If I had to lie about my education to prove my opinion was important...?

Would you lie about your "degrees," by claiming you majored in Finance, Accounting, and Economics, and minored in Energy Commerce and Geology, even though you barely finished high school, just to convince people you were very educated and your stupid opinions mattered?

No. That's ridiculous. Why would I lie to convince someone to value my opinion, expertise, or advice?

I guess some people do...

No. You can get caught out on that. It's much safer to falsely attribute "Quotes."

For that matter some highly educated people have some pretty stupid opinions.

And don't assume from the way they write that people are high school dropouts. You can get an MBA or a Phd in most scientific disciplines without being able to write a coherent paragraph.

Teaching remedial writing to executives is a fast growing field.

why would i need to lie about nething...... if my opinion is a good one it will have merit on its own.

yes i would lie if in that position, because its always important to get stupid opinions out in public

No. Simply put, if you have an opinion that is worth listening to, people will listen. If you have a well thought out, well educated opinion on something, and can at the very least list your source, and influences (mostly just for those skeptical listeners) then there should be no reason to lie.

Not me.

But I have caught many idiots trying to pull that and is fun to humiliate them. They think they play smart but all they do is play idiotics morons.

I understand this is a fairly common sentiment among younger people ... you don't feel that anyone takes you seriously, or that your opinion isn't valid because you're 'too young.' I can empathize -- when I was younger I felt exactly the same way. However, you also have to understand that when you get older you will dislike someone with significantly less experience telling you they know more than you, so it goes both ways.

The real question is what you're discussing -- if you're still in high school, and you're trying to argue about some esoteric concept in quantum mechanics, then I would say you're probably talking about things you don't understand as well as you might think you do. If, however, you're discussing about opinions on the War in Iraq (for example) then you have every right to have your argument validated. What is important is that you don't try to come off as an authority in something you have no right to assume.

One of my cousins a few years back married a jewel of husband that everyone in my extended family avoids at all costs. Why ...? Because whatever you are talking about he thinks he knows more than anyone else. That wouldn't be so much of a problem if he were actually educated or had some kind of experience, but he barely just finished his Associates degree in Computer Science (he's 32), and he works at a Verizon sales kiosk in the mall full time. Most everyone else in our family has at least a Masters degree, and quite a few of us have Ph.D's.

I remember very vividly one Thanksgiving a couple years back two of my brothers-in-law (who have Masters degrees in mechanical engineering) were discussing some kind of new microwave communication system (it was completely over my head). My cousin's husband comes up and starts saying things so ridiculous even I could tell he was completely full of crap -- and in his own mind he actually either thought he was right, or he was fooling everyone. He was talking about Star Trek technology, and using personal computer lingo ... just really making an *** out of himself. This is not what you want to do.

Plato wrote extensively about this kind of person ... he called them rhetoricians. Basically, he said said the purpose of a rhetorician is to convince others of the cogency of his/her own arguments (whether or not is it correct), regardless of his experience or authority on said matter. Plato suggested that a skilled rhetorician could convince others of just about anything, provided the audience did not possess expert knowledge of the topic being discussed. He concluded, therefore, that rhetoric is nothing more than "the art of convincing the ignorant," because if you know anything about what is being discussed you will recognize how wrong it is.

This is not what you want to do. Faking degrees or claiming you have more authority that you really do might convince the ignorant, but it will not work on anyone that knows about what you're talking about. And in most cases even people who don't have an expert knowledge will be able to recognize you're not what you say you are.

In 20 years you'll probably understand what I'm saying better. When I was 16 I thought I knew a lot, but now that I'm in my 30's I realize how little I really understood -- experience is more valuable than you probably estimate it right now. That is why a lot of older people discount what you say ... you don't have enough experience. Would you want a 2nd grader telling you "how things are?"

In the end you don't have to prove anything to anyone ... if they don't believe you then thats their own fault. Being educated or having experience doesn't mean you're always right either. I've met some very well educated people that had the most idiotic ideas, and very often the most intelligent people are the ones who are completely lacking in common sense. I've met quite a few teenagers that were more enlightened on certain subjects than most adults.