Things that changed your mind

We're all told (by people who want us to agree with them) that we ought to have an open mind. So, have you ever changed your mind about something? What was it, and how did your mind change? And is there any deep-rooted conviction that you don't ever expect to change? some examples from my own life: 1. back when I was a teen I thought that human life was intrinsically more valuable than non-human life. Reading Peter Singer, JSM and Bentham's arguments for utilitarianism changed my mind, and I've been a fanatical Benthamite ever since (now an example of a "deep-rooted" conviction). 2. had always thought that UFOs were a Bigfoot-tier hoax/mass delusion. Then, last month, I read Robin Hanson's theory for why UFO aliens might be real and why they are acting in the strange way that they are: https://www.overcomingbias.com/2021/06/ufos-what-the-hell.html Before hearing his idea, I would have wagered there was a 0.0000001% chance that UFO sightings were real aliens. Now I'm willing to put it up around 1%-5%. That's a big difference!! What are your examples, Lain? (and... please don't be too snarky if you plan on bringing up politics)

In my late teens when I picked up my first political beliefs, I used to be a pretty basic liberal of the "heheh creationists amirite" variety. Then around the start of 2014 I caught wind of the woke insanity and almost got sucked into the right-wing black hole, only for an epiphany to hit me: what if these right-wingers are actually controlled opposition for the liberals (which I later realized that, despite being called "the left" here in the US, they really aren't)? Since then I've taken on a belief that it feels like I've had all along, distrust toward any major form of authority. Governments, large corporations, celebrities, even just people with tons of followers on social media. All of them wield power in some form, they can say anything and have people believe it unquestioningly, so they cannot be trusted. A pretty basic belief for a place like this, but still.

Had a bit of an opposite realization to you actually. Used to be somewhat of a utilitarian, then I read some Kant and it made a lot of sense to me.

>>47263 They also seem to be too motivated by money and social affluence, so will not actually state their mind, and say whatever social engineering warm fuzzy soykaf to make money. "Right" or "Left". My bubble kind of broke when I watched a Canadian news channel, and there was a whole story on Donald Trump eating McDonalds, with the newscasters making fun of him. I was shocked.

i think the most important insight was that people don't say what they think but what they think will generate the result they want and its not necessary even a conscious choice. Its partly our own fault because we create the feedback loop that trains them into this behaviour by rewarding it. This fundamentally changes how you think about conversation with people. Its not a pure information exchange but essentially 2 hackers trying to find a hole in each others system to exploit. Secondary doing several years in biz changed my mind from the fantasies they teach about amazing big success stories. Turns out most of them had played under no rules and then established the roadblocking rules after they got big to cut off competition or simply had bigger money bags investors to kill competition. So playing fair is playing for loss. Also just yesterday i found out corps are forced to go woke - theres a social credit system for corps called esg that increases your credit rating for doing social bullshit like sending your wagies to a environmental training. Every biz needs money and every corp needs credit score which means they are forced to care about this esg score. Ironically its easier to appease the score with fake soykaf than doing real environmental preservation so you can find environmental corps lower rated than the woke twitter posting ones.

>>47263 >All of them wield power in some form This is the key point, power. Power is all that matters. It's all that has ever mattered, and all that ever will matter. >>47265 >My bubble kind of broke when I watched a Canadian news channel, and there was a whole story on Donald Trump eating McDonalds, with the newscasters making fun of him. I was shocked. Speaking as a Canadian leftist (the old-school "let's drain the swamp with machine guns and guillotines and get some healthcare and affordable housing for the masses" type, not the "let's navel-gaze about personal pronous while we dye our hair and obsess over intersectional nonsense while treating panhandlers like lepers" fake-new-left), I spent the past five years slowly going insane over the nonstop Trump obsession among brunch liberals here. I had to keep resisting the urge to grab them by the neck and scream "He's a fuarrrking symptom, not a cause, American voters rolled the dice on him because he at least pretended to give a soykaf about the working class and the alternative was yet another neoliberal ghoul promising a return to the Bush/Obama years!" into their ears until I was blue in the face.

