An opinion is what people have when they don't have any facts. When you have the facts, you don't need an opinion, it's just a statement of truth. Facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom. It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive. It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives. Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them; which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts' themselves meanwhile simply are.
Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them. I think Reality and Fact must be distinguished. facts can be proven, by merely pointing out that they exist and/or by investigation. Reality is a judgment upon those facts, or in other words, the acceptance that these facts together mean something. But since each one of us can have a different judgment we come up with our own ‘version’ of such reality. The amazing thing is most of us are indeed open to others’ interpretation of facts and hence allow each other to refine the collective understanding of reality. People respond the same to beliefs and facts. We believe what we know of, and to be honest, most of you people don't know very much, That's not a fact, just my opinion. It takes huge amounts of self-discipline to mentally separate the two while having and excepting both.
Perception is key but has nothing to do with the fact itself, except the fact that people perceive, based upon the limited facts they know of, the trick is to find out what fact led to another fact being true or not. Although a fact "not being true" does not exist, because it would no longer be a fact, it would be a lie or misperception. To be factually honest, saying most of you people don't know very much is a contradiction, that's the point. Confusion with facts vs opinion is what I'm talking about, both seem to speak words of truth but only one is a fact. The fact is that I don't have any proof that you don't know very much. But I can "think" that you don't because our society would not be this way if more of us did. Doublethink much?