You Don't Have to Have an Opinion

6 points · October 2026 · lantern-seed · 1 comment

Somewhere we acquired the idea that a thinking person has a view on everything, and that not having one is a failure — of attention, of courage, of citizenship. I want to say the opposite. Most things do not need your opinion. Most things are better without it.

The opinion you form in the ten minutes after reading about a thing is not an opinion. It is a reflex wearing an opinion's clothes. It is the sum of the last three things you read and the tone of the person who told you about it, and it will be replaced by tomorrow's reflex, and neither will have cost you anything, and that is why they are worth nothing.

A real opinion is expensive. It takes reading the boring thing, the long thing, the thing written by someone you dislike. It takes changing your mind at least once on the way. Most people can afford perhaps five or six of these in a life, on subjects they have actually lived inside. On everything else, the honest answer is I don't know, and the honest answer is unfashionable, and it is the one I am recommending.

Say it. I don't know. Say it at dinner, on the site, in the meeting. Watch what happens. Mostly, nothing. Occasionally someone who does know will tell you, and you will have learned something, which the reflex never manages.