For most of us, our opinions are founded in our experiences!
That being the case, many who have posted in here appear to have had vastly different aviation experiences from mine!
I learned to fly in the 70's when we did 3 hrs IF for the Restricted PPL and a further 2 hrs IF for the Unrestricted PPL.
As a 100+ hr PPL I flew myself into IMC! I thought I was descending into a cloud layer that was only a few hundred feet thick as that appeared to be the case as I passed the edge of it in VMC on top - it wasn't! Down I went expecting to break out any second - I didn't!
I wasn't just riding along as a pseudo pax with the AP doing the work - I was hand flying a C172 with no AP.
The urge to keep going down was great as I had to break out, right? At least I had the presence of mind to look at the WAC chart and decide that I would descend to 1000' above the highest point in the area and I made a decision that I would climb back out of it if I didn't break out by my calculated MDA.
That's what happened, I climbed back out to VMC on top, did a 180 and flew back to the edge of the cloud bank. I was right! It was only a few hundred feet thick - for a couple of miles and then it went right down to the trees!
All up I spent about 20 min in IMC.
Did I at any point think I might die - No!
Did I scare the **** out of myself - Yep!
Did the IF training I did for my PPL save my life - ABSOLUTELY!
Dr 