A large part of my focus in psychology is on the areas of emotional reasoning, cognitive distortions, and motivated cognition.
There are 3 things our human brains/nervous systems do incredibly well:
- recognize patterns
- preserve homeostasis
- deceive us about the nature of reality in order to meet unconscious needs (think denial)
I’m so convinced that “opinions” are (usually) nothing more than clear expressions of these ever present cognitive distortions, that I rarely pay attention to them.
There are typically only 4 situations in which I have much respect for people’s opinions:
- when supported by data and evidence
- when they largely converge with expert consensus
- when evidence and consensus are not available, time is of the essence and the person being consulted has a lot of experience as well as high emotional IQ (this might be opinion, or it might be intuition)
- when relationship priorities can (e.g. due to low risk situations) take priority over facts & accuracy. (e.g. my wife’s opinion about paint color will always take precedence over my own)
Beyond that, opinions are simply evidence for the tricks the brain plays on us each and every day.
With regard to “morals”, the only people who understand their origin with any precision are neuroscientists and experienced psychotherapists. The remaining opinionated laymen believe morals are acquired from conscious “teaching”, and that is just flat wrong in most cases.
If you want to see clear evidence of emotional reasoning, EVEN FROM a very smart engineer, you can read this other answer.
Dewey Gaedcke’s answer to Does free will exist?
Dewey Gaedcke’s answer to What exists in our brain as a result of self-deception?