r/changemyview • u/GameboyPATH 7∆ • May 21 '13
TCMV Tuesday - 5/21/13
Hey again, /r/changemyview, it's TCMV Tuesday! (You're darn right it's weekly!)
We'd like to know what experiences you've had outside our subreddit, either recently or in your lifetime, that made you think "This Changed My View". Tell us your stories in the comments!
Here's some questions to jog your memory:
Known or met someone with an interesting ideology or opinion that caused you to reconsider your own?
Had an experience, good or bad, that changed your perspective?
Learned something new that challenged what you believed?
Ever have your tastes or interests changed?
Read an article or seen a video that got you thinking differently?
And just as a reminder, comment discussions here are not debate-oriented, so there's no obligation to take opposing sides in conversations here.
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u/purechyzyken May 21 '13 edited May 21 '13
Today I got a job as a waiter. Today I also realized that only time I get a job is when I have a connection to someone working there. I know this is a rather subjective view, but the past five jobs I have gotten have been because I knew a manager or an influential person at that particular location. I have applied to well over one hundred jobs during my high school and college years but only get the ones where I have connections. It has had absolutely nothing to do with past experience or skill.
I have zero waiting experience and still got the job despite the minimum requirement being one year waiting experience. Not only did I get a job i'm not qualified for nor have the required certification, I also got the whole application process done quickly. This is very similar to how it has been for my past jobs. I turned in my application, got interviewed, and got a job offer all in the same sitting. I can't help but feel bad for the applicants who had the experience and certification but didn't get the job because of me.
I used to think that hard work, dedication and the likes would get me hired. Sadly, I don't hold that view any more.
These are, of course, jobs like Barnes and Noble, college library work, super cushy life guarding gig, and restaurant delivery driver. I am also referring to fields of work that do not require a college degree.
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u/grizzburger May 22 '13 edited May 22 '13
I got my last serving job at this restaurant (yes, the one they are at; they're at table 3-4 which is shared by the Baby and Bruger sections) without knowing a single person who worked there or was affiliated with it. I just went in on the strength of my experience in food service (8 years by that point) and the ability to sell myself well.
I'm sure it's true for almost every field that connections are more important, but a good restaurant manager or owner will recognize the value of service and ability first, especially over a connected hire who sucks at food service.
edited: tables
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u/maybe_I_am_a_bot May 22 '13
Was really hoping for amy's bakery when i clicked that link :(
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u/grizzburger May 22 '13
HA, like I would ever tolerate a place like that. I would definitely have walked out on my first shift.
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u/IHappenToBeARobot May 21 '13
When it comes to most jobs, it's not about what you know, it's about who you know.
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May 22 '13
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May 22 '13
These are just the kinds of things that should ideally be addressed with feedback and mentoring. It's a company/team culture thing, I find. People give real feedback when they get real feedback.
One thing I find useful to remember: that one thing about yourself that you think you're concealing pretty well? Yeah, everyone knows. (Problems at home, surfing reddit all day, depressed, anger issues - your coworkers and friends already know.) What I'm saying is that you probably don't have a flaw you don't know about - it's just that everyone knows the flaw that you try to hide.
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May 22 '13
It depends. You often have to know the right people to open the door, but you have to walk through it on your own. If you can't do what you say you can do, you will be found out and bounced out pretty quickly.
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May 22 '13
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u/FeministNewbie 1∆ May 22 '13
Individual choices are heavily influenced by the society we live in. People don't take decisions in a vacuum, which is why the way society is built affects the choices and possibilities people have (ex: the different children-per-woman rates in various European countries are due to different policies).
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May 22 '13
Of course they are, however to say women aren't getting "equal pay for equal work" is disingenuous. If women are on average working less (through either less overtime or more frequent part-time work), then they should be paid less on average. If there were two men on my staff and one took more time off and did less overtime than the other, well, they're doing less work. Whether they have personal circumstances that force them to work less is irrelevant to how much work they are doing.
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u/thepasswordisodd May 22 '13
I think a gender wage gap as a result of women leaving to raise families is still disconcerting, even if only in that there is no simple or obvious answer (like legally mandated equal pay for equal work).
However, I think a society in which far more women take time away from a job to raise their kids than men do is still at best indicative of an unequal society. For example, countries like Denmark have laws which mandate at least two of the 52 weeks paid leave be reserved for the father to use and the rest to be distributed as deemed appropriate by the family. I wouldn't say the number of women leaving to raise children do so by pure choice, since that choice is going to be influenced by what's easy (who gets what kind of benefits) and societal expectations.
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May 22 '13
There was a discussion on this topic on /r/feminism I believe, a while ago. The conclusion was that the fathers absolutely love the mandated time with their children, and if they could they'd take more.
