> ...who was clearly expressing an opinion but wasn't "defensive" enough in their post to clearly state their post was an opinion.
You are giving OP the benefit of the doubt, which is a nice thing to do, but what if it isn't actually true? One isolated case is no big deal of course, but what if this (people accidentally mistaking opinions for facts) was actually a very common phenomenon? And when combined with the power of the internet to propagate ideas (opinions perceived as facts), brought about a scenario where people's beliefs about reality are highly divergent from actual reality...in a complex system, might this possibly result in a kind of self-reinforcing negative feedback loop?
If one looked carefully, I wonder if some signs of this phenomenon could be identified within the system we find ourselves living in.
You are giving OP the benefit of the doubt, which is a nice thing to do, but what if it isn't actually true? One isolated case is no big deal of course, but what if this (people accidentally mistaking opinions for facts) was actually a very common phenomenon? And when combined with the power of the internet to propagate ideas (opinions perceived as facts), brought about a scenario where people's beliefs about reality are highly divergent from actual reality...in a complex system, might this possibly result in a kind of self-reinforcing negative feedback loop?
If one looked carefully, I wonder if some signs of this phenomenon could be identified within the system we find ourselves living in.