[FOM] Fact and opinion in F.O.M.

[Joe Shipman]

Recently I concluded that the biggest problem in internet discussion of public policy was that most people seemed not to competently distinguish between fact and opinion, and that one easy distinguishing feature is that people of good will cannot be in permanent disagreement about a matter of fact, so that people who mistook their opinion for a fact might unfairly regard their opponents as perverse or dishonest.

I now see that this distinction sheds light on some puzzles regarding choice of axioms.

To a first approximation, statements of arithmetic are matters of fact, while provably independent statements like CH are matters of opinion.

But can you refine this? Is there a statement of mathematics, not provably equivalent to an arithmetical statement, which is still a matter of fact?

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