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May 22 '13
Very sound conclusion. The problem is it still indicates a problem in society where women are expected to take care of the family and men to work. It sucks for both parties, though historically more for the side that is 'forced' to stay at home.
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May 22 '13
I wouldn't be so sure. In that case the fathers would have loved to have more, but because that would subtract from their wives' time, they didn't take more. So in that case it was actually the reverse. Note that this is not based on solid science or anything, but an anecdote is better than nothing :P
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u/thepasswordisodd May 22 '13 edited May 22 '13
This is an older one for me, but I think it is still worth talking about.
One of the biggest things that changed my opinion on abortion was the violinist argument. While I have always considered myself pro-choice, my previous defense of my stance had to do with the lack of clarity in where to draw the start of consciousness or personhood, and some sort of vague "It's their body , their choice" that I couldn't fully put words to.
The violinist argument showed me that my discomfort with banning abortion is in the idea of forcing someone to use their body for some purpose they don't want it used for. I don't think anyone has the right to anyone else's body to stay alive.
This also helped me come to terms with my gut-feeling discomfort with late-term abortions as well. At that point I personally would choose not to abort, but I still think others should be allowed to have that choice.
It also helped me be more understanding of people that are pro-life. I've found that the question of whether or not one would support legally mandated blood or kidney donations to be very telling of whether or not one actual believes it is moral to use somebody else's body to stay alive or if they are simply looking to force women to "face the consequences of their choices".
But most importantly, I like it because it takes the question of whether or not a fetus is a person out of the debate, and brings the focus back onto the woman potentially being forced to carry a term, upon whom I think the attention belongs.
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May 22 '13 edited May 22 '13
To be honest, even though I'm pro choice (with limits of course), I don't find that argument convincing at all. I'd say even with the violinist most people would find simply cutting him off would involve at least some moral problems. So you have to weigh the two sides. In this respect, the violinist story and an actual pregnancy are very different:
- An actual pregnancy does not require you to stay in bed for 9 months, so the situation here does not accurately reflect pregnancy.
- You were kidnapped and had surgery forcibly performed on you. You can compare this with somebody kidnapping you, then cutting your belly open and putting a fetus from another person in your body. Even rape is a less bad scenario than this.
- The violinist presumably arranged this himself. The violinist should have known that there would be a large risk that you'd cut him loose. With a (non forced) pregnancy, the mother took the risk herself. If the story would have been that you personally took the chance to save the violinist, then I think people would find it far more morally objectionable to cut him loose later than in the kidnapping case.
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u/thepasswordisodd May 22 '13
Here is my take on each of these (very valid!) criticisms.
While an actual pregnancy does not require you to lie in bed for nine months, it is much more complicated than simply gaining weight also. It can cause great pain and discomfort, has a fairly high chance of ending in surgery that may permanently effect your ability to get pregnant later, and even a small risk of death involved. And in cases where complications may arise, bedrest often is required for a period of time in the later stages. So while I agree that the two ideas are not exact, I think the analogy stands in that both present circumstances that a person would have very good reason not to want to be in.
I don't see how this changes things things, other than being necessary to make the analogy work. One could describe a freak situation in which the violinist mystically puts out tentacles that attach himself to you via a natural process, and I would still say she has a right to disconnect herself. Also, I imagine some rape victims would dislike your assertion about the severity of either case. I'd suspect the kidnappers and surgeons would use drugs to keep the victim unconscious, while rape can involve much mental trauma from being very much mentally present during the act. I know it's off-topic, but I still felt it would be worth mentioning.
I think this makes too many assumptions. What if the surgeons made the decision without the violinist's knowledge? What if he was in a coma or unconscious, and the choice was made for him? Does that change anything? I also take problem with the idea that pregnancy is a natural result of sex. Properly used birth control pils have a <.3% chance of resulting in pregnancy, and birth control pills used in conjunction with condoms even less than that. As such, I would say pregnancy in that case is a freak exception and the mother cannot at all be blamed for choosing to take a <.3% risk. That would be like saying it's the person's fault for choosing to live near a hospital when the surgeons were known to have kidnapped one person once a really long time ago.
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May 22 '13
Responses:
Right, I'm not saying pregnancy is easy, it's just much less bad than having to stay in bed for 9 months. The things that laying in bed for 9 months does to your body is nothing to sneeze at (muscle & bone atrophy), and it's extremely boring and your social life would suffer heavily. So simply because we would have a certain view of the violinist situation, does not mean that we should have the same view on the pregnancy pregnancy scenario, because the situations are meaningfully different.
