When I'm not at work on my musical project or at work in the traditional sense, I often try to think of things to write about. Much of the time, I feel as though I have books to write on a wide variety of topics, but when it comes time to type a short piece to share with the millions of people who navigate to this site daily, I find my mind blank more times than not. I have come to the conclusion that I am not as opinionated as I often think I am—and I haven't even really thought myself to be very opinionated since my early teen years. This got me thinking about opinions and about how generally useless they really are.

As I see it, there are two types of things: things about which you can have opinions and things about which you can be right or wrong. In fact, many types of things that seem to be matters of opinion are actually not. Issues of personal preference are really matters of fact. For example, you cannot believe that red is the superior colour; you would be wrong. If you say that your opinion is that red is the superior colour, then you are stating that you like red the best, and you can only either be right or wrong about that. When we talk about a colour being "greater," the greatness we speak of relates to us and not the actual colour. Therefore, there can been no objective criteria established upon which we can judge greatness of colours, so if you really wanted to start a debate, you'd do well to realize that first.

When people debate about supposed matters of opinion, they often use logical arguments to try to persuade the people with whom they are debating. There are a few possibilities concerning what is really going on here. The first possibility is that one person is completely right and the other is completely wrong. In this case, the logical arguments of the wrong side are fallacious, usually only seeming valid because they are logically irrelevant. The second possibility is that a "right" side and a "wrong" side do not exist, so there really is no point in trying to persuade the other side that your view is the correct one. The view that a side believes is correct is dependent on certain unspoken, usually unrealized factors.

If a person thinks that a politician should act in a certain way, they are said to have an opinion about the matter. Really, it is much more complicated than this. Perhaps the person would have the politician act in that way because it will benefit the most people to the greatest degree. About this they can only be right or wrong. Determining whether one thing benefits oneself greater than another thing is a difficult thing to quantify, but even that can be broken down further into simpler factors and the process repeated. Either money or comfort is more important to a specific person; someone can try to have an opinion about which it is, but they can only be right or wrong. If you continue down this path, you will see that everything comes down to absolute truths.

To hold a so-called opinion on a truth that will be revealed in the future is no exception. The determinist will argue that there is only one way in which the events of the future can unfold, so any suspicion, from its inception, can only be right or wrong. If determinism is a false notion (if I believe that it is false, then I am either right or wrong), then your opinion won't change the future anyway, unless someone in control of the situation hears about it and it affects their decision. In this case, whether you actually believe anything to be true is totally irrelevant. Only what the person in control takes in through their senses matters, and you could change a person's course of action without believing a certain way in your own mind. Thus the opinion is useless other than as a source of mental recreation.

So don't think I'm trying to change your opinion on opinions; either you're right about them, wrong about them, or you have a bigger problem than your opinion.