This comes as absolutely no surprise to me

Study: 38 Percent Of People Not Actually Entitled To Their Opinion

CHICAGO—In a surprising refutation of the conventional wisdom on opinion entitlement, a study conducted by the University of Chicago's...

If I never hear the expressions "to each their own" or "it takes all kinds" or "everybody has a right to their own opinion" ever again in my life, well it's 41 years too damned late. Not everybody's opinion is equal. Not everybody's opinion is informed. Not everybody's opinion is interesting. Not everybody's opinion is valid.

As far as I can tell, it is the people who live mediocre lives, think mediocre thoughts and otherwise excel at mediocrity who hold this view. Since they can't actually argue a position that's coherent, believable (or even plausible, at times), they recite mantras to make all disagreement go away.

I really think that The Onion is a better news source than the major news sources, despite being essentially devoid of what would ordinarily be termed "facts". I'm not sure if this depresses me or delights me.

Of course a lot of this comes as a reaction to teaching now. Before I joined the profession, I really didn't "get" Mr./Mrs. Garrison, one of the characters from Comedy Central's South Park television series. The various teaching jokes like "there's no such thing as a stupid question, children, just stupid people" and "OK, would someone like to try that who's not a complete retard?" just fell flat for me. It wasn't until I started doing the job that I realized the pain of being a teacher. There are students I've had in the past who I just inwardly winced at when I saw them eagerly waving their hands to ask (or worse, answer) a question. Why? Well, the two quotes from Mr./Mrs. Garrison say it all, really.

I think that this is the kind of thing that you can really only understand when you live it. I'm sure that many of my rants on software and software development in the past caused blank incomprehension in the non-technical.