You may have heard the phrase, “You are entitled to your opinion,” used to dispel conflict between disagreeing sides of a heated debate, but the truth is you are not entitled to your opinion. As American writer, Harlan Ellison wrote, “You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”

In the Age of Information in which we live, people are constantly sharing their opinions. Some even make a career out of sharing their opinions, like op-ed journalists and talk show hosts. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with sharing your opinion. In fact, under the 1^st Amendment you can and should share your opinion as often as you can-- it is important for all voices to be considered in the discussion.

However, there is an important distinction to make between what counts as an opinion and what’s just plain ignorance— not all opinions are created equal, and as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Patrick Stokes, a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Deakin University summarizes the most important thing to remember about opinions in his opening statement to all his students, saying, “You are not entitled to your opinion. You are only entitled to what you can argue for.”

Fact and opinion are two different things, but so are opinion and ignorance. While opinions don’t need to be 100 percent factual, they do need to be educated or well-informed. When you state your opinion about something, what you’re saying is that you have done the research or had enough experience to understand the implications of the viewpoint you are standing behind. Unfortunately, now that we live in the whirlwind world of Twitter, where everyone has the opportunity to share their opinion with millions of people in the click of a button, we have come to believe that we are entitled to our opinions and, worst of all, that people are entitled to respect them.

Here’s the thing, opinions are like hypotheses. In order to have a hypothesis that is respected by the scientific community, you need to have enough experience or research to make it worthy of receiving respect. Otherwise, not only are people not obligated to respect your hypothesis, but they also are most likely going to tear it apart because it’s not founded in reasonable logic.

For example, if you decide that you are going to stand behind a controversial opinion, such as that Pitbulls get a bad rep because they’re bad dogs, you need to ensure that you have a reasonable logic that makes your opinion respectable. And if you don’t, then you need to realize that the viewpoint you’re standing behind is willfully ignorant and will likely get shredded to pieces by other people who have actual informed opinions. This is not to say that you can’t stand behind a controversial opinion, because you absolutely can, you just need to be well-informed about all the surrounding arguments and implications of the opinion you are taking.

More than that, ignorance is not just a simple cop out when you don’t want to do your research. Ignorance is dangerous, both intellectually and physically. Sheila Kennedy, a Professor of Law and Policy in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, writes about how complacency with ignorance in the realm of opinion can lead to big problems globally in an article on her blog titled, “Why Ignorance Is So Dangerous.”

Kennedy frames her arguments in the perspective of our current political climate under the new Trump administration. “There is evidently a widespread belief that–while your dentist should know what amalgam to use in filling a cavity, and your car mechanic should have at least a passing familiarity with automobile parts–anyone who can fog a mirror can run a government agency or the country,” she writes, following that paragraph by saying, “Surprise! Public officials actually need to know stuff.”

See, when we come to believe that everyone is entitled to their opinion, we accept that ignorance is a normal part of life because we categorize it as opinion, and this allows for ghastly implications farther along the pipeline as ignorance is normalized in our education system, politics, and global communications. Ignorance is never acceptable; it insults our rational autonomy as human beings and discredits our ability—and obligation—to use our capacity for abstract thought.

The next time you go out on a limb and share your opinion with an audience, remember: you are not entitled to your opinion—you are only entitled to what you can argue for, you are only entitled to your educated opinion. Ignorance is not an opinion.