@TheMiddleWay Agreed. Reading the Pew Poll findings, I don't imagine that confirmation bias' existence is a huge shock to most rational individuals. I just couldn't help while reading the questions; picturing some individuals that I know with tongue firmly implanted in their cheeks, selecting fact or opinion incorrectly. Because... not. Maybe I need to find a new crowd to associate with.

@TheMiddleWay
This has indeed been a thought provoking mental excercise....one worthy of our time....(in my opinion). I am however hoping for your reply to the point I made days ago. You state the amount of land lost was obviously siginificant, so therefore the
statement was of a factual nature. What if I say the amount of dirty dishes in my kitchen is significant. Is that a factual statement? According to your logic, I know if it is a factual statement or an opinion, but you do not. Doesn't that fly in the face of identifying the NATURE of a statement?
If I said there are 5 dirty dishes in my kitchen, now THAT would be a factual statement, because it is either true or false. It does not rely on falling into an "obvious" category, which will be subjective in many cases.

@TheMiddleWay
You drive me to be as precise as possible. That is good. Let me have another go at it. The instructions on the survey were to ignore how much we may know about the actual facts concerning
the statement, and go simply by the statement itself (or words to that effect), which makes sense. You said it was a factual statement because you obviously knew a lot about the issue, and therefore knew that it was clearly true.
But someone who knows nothing about the actual history or circumstances of that region must mark down either factual or opinion based on the question itself. (as Pew instructed us to do). Pew did not want us to do some quick research before putting down our answer. So Pew should grade the answers on what this statement says to someone who is in the dark on the issue. To me, that would be... THE STATEMENT ITSELF only says that, in the OPINION of the writer, the amount of land lost is significant. This poll was supposed to be an examination of the ability to identify the nature of a statement, not an exanmination of the knowledge of recent middle eastern history. I assume you do not totally buy my analysis. But if you use your imagination and put yourself in the position of someone who is ignorant of the actual events over there (yet still answering the poll question), it makes a little more sense.

Bravo to DonThiebaut. You are % correct. And that is factual.
I was going to make a post explaining it exactly as you did. Now I am curious. Have you taken the 16 personalities and been classified as INTP (the logician) as I have? Logic is a beautiful thing.

@TheMiddleWay I'm not saying that Isis didn't lose, I'm saying that the statement as it was phrased is not literally factual. It may be true in the broader interpretation, but it relies on the reader having mostly the same interpretation of what constitutes significant. It's an opinion statement based in fact, not a fact statement.

@TheMiddleWay It's actually really easy to show that those can be considered to be not 'worthy of attention'. Some people didn't pay attention. Any value assessment is by nature an opinion. Significance is a value assessment. Significant to one is insignificant to another. A majority considering something significant doesn't make it fact, just widely held opinion. That's not to say that the opinion is wrong, just that it is not the same as a fact.

@TheMiddleWay you could even quantify it by saying that it is significant to a specific individual or group. But again, as phrased, the statement is an opinion.

@TheMiddleWay The fact that the assertion turns out to be obviously right has no bearing on whether the assertion was one of fact or opinion. In this case he gives
no quantifiable amount of land that would meet his standard of significant. If the amount of land turned out to be an amount that some would consider significant, but other people would not, does that mean that the statement of fact has now become a statement of opinion? And could you tell me exactly what amount of land would make it obviously true? The answer to that question would be "its a matter of opinion" I rest my case.

@TheMiddleWay You are overthinking it. Forget ISIS, forget 2017. It could have said, "Gloop lost significant portions of glop." The point isn't that portions were or weren't lost, or when, or whether those portions are significant from a particular view. The point is that 'significant' is not a definitive term in and of itself, and that a statement that has no greater precision than 'significant' is not a factual statement. It's based in fact, it's widely regarded as factual when given any baseline (as when providing a person or group to measure significance), but it's not a fact on it's own any more than saying 'ice cream is good'. I like ice cream and I'm glad ISIS lost, but those are opinions.

@TheMiddleWay Again, the point is not the land lost. It is a fact that land was lost. It is a fact that the sun is farther than the moon. The point is that whether the loss was significant, whether the distance is significant, that makes it an opinion. On the scale of a galaxy, the sun is an insignificant distance from the earth. A greater distance than the moon, for sure, but not a significant distance. The statement being about something true and factual doesn't mean that the statement itself isn't an opinion. If I said your shirt was red, even if incorrect, it would be a factual statement. If I said your shirt was too red, it would be an opinion.