>>47263 >right-wing black hole Racist crybaby collectivists who think whites are oppressing blacks and racist crybaby collectivists who think jews are oppressing whites are not actually opposite ideologies. They just have different goal posts. >despite being called "the left" here in the US, they really aren't It's still "left" I just think that government and corporate interests have bribed / manipulated them to drop the economic side and jack up the social side to a million. >distrust toward any major form of authority. Governments, large corporations, celebrities, even just people with tons of followers on social media Most people probably feel like that coming out of 2020. With celebrities and social media personalities I would point out that they only exist because someone else allows them to exist though. As soon as they stray off message they are thrown overboard.

>>47262 >https://www.overcomingbias.com/2021/06/ufos-what-the-hell.html If lesswrong was reddit, then this site is 9gag I swear. By his analogy, US airforce zooming around New Sentinel island on helicopters would teach it's inhabitants a valuable lesson on non-expansionist and ecological ethic.

I used to think religion was kind of dumb and had a sort of relativistic "all religions are basically the same" attitude. Then after some proselytizers tried to save me in college I did some reading and listening and I've come to see the value in it. A good religion can help people live their lives in a better way and churches are really important for keeping people in touch with their neighbors. I also realized some religions/sects are just trash and it's not "oh that's just their culture it's fine". I'm still not particularly religious, don't attend church regularly but maybe someday. A similar experience with "science" but in the other direction. Not science per se, but the scientific-industrial complex. Once I've seen how the "4 out of 5 doctors say smoking is good for you" sausage is made I tend to be very skeptical of any "new study finds this soykaf we're dumping in the river is actually fine" news.

Used to be religious and right-wing, not the trend (at least for the religious part), mind you. I was raised a catholic and was always interested in theology and philosophy, some people even believed I would become a priest (I myself didn't know, was waiting to see what God would choose for me). Online I became "right-wing" just because of their propaganda of being "Factual and logical" against the "Politically correct idiot". Eventually I understood that it was just propaganda and "right-wingers" were liars full of bullshit who did everything they accused "leftists" of doing and became more apathetic towards politics and started to thinking by myself, with my politics being personal preference(always aligned with religion of course). Eventually I realized that religion is just wishful thinking coupled with self-brainwashing and became an atheist. At this point I started thinking myself without limitations and building my own frameworks instead of developing the ones I was given, took me a long time do deconstruct all my previous beliefs and throw in the trash the ones I couldn't justify. As time went by I tended towards anarchists due to their radicalism making me interested, they seemed to be more about action than moral posturing. We also seemed to share a lot of similarities in regards to our beliefs about capitalism, the government and personal liberty. I read some books, papers, magazines and talked to more anarchists and discovered most of them are no better than the average person when it comes to moral posturing. Sad! While I don't like the use of labels, anarchist fits more than the rest.

>>47263 I had a similar epiphany. At some point I started gravitating towards the right wing mainly after entering the blue collar job market. However, after recently moving closer to family and having to spend an inordinate amount of time with a particular family member whom I cannot stand, I can honestly say that there is a moronic element to right wing culture. There is an element that comes from being rejected in high school, and now as an adult trying to force people to take you seriously through totalitarianism that nobody asked for, and because you have guns. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the same pathology that the nazis came from and also people like the Columbine shooters. There is also the idea of blaming minorities and women for every problem in life, when you spend most of your time in front of the television. I'm not sure if women are actually achieving more than men these days or it only seems that way through the media lens, but either way you should be trying harder rather than blaming women. The true reality of politics is that you need the push and pull of both liberalism and progressivism so that you don't go too far to either side.

>>47359 >affirmative action when the whites&asians complain its at least real and not imaginary, though its false to blame minorities of course, the real issue are white lefties who support and implement it There was a study also not too long ago that showcased out of all groups of people only white lefties have massive self-hatred for themself. Literally mentally broken.