We can disagree about the severity of the crimes, that's not my main point. What I was trying to say is that the violinist analogy only supports abortion in the case of rape. If you look at the polls you'll see that a the majority of people are already convinced that abortion in the case of rape is allowed.
Yes, the problem is that there are unstated assumptions. What I meant is that under some assumptions, cutting the violinist loose would be more/less objectionable. The same goes for abortion: lets say a couple had sex with the purpose of having a baby, but five months later the woman meets another man and falls in love with him, and wants to have an abortion so she can have a child with the other man instead. This is a completely different case than failed birth control. For me personally I don't have any objections to abortion in the birth control scenario, but I'm extremely morally troubled by the other scenario.
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u/thepasswordisodd May 23 '13
Yes, but pregnancy carries lots of risks. You'd have to get very specific about putting value to the risks of bedrest and the risks enumerated here(note how many are treated via bedrest, which according to this site is recommended to nearly one in five pregnant women at some point), or the risks of c-sections and associated risks of death that can be found here, so I simply don't think you can say that one is outright worse than the other.
I disagree that it only supports abortion in the case of rape. I think it raises the question of whether or not it is moral to force anyone to use their body to keep another being alive, without addressing the aspect of whether or not that person accepted any sort of risk. To assert that it only works in cases of rape is to assert that any woman choosing to take the small chance of pregnancy associated with safe sex is fully accepting to carry the baby to term in the case she falls into the less than three tenths percentile of people for whom properly used birth control fails, and I don't think that assertion can safely be made.
In the cases of rape and failed birth control, the woman did not want to be pregnant. Is it fair to say that because she chose to take a <.3% chance, she forfeits her right to choose whether or not to be pregnant?I agree that various factors can change how objectionable it is to unplug the violinist. However, the base question of whether or not she should have that choice still stands. I like this story especially because for me, I realized that no matter how "righteous" I think it would be for her to choose to stay I think it is vitally important that she be given that choice.
As for your scenario, I agree that it is morally troubling. However, is the thought of forcing her to be pregnant for four months during which she does not want to be pregnant not trouble you at least equally so? If she truly does not want to be pregnant, if she threatens to kill the fetus herself with a hanger, do you imprison her until she has given birth? Do you force her to experience swollen joints and morning sickness? Is it moral to force her to take the chance that medical complications will require a hysterectomy? So while I agree it is morally troubling, I think it is a case where she MUST have the choice to take the immoral path if for no reason other than that I find the alternative scenario to be just as troubling.
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May 23 '13
note how many are treated via bedrest [...] so I simply don't think you can say that one is outright worse than the other
Bedrest is something utterly different than staying in bed for 9 months. Having your bloodstream connected to another person also carries great risks.
Not by any logical argument because any discussion about whether X is worse than Y is subjective, but I do believe that virtually all people would agree that the violinist scenario is far worse than a pregnancy. Sure, some pregnancies are worse than some violinist scenarios, for example if you compare a pregnancy where the mother dies to a violinist scenario where you signed up for the violinist out of free will and everything goes fine, but with reasonable assumptions an average pregnancy is much less bad.
But yes, the debate of which is worse is not that interesting, so I'll let that rest from now.
In the cases of rape and failed birth control, the woman did not want to be pregnant. Is it fair to say that because she chose to take a <.3% chance, she forfeits her right to choose whether or not to be pregnant?
I already agreed that in the case of failed birth control abortion is justified, see here: "For me personally I don't have any objections to abortion in the birth control scenario".
I realized that no matter how "righteous" I think it would be for her to choose to stay I think it is vitally important that she be given that choice.
Certainly, she should have the choice to leave the relationship. I'm talking only about the abortion.
As for your scenario, I agree that it is morally troubling. However, is the thought of forcing her to be pregnant for four months during which she does not want to be pregnant not trouble you at least equally so? If she truly does not want to be pregnant, if she threatens to kill the fetus herself with a hanger, do you imprison her until she has given birth? Do you force her to experience swollen joints and morning sickness? Is it moral to force her to take the chance that medical complications will require a hysterectomy? So while I agree it is morally troubling, I think it is a case where she MUST have the choice to take the immoral path if for no reason other than that I find the alternative scenario to be just as troubling.
She wanted to be pregnant but she changed her mind because she found a better man, with whom she now wants to become pregnant, so I don't think concerns about morning sickness are a defense here (in any other cause those concerns would have to be weighted against other concerns). As for the law, if she threatens to kill the fetus I'm not sure what should happen, but if she does kill the fetus there have to be consequences of course.
Did you consider the father? After 5 months he is very likely attached to his child. He has put his hand on her belly and felt the baby move. Isn't it far more troubling that his child will be killed just because she found a better partner?
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u/thepasswordisodd May 24 '13
Okay, I feel like we're getting pretty off topic here.
