You Are Never Entitled to Your Opinion
Ever! You are not even entitled to "I don’t know." You are entitled to your desires, and sometimes to your choices. You might own a choice, and if you can choose your preferences, you may have the right to do so. But your beliefs are not about you; beliefs are about the world. Your beliefs should be your best available estimate of the way things are; anything else is a lie.
If you ever feel tempted to resist an argument or conclusion by saying "everyone is entitled to their opinion," stop! This is as clear a bias indicator as they come. It may irritate you to give in, but honesty demands it.
Yes, you can sometimes reasonably reject a claim that appears well supported by arguments. After all, a reliable source might recommend against the claim, but not give its reasons. Or the arguments might come from a biased source, good at searching selectively for arguments favoring a certain side. But beware the temptation to use these as blanket excuses to ignore good arguments.
The idea that everyone is entitled to their opinion comes in part from our cult of democracy. We are proud to live in a society where we all can "have our say" by talking and voting, and those who claim we do not know enough to have a useful say, we suspect are trying to disenfranchise us. We must therefore all know enough to have a useful say on any public issue. But that is wrong.
A related error is the idea there are two kinds of topics: facts and opinions. On facts you can be wrong, so you just go to experts and then believe them. On opinions no one can be wrong; the weight of opinion is the weight of power; those who say there are experts are trying to trick you into giving up your power.
My students don’t expect much class discussion when I teach math or physics, but they do expect discussion on topics related to personal choice or public policy. And they expect any opinion expressed eloquently and with passion to be worth as good a grade. (At least non-economics students expect these things.)
Anybody, scientist or no, feels entitled to spout forth on politics or psychology, and to heap scorn on what scholars in those fields write.
It is true that some topics give experts stronger mechanisms for resolving disputes. On other topics our biases and the complexity of the world make it harder to draw strong conclusions. And topics where most of us can contribute relevant information may be good topics for discussions, and not just lectures.
But never forget that on any question about the way things are (or should be), and in any information situation, there is always a best estimate. You are only entitled to your best honest effort to find that best estimate; anything else is a lie.
Added: M Lafferty points us to this similar article by Jamie Whyte.
I wrote a response to a re-post of this.
It’s not wrong, but this article is missing something. The truth of a claim, and thus a belief in it, can differ depending on the frame a person stipulates in questioning it. I think that's what people are handwaving at when they say loosely "everybody is entitled to his or her opinion." What I think they mean (or should mean) is people are entitled to concern themselves with the questions they care about and not worry about the ones they don't; we aren't really disagreeing about the answer, but about which question we're asking or care about; which is a rather different claim.
I think it's better to phrase that intuition more like: someone with the perspective of J, like mine, would see this claim as X. Whereas I can recognize someone with the perspective of K, like yours, would see this claim as Y.
The different bases J & K, which are decided by stipulation, entitle us each to the claims X & Y. I don't accept Y, not because I don't see that Y follows from K (I might; that'd be a different situation), but because I don't accept K as the proper basis to apply in this situation for these other reasons; or at least, it's not the basis I care about. That's what I think the phrase "we are each entitled to our opinions" typically means or ought to mean if people had the time to think through it.
I'll give an example. I'm particularly thinking about aesthetic opinions, which is the classic case study for this. Some people really don't like modern abstract art because it's non-representational and very deliberately alienating and flaunting of romantic norms. So they can have the opinion a modern abstract work looks like crap based on that gut instinct (which instinct such a work is probably trying to evoke). But looking deeper, what entitles them to that opinion isn't really "everyone is entitled totheir own aesthetic opinion", but "I don't care about the basis fornon-representational art, what led a lot of other people to ever care about it."
But if they took an Art History course, they'd be expected to articulate how they can recognize how certain works are better orworse exemplars of modern abstract painting from the perspective of the people that constructed and followed it, e.g., 1950s New York, largely led by Continental expats, and their exasperation & disgust with the Continental Romanticism of the last 60 years which had just dragged us through two world wars, giving them a compulsion to purify the arts of it as absolutely as possible, and abstract expressionism gave them a very "American" utilitarian way to do that which was fresh at the time, etc. One is entitled to share that disgust & exasperation or not, and see the work as purifying or pointless accordingly; but they are not entitled to an opinion about whether or how well a work taps into that exasperation and disgust from the perspective of a literate critical audience that recognizes it and takes it to heart. Something like that.
I think... The writer was addressing the notion that people use "I don't know," as a form of argument. (Opinions in the style of this essay, are argumentative)
That isn't a valid argument. In an argument, not knowing is simply realizing that you aren't in an argument, you're just a listener. If asked a direct question about something; you are not in an argument. And the asking party has already stated that they don't know but would like to. Hence the asking. (this is a better way to suggest you don't know, ask for assistance)
If in an argument, you have enough understanding to think someone else false, then saying "I don't know," is fallacious! You know enough to argue, then you must also know enough to present some sort of argument. Not knowing cannot be presented as an argument.
Stating that you don't think you have enough information to correctly argue, is to concede to the other party. Ending the argument. And invalidating you position. So it would be best to avoid (if you are actually trying to gain ground in an argument) saying "I don't know."