Your Opinion Doesn't Matter
On why not having an opinion is fine.
We live in a culture that treats opinions like participation trophies. Everyone gets one. Everyone deserves to be heard. It's a comforting lie we tell ourselves in the name of inclusivity.
But here's the uncomfortable truth: most opinions are worthless.
The Difference Between Opinion and Ignorance
When someone says "the Earth is flat," we don't call that an opinion. We call it being wrong. Yet somehow, when that same person offers their thoughts on climate science, economic policy, or vaccine efficacy without having cracked open a single peer-reviewed paper, we're supposed to nod respectfully and say "well, that's your opinion."
No.
That's not an opinion. That's just noise with confidence.
An opinion worthy of consideration requires a foundation. It demands that you've done the work—read the research, understood the counterarguments and arrived at a conclusion through actual reasoning rather than just your feeling.
The Entitlement Epidemic
The phrase "everyone is entitled to their opinion" has become a shield for intellectual laziness. It's wielded most aggressively by people who've invested zero effort into understanding what they're talking about. They treat their uninformed hot takes as equivalent to the carefully considered positions of people who've spent years studying a subject.
You're not entitled to have your opinion respected just because you have one. Respect is earned through willingness to change your mind when the facts don't support your position. If you haven't done the homework, your opinion on the test doesn't count.
The Cost of Opinion Inflation
When we treat all opinions as equally valid regardless of the thought behind them, we devalue the knowledge. We create an environment where expertise is dismissed as "just another opinion," where facts become negotiable, and where confidence is mistaken for competence.
The person who's dedicated their career to epidemiology doesn't have "an opinion" about disease transmission that's equal to someone who watched three YouTube videos. The climate scientist who's analyzed decades of data doesn't hold "just an opinion" that deserves the same weight as someone who noticed it snowed in April.
And here where the main problem arises. Most people don’t see the difference.
A Better Standard
So what should replace our current everyone-gets-a-trophy approach to opinions?
Intellectual honesty.
Before offering your opinion, ask yourself: Have I done enough research to speak with any authority? Am I bringing something to the conversation beyond my feelings?
If the answer is no, there's a perfectly valid response: "I don't know enough about this to have an informed opinion."
That's not weakness. That's wisdom.
It's the recognition that some topics deserve more than your reflexive reaction, and that silence is better than uninformed noise.
It's Okay to Not Have an Opinion
Here's something our opinion-obsessed culture has forgotten: you don't have to have a take on everything.
Someone brings up the latest political scandal at dinner? You can say "I haven't followed it closely enough to comment." A coworker asks what you think about some complex policy issue? "I don't know enough about that" is a complete sentence.
This shouldn't feel like admitting defeat.
Not having an opinion on something you haven't researched is absolutely fine. It’s a sign of intellectual integrity.
The compulsion to have an opinion on everything is exhausting and ultimately hollow. It spreads you thin across topics you don't understand, forcing you to defend positions you arrived at through no rigorous process. It turns you into a generator of meaningless noise.
By understanding that you don’t need to have opinion for everything gives you enough freedom to become an expert in your field, that you actually care about, so your opinion in this specific field matters.
The Bottom Line
Your opinion doesn't matter if it's not built on anything. And that's okay. You don't need to have an opinion on everything. You don't need to weigh in on every debate. The world will survive without your uninformed take on quantum physics, Middle Eastern geopolitics, or constitutional law.
What the world needs less of is the arrogant certainty of people who haven't done the work. What it needs more of is the humility to say "I don't know" and the discipline to reserve judgment until you do.
So the next time you're tempted to share your opinion, pause. Ask yourself if you've earned it. Because in a world drowning in noise, informed silence is a radical act.