IMHO: In my humble opinion–what’s the deal with that? What do we ever say that isn’t our humble opinion? And yet when we declare “It’s raining” do we really mean “I think it’s raining” or is raining a fact, and therefore not a matter of humble opinion?

In the acronym IMHO, the H is redundant. IMO is already humbled, revealing awareness of one’s role as an interpreter of evidence, as if to say, “The opinions expressed here are those of the expressor and may not be those of reality itself, the expressor’s ultimate employer.

And even “In my opinion” is redundant since the evidence that a statement is your opinion is implied by the way it emanates from your pie hole.  You’ve probably been in one of these exchanges before.

A: It’s not a good idea.

B: Well, that’s your opinion.

A: Of course, it’s my opinion! I’m saying that in my opinion it’s not a good idea!

If “in my opinion” is implicit, why would we ever make it explicit?  One reason would be signal receptivity to alternative perspectives.  It can signal that, “this is a conversation, not an argument or a fight.”

A:  What did you think of the movie last night?

B:  In my opinion it wasn’t very good.

A: Ah, well in my opinion it wasn’t bad.

I have yet to meet a signal that couldn’t, in some contexts mean the opposite of its literal meaning. A showy signal of accommodation and receptivity can be a way of saying “you’re so aggressive I have to walk on eggshells not to upset you.”  IMHO can signal “I’m the humble one here; you’re the arrogant one.”  I sometimes use IMAO (In my arrogant opinion) to confuse this effect.

And notice also that declaring oneself humble is a fairly arrogant act.  In Numbers, one of the five books of Moses (supposedly written by Moses), verse 12:3 reads, “Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.”  Not arrogant, perhaps if it was dictated to Moses by God, or at least no more arrogant than saying “People say I’m really humble.”

Many common phrases have a suspiciously arrogant-sounding self-reported humility. “Excuse me” is a command.  “With all due respect,” implies a claim that amounts to “I’m an authority on how much respect is due to you, and trust me, I know I’m showing you your full due.” Perhaps more accurately we should say “With all due respect, I’ll leave it to you to decide whether I’m showing you due respect when I say…”.

One of the cockiest conversationalists I’ve ever met, would pepper her unsolicited advising and pontificating with the caveat, “I reserve the right to be wrong,” as though everything she said would be so compelling we might forget her potential fallibility.

Any time we graciously remind and assure people that they are entitled to an alternative perspective, we run the risk of sounding like they don’t.

A:  Feel free to disagree with me.

B:  (Sarcastically) Why thank you, that is so kind!  I was waiting for your permission.

When we preface something with IMHO does that mean everything said before it was not IMHO?  When we say, “Well, frankly speaking” does that mean everything before it wasn’t frank?  When we say, “You look great!” does that mean that you didn’t before? In sum, when is a signal a reminder of an ongoing state and when is it the announcement of the start of a new state.

Another possible use of IMHO is to distinguish opinion from fact. When I say, “It’s raining,” I’m stating a fact.  When I say, “It looks dreary outside,” that’s an opinion.  But if it were as straightforward as that, we wouldn’t need to distinguish explicitly. We would all know the difference between fact and opinion.  Epistemologists–those who study the difference between fact and opinion have not come to agreement on the difference, and by now it’s pretty clear that they can’t, if only because any claim to know the difference would itself be an opinion and therefore open to challenge by someone who holds a different opinion. Reasonable people can disagree about what’s fact or opinion.

Notice that for every signal we can send saying, “the following is just an opinion” we have an equal an opposite signal saying “the following is a fact.”  In fact, “In fact” is one of the most popular. And really so is “really.”  These are some of the most popular conversational packing peanuts around.  We put “In fact” in front of all sorts of things that aren’t even close to fact.  “In fact he’s not likeable,” for example. And we don’t call each other on such abuse of “In fact” unless we’re in disagreement.

It’s as if all conversation rides back and forth over two lines, the line between agreement and disagreement and the line between opinion and fact. So long as we’re in agreement the line between opinion and fact isn’t really an issue. You can say “IMHO the movie was bad” and I can say, “In fact it was bad,” and we won’t quibble over packing peanuts.  But if we disagree, we’re likely to pick at each other’s confidence.  We’ll claim that our opinions are fact, and that our opponent’s positions are mere opinions.

Among the items that top every human’s wish list–right up there with wealth, fame, power and sexual status–is a desire that our opinions should prove to be absolute incontrovertible facts. In fact, (see what I did there?) our desire to have our opinions affirmed may be the reason we crave wealth, fame, power and sexual status, all of which we interpret as confirmation that our opinions, beliefs and choices are supported by reality.

To grant that wish for compliant reality checks without having to make everyone wealthy, famous, powerful and sexually high-status, I’ve been trying for years to get some electronic meter company to produce a Universal Multi-function Pseudo-Scientific Instrument.  It would look like a Geiger counter with a needle-meter, lights and sounds—very scientific.  It would have a small remote control button you could keep in your pocket, the palm of your hand or on a ring. When you pressed the remote, the meter would go off. It could measure anything and provide factual support for any opinion you might harbor.  It could be a BS meter, truthometer an egometer, foolometer– hold the meter up to anyone and “prove” that your opinion of them was scientific fact.  That’s what we really want—a way to ignore the possibility that our opinions are wrong, a way to make reality comply with us, not the other way around.   Lacking the meter we use rhetoric.

My broad definition of rhetoric is any universally applicable device for increasing or decreasing the credibility of a position.  “In fact,” for example, is a device that can increase the credibility of any argument:  “In fact, it’s ugly.”  Or “In fact, it’s beautiful.”  I put it in the same category as sexiness, which lends credibility to any argument made by the person in possession of that trait.  “Well, that’s just your opinion” is a very popular generic way to decrease the credibility of any argument.

To the extent that “In fact” has lost its power to add credibility it would be from overuse.  It’s like using my Multi-Function Pseudo-Scientific Meter to affirm everything we say, until its battery has gone dead.

I had a sweet argument with a friend the other day over the difference between fact an opinion. I was reporting on what epistemologists think are the problems with claiming that anything is fact, and he was saying “Oh, come on. Facts are facts.”  He gave me some examples, including that when you let go of a rock it falls to the ground.  I said “No, in fact, that’s just a very reliable conjecture.” We were escalating, adding “In fact” aggressively to everything we said.  Then I tried a different tack and swung the conversation around to the difference between how causality works in physics and life, and why the falling rock feels so much more factual than a lot of conjectures we make about life.  “In my humble opinion, you’re onto something there,” he said.  In fact, I’ll share that difference in another article.