“The ideas that are being spread most often today aren’t ideas at all. They’re opinions. And we learned a long time ago that everyone is entitled to his opinion. But what if it’s not his opinion? What if the opinion belongs to someone else?” (quote Seth Godin)
Dustin Staiger says, in relation to Seth’s quote : “If you make a statement like that, then you believe there’s a difference between ideas and opinions.”
In another post about this issue, Dustin rethinks the relation between ideas and opinions like this : “Opinions aren’t always bad. In fact, they’re usually necessary. What we have to realize though, is opinions are steps back. Sometimes we need to step back from an idea, but common sense tells us we have to move forward again if we want progress.”
Maybe you’ve figured out a keen idea that looks really logical to you, because from your own point of view what you’ve created is logical and clear. But if someone else comments on this creation he shares an opinion with you, based on your creation/idea. He hasn’t thought of a new idea, you have made him think about yours. You’ve caused him to form an opinion.
Maybe his opinion wasn’t quite positive and it made you realize that there was a difference in interpretation. This (negative) opinion has set you back a few steps, because it became clear your idea needed some more modifications to become a clear and constructive universal idea that everybody would recognize in the way you meant it to be recognized. The opinion caused you to rethink the idea and recreate it so that it would be interpreted exactly the way you wanted it to.
Since common sense tells us we have to move forward to make progress, maybe being set back isn’t so bad after all. The setback will cause you to come up with a plan or with modifications to adjust the original idea and move forward again, so in fact opinions are triggering ideas.
Good teachers in college should always give honest opinions about your work, so that you’re forced to rethink a concept and come up with a new or modified idea. That’s why interaction is the key in a creative learning process, and not the reproducing of an existing idea from the syllabus. Good teachers will learn you how to take these steps forward, how to anticipate on opinions and create a productive view on existing ideas and opinions.
Dustin Staiger has lined up some of the differences between ideas and opinions. I couldn’t have done it better, so here’s what he came up with :
via [CustomerWorld]