>>47360 Affirmative action can also deepen racial divides. Think about the difference between "this space is *only* for a certain group" instead of "this space is for everyone". Or replace "space" with "benefit". You end up with different groups not interacting, probably secretly (or not so secretly) fearing and distrusting each other. That is not diversity, it is segregation. It makes sense to give people support when they need it, and that support would naturally go to people who tend to need help more due to being stomped on more often; but it doesn't make sense to gate that support behind being oppressed in some way. It's the same idiotic idea behind "means testing", which ends up costing more than just giving people help when they ask for it. >>47358 >As time went by I tended towards anarchists due to their radicalism making me interested, they seemed to be more about action than moral posturing. Many of them, sure. You can find some real wingnuts and hypocrites calling themselves anarchists though.

My entire life has been falling down rabbit hole into the next, i have had my mind shaken more than most people, except those who live on the most extreme fringe edge of our world. I have come to recognize there are things in this world that are not of this world. Rationality and what our understanding of this world is presented as will be shattered one day. If you cant make anything out of this then dont bother. But never mind me rumbling, theres lots of secrets in this world, have fun finding them.

>>47335 Are you sure this analogy really makes sense? Or are you just opposed to non-expansionism and world governments? (Robin certainly isn't claiming these are good things).

Reading classical works by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. Having a scientific Marxist worldview is the ultimate inform.

Yeah a lot. Mostly via real interactions with people, and via making efforts to understand their view and what they were trying to say. As once it happened the first time I saw how much I was wrong about things. Prior to this I never changed my mind just went further along and improved the ideas I had. When I did change my mind it was very slow and I still held on to what I thought before in some ways. I even changed my mind about something I thought because of this experience though, that one cant effectively have a realistic view of the world and its workings without input and seeing perspectives of others face to face. I thought that one couldnt really learn to actually fundamentally go I was wrong and change their mind especially about things maybe fundamental to their world view, without someone they respected a lot telling them otherwise. Thus forcing them to consider why someone they respect and know isnt stupid would think the opposite. However I have a friend whos still a neet from highschool, and though he still is close minded in some ways hes made huge developments and changes of mind and frame of thinking that are similar to my own. Purely from reading literature. I always thought it was very easy to say read a book about philosophy and just bend it to what you already think, but said friend actually has made as much of a 180 as me.

>>47262 I change my mind about things all the time. Having that kind of intellectual honesty is a healthy thing. People who aren't willing to do something like that shouldn't even be obligated to debate about certain things in the first place..

>>47262 I changed my ideological view a few times, never left the basic idea of different racial qualities though, because that is one thing one just cannot deny. Now I'm at the point, where my basic fundamental view on the world will not change, this I can say for sure. Humans are, in their majority, easily influencable, gravitate towards laziness and are prone to cause damage if unsupervised. This is why I'm actually not opposed to the current system anymore, as it hasn't really changed for over 2000 years, only gotten improved by technology and science. I rather just want to exploit the system and circumvent anything it wants me to do, so practically, I want to take everything I can without having to give/ let myself be controlled. A healthy and pragmatic worldview, I think.

>>47262 I change my mind about things never. Having that kind of intellectual integrity is a healthy thing. People who aren't willing to do something like that shouldn't even be obligated to debate about certain things in the first place, for they believe in nothing.

I read Nietzsche's Ecce Homo while in hospital. At the time I viewed it as a virtue to tolerate circumstances that were harmful to me for a greater cause, which often weren't all that great. I started taking better care of myself after this. I regard situations that are harmful to me, as actually being harmful, not something to tolerate. I attribute a lot of my success in life to this experience. Evola changed my view on spirituality. I had dismissed it as a synonym of religion and completely outside of my area of interest. Evola separated it from religion and instead describes it as a way of life, in a will to power sense. I now consider it to be within my area of interest (though still not in the religious sense).

I used to be supportive of the death penalty because "some actions deserve death." My mind was changed when someone said that even if some actions do deserve death, it shouldn't be the government's decision to make. Resonated with me.

