Having Informed Opinions

We all have opinions. It is what makes each one of us unique and propels us toward the choices that we make.

For example, I believe dogs are way better than cats, therefore, I probably will never have a cat as a pet.

I mean, look at that face!

For the most part, opinions are based on our preferences and beliefs, which are sometimes backed up with facts and research. These are informed opinions. When facts and research cannot be provided (i.e. in the case of debating what is "right" from "wrong"), to have an informed opinion would mean to have a knowledge of the extended discourse surrounding the issue.

But too many people are spewing uninformed opinions nowadays. What is worse is when people rely on uninformed opinions to govern their actions. Unfortunately, I suspect that this is because of the bandwagon effect. What you are ultimately saying when you fall in the bandwagon is, "Others say it is bad, so it must be bad. I won't bother looking into why because everyone is saying it." And I partly blame our high speed culture with microwave-ready mentality where knowledge needs to be served fast and easy, disregarding the quality of the meal.

Speaking of food, this segues nicely into a funny video that I found via Facebook where Jimmy Kimmel got his crew to interview people at the local farmer's market who are against GMOs on what is a GMO:

While this video is extremely entertaining, it also prompted me to write this post. They just make people who are against GMOs look bad, man! And I'm against GMOs!

But more than that, it bothers me when people state an opinion or choose to live a certain lifestyle and could not, for the life of them, justify it. They're living in ignorance! And whoever thinks ignorance is a desirable trait is deluding himself. That, or he's one of them.


A note on the issue of GMOs, for those interested:


I'm against GMOs. I now avoid them whenever possible and practical. I used to be one of the people in the video, only knowing to say that it is bad for you because it is unnatural. (I've always been a bit of a science geek, so I knew what it stands for.) This statement comes from the assumption that something "unnatural" will inevitably harm us. And I put unnatural in quotations specifically because we don't even have a working definition of the word when we use it in this context.

In reality, there is no proof at all that GMOs are bad for you. There has been no research done on the matter. And it is precisely this lack in scientific knowledge that people should be wary of GMOs. We don't know what it does to our body in the long run. Sure, it's not killing us right away. Smoking doesn't kill you after the first cigarette either. But maybe after the 100,000th it might.

For reasons that I will not try to explain here, I don't believe GMOs are inherently harmful. It is what is done to the GMOs that could potentially cost us our lives. In order to make sense of this, you need to understand that GMOs are generally created to withstand pesticides and herbicides in large amounts. Because of this immunity, farmers (I don't even want to call them that anymore) are able to dump these harmful chemicals in quantities that would have assuredly killed fruits and vegetables that are non-GMO.

It is this increase in the use of pesticides and herbicides among GMOs that worry me. We don't know how much of these chemicals are still on our food when we buy them, or even how much gets absorbed into the food that we cannot possibly wash off.

So that is why I'm against GMOs.