Difference Between Bias and Opinion
by Charles Goh, on June 15th, 2012
The difference between opinion and bias is that an opinion is what someone thinks about a certain topic when a bias is how someone thinks feels and reacts about a topic based on something from their past……for example I hate the color purple because my biological father likes purple. That is a bias when “the Phillies are the best team in the world is an opinion because there is nothing from my past that can back that up.
I came across this on WikiAnswers a while ago; this might be worth discussing. Perhaps what the person who wrote the above statement meant was that opinions are backed up with valid arguments, and biases are not. For example, I think the sky is blue because the atmosphere scatters the blue light end of the visible light spectrum more than the red light end. A biased opinion would be something like: The sky is blue because the government says it is blue.
The first argument is an opinion with a valid reason while the second one is a bias using the same reason. So what it means is that opinions’ arguments must justify the opinion while a bias consists of one reason of which everything is based off of. So for example, if there was no blue light end of the visible spectrum, the opinion would be that the sky is some other colour, but a biased person would still say, the government says it is blue so its blue.
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“So what it means is that opinions’ arguments must justify the opinion while a bias consists of one reason of which everything is based off of.”
Does opinion really have to be based off of valid reasoning? I think opinions are, in their very nature, beliefs that can’t be justified. And bias can arrive from more than just one, concrete reason. In history, as David mentioned, we learn to look for bias not only in a source’s argument but in their origin and purpose among other things.
In that case there will always be bias. If bias comes from the very nature of mankind (which seems like a reasonabe statment), then every opinion is biased in its own way. The justification for opinions need not be valid for all parties, only to one.
For example. What is the first thing that comes into your mind when you think about the possibility of a World War 3?
Opinion 1 = Many people will die, so the war is not worth fighting
Opinion 2 = Population control! How convenient. I welcome it.
The person who has opinion 1 would say that “population control” is a ridiculous and invalid reason. The person who has opinion 2 would say otherwise.