>>47442 I changed my mind on the death penalty after reading The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. >“This is not my own fantastical opinion—many people have thought the same; but I feel it so deeply that I’ll tell you what I think. I believe that to execute a man for murder is to punish him immeasurably more dreadfully than is equivalent to his crime. A murder by sentence is far more dreadful than a murder committed by a criminal. The man who is attacked by robbers at night, in a dark wood, or anywhere, undoubtedly hopes and hopes that he may yet escape until the very moment of his death. There are plenty of instances of a man running away, or imploring for mercy—at all events hoping on in some degree—even after his throat was cut. But in the case of an execution, that last hope—having which it is so immeasurably less dreadful to die,—is taken away from the wretch and certainty substituted in its place! There is his sentence, and with it that terrible certainty that he cannot possibly escape death—which, I consider, must be the most dreadful anguish in the world. You may place a soldier before a cannon’s mouth in battle, and fire upon him—and he will still hope. But read to that same soldier his death-sentence, and he will either go mad or burst into tears. Who dares to say that any man can suffer this without going mad? No, no! it is an abuse, a shame, it is unnecessary—why should such a thing exist? Dostoyevsky himself was very nearly executed (as in, he was on the firing line when the execution was cancelled), so he's probably speaking from personal experience.

Felarya has defined a bit of my identity for me . I remember discussions on blue & orange morality from the early days of the fandom . now having seen AOT's depiction of moral relativity , I have grown more zealous for peacekeeping efforts . I want to eat with more people , more harmless fruits . language acquisition requires strong contrasting examples , but groups with undignified karma should depopulate only cycling generations through native births . we need a safer world naow . I like looking-glasses , not shadows . in short , AOT probably changed my mind toward pacifism .

>>47262 Changed my mind about cannibalism after I researched it enough. I'm now willing to try some, as long as it's not the brain or the organs (except maybe the heart).

I hope you have a vegan lifestyle .

These days it has become fairly common for me to even start a thought having one opinion and end the same thought suddenly becoming convinced of the opposite opinion. I assume it's because of being alienated and not anchored socially to having to have certain opinions to maintain social status.

>>47974 keep a diary . decide what you want to believe

When I started trusting science even more, I changed my mind about drugs. I dont have a solid opinion though, but now I think of some of them (not the recreational ones) as a vehicle to achieve desired states or connecting points in our bodies. Back then i jjust didnt see any point to this.

>>47262 >So, have you ever changed your mind about something? I was the most neoliberal person that you can ever imagine, just passively absorbing political opinions, until my brother converted me to ancap. Took just some minutes of arguing, and sincerely it wouldn't have been hard to convert me to anything else, but I'm glad that it was ancapism, even if my ideas of it at the time are very different from my ideas of it now. I do support freedom in every way I can but I am not naive enough to think that the society I want can be achieved in just a lifetime, and maybe ever. But a minarchist society is enough. I am also considering joining maybe the orthodox church, since I have heard some really convincing things that kinda respond to that which made me lose faith in Catholicism over time. This is only possible however because I was never an atheist, I just stopped caring about religion, but at the same time I do have mixed feelings since I don't need god to have morals or give meaning to my life since I already have those. >And is there any deep-rooted conviction that you don't ever expect to change? Even if someday I stop being an anarchist I will never just accept somebody else having control over my life, even if I have to live in the middle of nowhere, which is what I plan on doing anyways. Freedom is one of the sole reasons for my existence, the possibility of living exactly how I want, dedicating my free time to what interests me, investing in that which will make me grow as a human being, or whatever that means. It is really frightening to think that I will have to live in a totalitarian country (and maybe eventually world) for the rest of my life and to think that there is a possibility that I will eventually have to live complying to the every whim of an organization. The only exception I have for this rule is for romantic relationships, but so far I have had none so I didn't have to think too much about it until now. Another conviction that nobody will convince me to change is that I shall never use drugs, except for prescription drugs and only the necessary ones. Some years ago I made a vow that no matter how painful reality is I would witness it in its fullest until the bitter end (when there is literally no possibility of freedom anymore, and only then shall I an hero). If I did drugs not only would I be cheating myself, but I would be also breaking that vow, which just means I would be losing control over myself.