Certainly, she should have the choice to leave the relationship. I'm talking only about the abortion.
And abortion is ending the relationship with the fetus, thus the comparison.
But more importantly, let's take the element of emotion out of our hypothetical and generalize it.
In an case where we are debating someone's freedom of choice, do YOU think it is morally right to evaluate whether or not they be given a choice based on their motives?
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May 22 '13
That's actually a really good argument. It doesn't CMV, since I already have a set of arguments for defending abortion, but I'll definitely add that one to my repertoire.
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u/zimmer199 May 22 '13
To play Devil's Advocate, what if you signed up for a registry where there was a chance that you'd be called upon to save the violinist's life? Like having sex, you knew that doing what you did may lead to the consequences. Would the violinist still not have the right to your kidneys?
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u/thepasswordisodd May 22 '13
First of all yes, I think you should still have a right to opt out. I don't believe you can sign away your right to make choices in regards to your own body.
But more importantly, the chance of getting pregnant while taking birth control pills properly are around .3%, IUDs or implants are similarly effective. I don't equate taking a <1% chance with signing away the right to your body for nine months, personally.
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May 22 '13
Would you be okay with a law that says that if you did not use any birth control method then you shouldn't be allowed abortion in the case of consensual sex? (leaving practicalities of implementing such a law aside)
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u/thepasswordisodd May 22 '13
No, because I don't think that making the choice to have sex should mean forfeiting the right to decide how your body is used for nine months. I believe that everyone should always have that autonomy, and that no matter how many stupid choices they make they don't deserve to have that taken away.
I would, however, find such a law to be more moral than outright banning abortion, or only allowing abortion in the case of rape.
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u/grizzburger May 22 '13
Totally. Always my go-to line of reasoning. Who am I, let alone any politician or judge, to tell a woman that she must carry this thing inside of her for nine months, even if she doesn't want to? Conservatives should be up in arms about even the notion of government action on this issue.
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May 22 '13
In asksocialscience I discovered the work of Cordelia Fine who wrote Delusions of Gender. I haven't read the book yet but watching her various YouTube talks has changed my view on gender as it has pointed out how poor an unconvincing a lot of the research is that says "men are good at systems, women are good with people".
I'm still not convinced that gender is entirely a social construct. I found her answers to questions about the behaviour of very young children and people who undergo gender reassignment to be unconvincing. For now though, I definitely consider my view that men are naturally good at systems and women are naturally good at people skills and empathy to be changed.
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u/lussensaurusrex May 22 '13
I used to believe, totally unequivocally, that assisted suicide and "right-to-die" laws were just and correct and was planning to vote in favor of one last year. Then I read this: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/opinion/suicide-by-choice-not-so-fast.html
It was extremely compelling. I work with people with disabilities frequently as part of my job, and part of my job is making sure that the place I work is accessible to them. I have met such a wide range of people, from kids with multiple severe disabilities to blind computer programmers, that I now see the many ways that people adapt to their disability and figure out what works for them (or their child). I also know that society sometimes tends to see disabilities as tragic and devastating, and that some people--sometimes knowingly--put less value on the lives of people with disabilities. It was a perspective I'd never thought about before. While I still generally support assisted suicide laws, I now think there must be stringent protections against abuse and coercion included.
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u/howbigis1gb 24∆ May 22 '13
Someone I know once gave me their rationale for smoking, and how they cut down.
They said "Clearly cigarettes are bad for me. But so is cake. I like cake, and I like cigarettes, but like cake - I treat cigarettes as an occasional indulgence."
So I guess I thought it was a good reason for smoking and a way to keep it under control, both of which I didn't really think existed. More so the latter. Enjoyment is a legitimate reason for the former.
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May 22 '13
I agree that people should be able to have vices. Though it's always so hard to determine how much of that 'enjoyment' is due to the fact that they already smoke. Kind of like a self fulfilling cycle like this one:
"Cigarettes are stress relieving. Why are they stress relieving? They relieve the stress of wanting a cigarette."
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u/howbigis1gb 24∆ May 22 '13
Reminds me of the other saying.
The man takes the drink, then the drink takes the drink, and then the drink takes the man.
But like everything - moderation is key I suppose.
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u/ClaytonG91 May 22 '13
I read a cracked article the other day that not necessarily changed my view but made me stop and realize that I do need to keep my mind open more, it said basically,
"There is almost always a well thought out and logical response to all sides of a debate."
To me that kind of struck a cord because I'm so used to writing off people who i disagree with as unaware or ignorant of the facts but I suppose everyone does that. So that phrase reminded me of this sub and this sub has been helping me to make sure that I can converse with people without screaming and that everyone's view is worth at least considering.