The word BETTER is subjective by definition as it is a human judgement.
That is why we have law and the stuff.
Because what one person finds 'better' is seen by another as 'worse', so completely the opposite.
And then most peoples opinions will fall in between these two extremes.
How relevant is the opinion in cases where we have hard data ?
I have an opinion that world is flat , does it make it so ? Not really.
Should i build my world around that opinion ? i font thinks so. Living in ignorance is bad.
Should i promote this opinion on others and propose to build society based on that ? hmm probably not a good idea for everyone else involved.
Some example of hard data.
* Our society need energy to sustain it self.
* we all need food and water.
* we all need a feeling of being loved by parents when we are still children.
Your or mine opinion means nothing. In fact it they are opposite to fact they are actually harmful to society.
For example i could have opinion that children should be beaten and abused . What the point of keeping that around if all the data we have tells us how harmful to children that actually is.
I think the reasoning
"if you don't know everything, then you can't talk about anything!" apply to you as well.
Aah, but in all that you wrote here you didn't use the word 'better', which was what i was talking about.
Better is an opinion and is not based on hard data.
Better is always from some(ones) point of view.
And i agree with most of the rest of your post, hard facts are hard facts.