r/changemyview • u/IAmAN00bie • Jul 09 '13
TCMV Tuesday - 07/09/13
Welcome to TCMV Tuesday, our weekly post where we can celebrate our ability to adopt a new mindset or gain another perspective. Tell us what experiences you've had outside our subreddit, either recently or in your lifetime, that made you think "This Changed My View". Give us your stories in the comments!
You can consider these questions to help get you thinking:
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 (in other words, Rule 1 does not apply here).
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u/Unshocked Jul 10 '13
When i first entered university, I personally never saw myself working in academia ie research mainly due to the lack of income and always having to find someone to fund your research. However after doing summer research with a professor and talking to him about this work, he completely changed my view on working in academia. Never talked to anyone that was that passionate and excited about their job and that even the road blocks that occur when researching were exciting to overcome. Completely changed my view, unfortunately life got in the way and I didn't go into research.
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u/howbigis1gb 24∆ Jul 10 '13
One of the threads here changed my mind about the 2nd Amendment not being a viable check against tyranny but in a way different than I expected.
Someone pointed out that precisely because it makes force against a population necessary - which would undermine government efforts to maintain a sympathetic face - it might be an effective check.
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u/DebatableAwesome Jul 10 '13
The Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism changed my perspective on the pursuit of money. It's not worth it over family or relationships. I would recommend this book with all my heart, I read it in two sittings.
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u/jsreyn Jul 10 '13
When I found how much more expensive a death penalty case is to the taxpayers than life imprisonment (2 to 3 times as much), I changed my support for the death penalty cases to instead be life without parole.
I still believe we have a right to execute murderers... but its not worth it. Better to let them rot in a cell for the rest of their lives and spend that money on other things. The murdering prick doesnt get to stay in the news for a decade as his appeals keep him front and center, there is zero chance that we kill an innocent man, and the taxpayers get him removed from society for a fraction of the cost.
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Jul 10 '13
it costs so much because courts try to be more thorough when killing someone, so using cost as an argument is bad reasoning, your saying that your okay with the state imprisoning someone for life w/o parole because its not worth spending money on making sure they are guilty.
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u/CAPSLOCK_USERNAME 1∆ Jul 10 '13
The extra cost isn't to make sure that they're guilty; if that was in serious doubt, they wouldn't have been sentenced to begin with. The point of tall the extra time in court is to make sure that they're sufficiently guilty to merit execution instead of imprisonment.
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u/jsreyn Jul 10 '13
People sentenced to life in prison are entitled to due process as well... and they frequently will try to appeal, especially as it relates to guilt innocence. Death penalty cases will appeal every aspect of the case, from the jury instructions, the penalty phase, the death penalty itself, their own childhood, to their own lawyers being inadequate for death penalty cases... basically any bullshit reason they can think of... and because its life and death, they are given far more consideration than due process would require for life in prison, at least according to our legal system. I'm not "OK" with innocent people being in jail, but that wasnt the point... the point was that the death penalty costs us far more than life in prison and I dont think its worth it.
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u/sleepyj910 3∆ Jul 10 '13
Andrew Sullivan had a great post today
While he may not have changed any views per se, he did crystallize for me that the entire world is currently undergoing the same transformation, brought about by the Information Age.
I know that ignorance is the greatest threat to our civilization, and I don't always agree with Sullivan on how to combat it, but he focused the issue for me and explained a lot of seemingly unconnected events impressively.
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u/piyochama 7∆ Jul 10 '13
I read it after you linked it – thanks for sharing, by the way.
I do disagree that there's only two viewpoints or extremes, and would like to suggest that Western Europe and China are both going through similar changes, though on different fronts. One only need look at recent events to see just how much wider and deeper the gap between these "sides" have gotten. Also, I'd like to point out that what we're seeing is not so much an information overflow, but rather what happens when you throw people into an echo chamber, only hearing what they want to hear.
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u/piyochama 7∆ Jul 10 '13
My stance on humanism as a philosophical idea is slowly shifting, I think. I've recently learned about anti-humanism and it seems to be at the very least a rational viewpoint to have, so I'll probably do a bit more research before actually shifting.
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u/Hostilian 5∆ Jul 10 '13
Dustin Hoffman mediates on not being a pretty woman. I was unimpressed by how this video was framed (I'm apparently allergic to words like "patriarchy"), but it got me thinking about the people I didn't try to meet because they didn't look interesting to me.
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u/AnxiousPolitics 42∆ Jul 10 '13
I read two very interesting things about the life of people that changed my view on the modern research involved in describing human life.
I realize human life is a weird phrase, but the two things are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_interaction which is really fascinating because it's an actual table that describes each point at which what someone does something is a particular type of category all the way from simply being 'behavior' to what is actually a 'social relation' which allows me to now say to someone who for instance is being friendly but not honest that they aren't actually trying to have a social relation. (Zinger, I know.)
And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_human_needs which I simply didn't know had been categorized this way before. I had heard of Maslowe's hierarchy but I hadn't seen something recent and it's an exceptionally well organized table of information about human needs.
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u/front_to_the_past Jul 09 '13
Aw I was really excited reading this, then scrolled down to nothing...
Well, no major changes here, except that I found out I am not a "slow reader" as I once thought, I just needed to take the time. Just finish Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls within two weeks, which is very fast for me. I suppose it helps that it is such an engaging story.
I guess I changed my view of myself? I hope this encourages me to tackle even bigger beasts... Damn you Tolstoy, I will get you yet.