>>47262 Randomly doing small talk to a gay coworker about issues in my relationship lead me to understand that some relationship issues happen regardless of the gender of people involved, and it is a thing in common for conversations. Before I thought that the differences were too many to even bother talking about it. Going to a Tibetan Buddhist centre near the place I was living and learning a bit from them let me to see that there are interesting and useful practical things to learn from religions, and that made more receptive not only to Buddhism but to religions in general. One important point I realized is that many religious traditions have a purpose that sometimes is not too obvious, and that many things are simplified with symbols and ritualistic behavior for layman to be able to attend and feel at home, but if you ask around, some people can explain what is going on. Trying to learn a language let me to understand that putting time into it and enjoying the process is much more important than methods, books, teachers and classroom. By creating a habit and putting my time into it I can learn and succeed in just about anything, and a huge chunk of it are unconscious processes.

>>47335 >elite group of smart aliens rule over a centralized galaxy wide government to prevent the dumb aliens from doing dumb things that would make us notice them >and now they're here to peacefully guide dumb humans to enlightenment as well He is literally just projecting his own bootlicking technocratic politics onto the aliens.

I used to actively dislike hippie culture, partially due to my teenage fetishization of militaries (admittedly I still have similar tendencies) and the associating them with the beliefs of certain people I knew in school. Gradually I began to sympathize with them due to their early attempts at self-sufficiency and alternate modes of thinking, their development of underground culture, and their highly varying societal ambitions within the context of their era. Also how pity due to how their memetic bastard children were herded by the elite into being parodies of themselves and how their culture became commercialized; almost felt like I was tricked into hating them.

I never had much choice to be honest. I saw a UFO when I was 8, when I was 14 I watched Lain and the bit were Eiri says that humans created god just fuarrrking blew my mind, when I was 17 I saw a ghost standing right next to my bed, so by the time I had become an adult I had just assumed that no opinion I could ever had on anything would be true or false and that it would constantly have to change. Robert Anton Wilson really just puts it best, that >All phenomena are real in some sense, unreal in some sense, meaningless in some sense, real and meaningless in some sense, unreal and meaningless in some sense, and real and unreal and meaningless in some sense. So since watching Lain I really haven't had a huge "big thing that changed my mind". It's always a long process of information intake that slowly shifts my perspective on something.

>>48060 >almost felt like I was tricked into hating them. yeah, ALMOST military drone

>>48063 I can really associate with that, i saw a ufo too when i was about 10 with my back then friend, which was before everyone had a cam in their pocket, there is no way that thing could have been anything human built. When i started hearing about ufos and conspiracies, i knew right away they had to know about this and keept it under the rug. Sel was also a mind changing experience, so much stuff in there was just stuff that wasnt widely known at that time, maybe still isnt.

>>48079 I said almost because sometimes instead of indoctrination it could just be me being really stupid by taking a position out of spite. Though to reach that level of stupid may have taken some level of manipulation.

Its kinda weird how much my attitude towards religion changed. I was the most "hehe there is no god, no meaning no nothing you stupid sheep" person in my teenage years but after seeing (and even dating a religious girl for some time) I became waaay more receptive of religion in my life. Some time ago I started "no-fap" and after sometime away from porn I started feeling happy again and finally understood what prayers and thanking god even stands for. I love how important the value of family is in religion (Judaism) and I am generally more thankful for everything in my life. I am still developing my religious side but I can see myself becoming more "traditional" slowly.

>>49114 >dating a religious girl did you do it in the pooper?

>>47391 >People who aren't willing to do something like that shouldn't even be obligated to debate about certain things in the first place, for they believe in nothing. Yes, please. I hate this idea that seems so pervasive that you have to pick a side on every stupid issue. I don't care about the vast majority of Topics of Discussion and I wish people could come up with more interesting things to talk about.

>>49170 she wanted but beta me back then wanted to preserve her virginity (even though she became the biggest sloot after I broke up with her lmao)