Right and Wrong Opinions

About a year back, when Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland came out, Emily R posted on Facebook about what an awesome movie it was (which it was). Ezra said something along the lines of "No it is not, but I respect your opinion, no matter how wrong it may be." Laugh I did (he is a funny guy when his jokes make sense), but it got me thinking: Can an opinion be wrong?

If I am correct about opinions, yes. Not that one, of course. No. But say (I use a lot of analogies) there is a hippo and my opinion is that it is a rhinoceros. I may think that, but facts are facts. It's different if one says "Roses are beautiful" or "Fish sticks are nasty!" (both true, ha). It's to do with elementary fact-and-opinion reasoning. I'm not altogether sure about the whole factual thinking part (getting facts wrong), about whether those count as opinions. But another thing I'll mention is ill-founded opinions (I believe I have mentioned them) - when someone forms judgment without proper evidence. In other words, haste (hastiness?). Take the aforementioned hippopotamus. I have friends - very good ones - who could argue until purple-faced that it was a rhino, and not produce a shred of proof. Humans hate being wrong, I guess. Not excluding myself: I can certainly be wrong, but I am more cautious about not assuming stuff and getting my facts straight, etc.

Moreover, you should see here that I  stated I've been told different things about what is and isn't an opinion. I try to be as careful as I can (Treebeard comes to mind). So most of the time when someone is dead certain they've caught me jumping to conclusions, his or her (opinion?) is wrong.

Thanks for reading,
Lewis

Things versus Reasons

I don't recall if I heard this somewhere or if it came to me of its own, but here' the quote: "He/she did the wrong thing for the right reason."

Or vice versa. Does it really matter what the thing is, if you do it for a different reason than many would? For example, since I'm super into Harry Potter right about now, [SPOILERS] when Snape killed Dumbledore, he appeared to have done wrong. Normally he would have had done so, but he did it to (as I recall) gain Voldemort's trust. It's been a while since I read the books, and I plan to reread them, but for now I'm left to my memory. Anyway, it can also work to the contrary: If you do the right thing for the wrong reason, I would not count that as the right thing.

What I guess I'm trying to say is, does it really matter what you do, so much as the reason for which you do it? If anyone reads this, please tell me what you think.

Farewell,

Lewis