Why do uneducated people have opinions?

This is why democracy doesn't work. You have huge %s of populations voting for people they don't really know and for politics they really don't understand.

He must watch Rick and Mor- *gets shot*.

Honestly, this is coming from someone who has had opinions refuted before in quite embarrassing fashion: People have pride, and pride rules their thought process. I blame this on both parties SOMETIMES. Usually it's one ignorant asshole who has his ears clamped shut and refuses to listen to reasoning and logic. Sometimes though, it's a mix of one ignorant asshole and one slightly less ignorant asshole. A lot of the time when I have wandered into a conversation that I know very little about, I attempt to blend in and not be "that guy" who has no idea. Because my experience has generally been that people who do not know get shredded to pieces by the intellectually "superior" who essentially have no interest in educating you or helping you learn a new point. Almost like the insiders club to knowledge, where you either "know" or screw off because you're an inferior waste of oxygen that should be purged from the earth. While I admit that some people do not take kindly to being told they are wrong about something, some others make it that much more difficult by using juvenile tactics to impress their "points", regardless of how correct they may actually be.

Still, room for improvement on all sides, in my opinion.

In this world filled with lots of information that can be overwhelming, who gets to decide what is true or not in politics? Who gets to decide whether a person has knowledge or not? Even if you require post-graduate degrees for a position in politics, there are still stupid people with post-graduate degrees. Only scientists are allowed to run for politics? That is not their forte and they wouldn't want to delve into politics. That is why it doesn't matter if you're poor or uneducated, you have the right to vote after you reach a certain age. It becomes authoritarian/oligarchic once you restrict the voting process to select few. There are only 2 viable options aside from democracy, which are authoritarian and anarchy. I wouldn't say these 2 are better. Work with what's already in place. It can be improved. Educate the masses. Lift up the lives of the poor people. These are what really solve the problem not changing democracy.

Why do people have opinions. Because they do.

Dunning Kruger.

Also, having opinions about things in the first place is objectively a poor way to be educated. There are facts, there are hypothesis based of facts, and there is everything else. The later being mostly irrelevant.

Best to limit your opinions to your favorite color and favorite food.

I think the OP is just another version of what he is complaining about.

If a fidget spinner ran for office it would likely get elected. I believe all citizens of a country should have to pass a reasonably basic test on politics before they should be allowed vote.

I shudder to think what percentage of voters go to the polling stations just to take a selfie...

Im with stupid

I'm a little torn. On the one hand, the OP is exactly what people hold up as an example of smart people being too arrogant. Dumb people shouldn't have opinions? Come on, man. On the other hand, they guy was arguing a demonstrably false position against loads of evidence. There's nothing I hate more than making a good argument backed up by facts and experiments and having the other person just shrug and say "you're wrong." If you're not interested in having a debate that appeals to common measures like facts, then why are you arguing in the first place? Why not just go around saying "I think you're wrong and I'm right, but I have no interest in backing up my opinion, so I'm just going to end this conversation before it even gets started and save everyone the trouble?" Sometimes I think they only do it for the smug satisfaction they get from watching other people's frustration.

And you know what, if it was just a bunch of petty jerks going around screwing with people because they can I'd be fine with it, laugh and walk away. But it's way more than that these days, it's a parasitic disease. Between flat earthers, anti-vaxers, young earthers, birthers, Alex Jones, and Goop, it's just like every single place you turn there's a new conspiracy with a million followers. Yeah, the TC was being disrespectful, but he started this conversation being respectful. He started the conversation expecting the other guy to understand his appeal to reason and logic and come away knowing a little bit more about the world, and the other guy threw it back in his face. Why? So he could have one moment of showing up someone smarter than him. Pettiness, pure pettiness.

That's pretty normal, it's usually the uninformed and uneducated that have the most opinions. Smart people know when to stay silent while uneducated ones will argue for the sake of argument. Ultimately, their argument will go around in circles and it will never end so perhaps just walk away. You can't win all your battles, or rather, you shouldn't try to win all of them since the rewards aren't that great to begin with.

A little exercise for you...

Step 1) Write down everything you think you know about everything that you know about.

Step 2) DO NOT read Step 3 until you've done Step 1.

Step 3) Now that you've completed the list from Step 1, go back and properly verify every single thing that you wrote down. If even one single thing that you wrote down in Step 1 is wrong, then you fail.

This is why we have CIVILIZATION. Nobody knows everything, and the things that most people are wrong about usually don't matter to them, and no one can remember where they learned everything that they know and how true it is anyway.

Not saying that the guy wasn't wrong, but you don't have to be f***ing uppity about it. Ultimately he's not a physicist, so it probably makes f***-all difference whether he knows how time dilation works. Now make a list of everything that YOU might be wrong about.

ON THE OTHER HAND...Brokenrabbit said that he wrote out the Schroedinger equation and the idiot couldn't make heads or tails of it. So, just playing devil's advocate here...if the guy really didn't understand any of what Brokenrabbit wrote, why exactly would that guy automatically say, "gee, you wrote out a fancy equation that I don't remotely understand, so I guess I'm going to agree with you now instead of thinking that you just wrote a bunch of pure gibberish just to try to look smart"?

i mean, the proof given was clearly beyond the level of the idiot's understanding, so now we're going to say that he's a troll for not understanding the proof that was given? Isn't it more likely that he really is just so ignorant that he doesn't understand that he's just been proven wrong?

I mean, I get it, no one likes feeling stupid. Getting back to what BR was saying, though, if you don't know a lot about a subject why do you feel the need to go around making statements about it? It sounds to me like he made a statement about a subject he knew little about, BR gave him a detailed proof of why he was wrong, and he reacted by just insisting that he's right anyway. To me that doesn't indicate he's too ignorant to understand the proof, it indicates he doesn't want to understand it. If he didn't understand it he could have said "wow, I that sounds fascinating, but I don't really get it, could you explain it to me a bit more?" Or he could have said "I don't know that you're right, but you clearly know a lot more about the subject than I do." That way he doesn't have to agree with BR, but he also doesn't act like he's just right regardless of evidence.