discouraged to verify repeatedly.

And then there are actual opinions, like “that genre of music is bad.” Much like a preference it can’t be proven, although the history of the internet suggests people will enthusiastically try.

What we do now is take the middle two, the ones reality can answer, and smuggle them into the last category to gain a false diplomatic immunity. Once labeled an opinion, a statement is expected to inherit the social protections of a favorite color.  At that point evidence becomes rude. Correction becomes censorship. Statistics are treated as personal attacks.

By reclassifying claims about the world into protected feelings about the world it’s becomes impossible have a discussion. Disagreement requires the possibility that someone might be wrong.

If everything is an opinion, nothing can be corrected. And if nothing can be corrected, conversation stops being communication and becomes parallel monologues performed at each other for safety.

And yes this is, in my opinion.
You’re free to disagree. That’s what the seat-belt is for.