TJ Walker explains how to tell evidence from opinion by asking "How do you know that?" Strong feelings aren't proof, and one story doesn't prove a pattern. He shifted his teaching methods after gathering data from thousands of speakers, not just relying on what felt right.
Ultimize. Here's a question that can instantly improve the quality of almost any conversation. Ask, how do you know that? Now, not in an aggressive way, not like a prosecutor, just as a curious human being. How do you know that? That simple question has a remarkable ability to separate evidence from opinion. The problem is that most people treat opinions as if they were evidence. They say things like, I just know, or everyone can see it, or it's common sense. Those statements may express confidence, but confidence is not evidence. Confidence merely tells us how strongly someone believes something. I've noticed this throughout my career. Someone will confidently tell me that a particular speaking technique always works. Another person will confidently tell me the exact opposite. If confidence determined truth, both people would be correct. Obviously, that can't happen. So the question becomes, what evidence supports the claim? When I first started teaching public speaking, I had strong opinions about what audience wanted. Some of those opinions were right, some weren't. The thing that improved my thinking wasn't becoming smarter, It was collecting more evidence. After working with thousands of speakers in dozens of countries, patterns began to emerge. Certain techniques consistently worked better than others. The evidence forced me to change some of my earlier assumptions. That's one reason evidence can be uncomfortable. Evidence doesn't care about our preferences, doesn't care about how long we've held a belief. It doesn't care about whether a conclusion feels satisfying. Evidence simply points where it points. Opinion, on the other hand, is often based on personal experience, intuition, emotions, assumptions, or preferences. Opinions aren't necessarily worthless. They're certainly not automatically worthless. In fact, some opinions can be extremely insightful. The problem occurs when we confuse an opinion With proof. Consider restaurant recommendations. If one friend tells you a restaurant is fantastic, that's useful information, interesting, but it's still an opinion. If 500 customers independently give the restaurant outstanding reviews over several years, now you're starting to accumulate evidence. Now, neither source guarantees the restaurant is good or great for you. The difference is that one relies primarily on an individual's judgment. While the other draws from a larger body of information. A mistake many people make is assuming that personal experience automatically proves a broader conclusion. Someone loses money in one investment and concludes all investments of that type are terrible. Someone has a negative experience with one employee and concludes an entire generation has poor work habits and ethics. Someone meets one dishonest person from a particular profession and suddenly distrusts everyone in that profession. It's not the way to do it. The human brain loves turning small samples into large conclusions. Critical thinkers resist that temptation. Another useful distinction involves expertise. An expert's opinion is still an opinion. However, it's often an opinion informed by years or decades of experience. data and observation. That's why expert opinions can be valuable, but even experts can be wrong. The strongest experts usually understand this. They tend to speak in probabilities rather than certainties. One habit can dramatically improve your thinking. Whenever you encounter a claim, mentally place it on a spectrum. On one end is pure opinion. On the other end is strong evidence. Then ask yourself where the claim belongs. Is it based on feeling, an observation, a single example, a study, multiple studies, long-term data? The exercise forces you to evaluate the foundation beneath the conclusion. The goal isn't to eliminate opinions, Life would be impossible without them. The goal is to recognize the difference between what we know, what we think, and what we merely suspect. Those categories often get blended together. Critical thinkers work hard to keep them separate. Coming up next, we'll explore one of the most valuable mental models you can ever learn. It won't make uncertainty disappear, It will help you make better decisions despite, despite uncertainty. That's the power of thinking in probabilities instead of certainties.
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