# Opinions as variation - a clarification By:: [[Steven Denman]] 2023-05-16 [[Brian Heath]] wrote a [[A Critique of Opinions as Normal Variation|critique]] of my [[Yea, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man. Thinking of opinions as normal variation.|post]] that raised good points to clarify. First, my emphasis on treating opinions as variation was not an assertion of one opinion's value over another. A feature of humanity is that people's opinions vary and people's opinions change. In a more practical, professional application, if the goal is to try and build something that has the highest opinion-pleasing expected value (I made that up, but there is probably a word for it), one would want to know the central tendency and range of those opinions. (e.g. over the past 7 years, the portion of the US population who use cash-only has dropped 10%). This requires more listening, more understanding, and more consideration of the range of opinions, not less. Brian raised the point that : "However, with opinions, who is to say what normal variation is and what are good or bad changes in the system?" And later: "Statistical opinion control seems like a slippery slope to propaganda and dictatorship." Good point! My intent was only to apply the appreciation of variance when contemplating a complex system, not the goal of statistical process control. The idea that opinion variance should be reduced in a system is horrifying indeed! That still leaves the ancient question of what to base society on when opinions vary. Is the goal the same as my professional application above, to maximize opinion-pleasing expected value? (hopefully dialogue, but often shouting, ensues) #### Related Items [[Statistics]] [[Opinions]] [[Complex Systems]] [[Variation]] [[Society]] [[Discussions]]