I used to think that people with my views should not be in places like CIA, NSA et al. I did not think I could work in those places. Now, I think those places need and needed our voices in the discussions. Too many people are in silos with like thinking people. We need diversity of thought.

Cops and HOA all wrapped up in one.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Homelessness. Working in a field where the issue was adjacent to what we did, I learned a lot about them. The majority of them don't want "help" and "services" which means giving up their freedom and agency or means having to do something in return for shelter. They don't want job training or drug treatment. They don't want to live in a shelter. We should just give people housing and have some rules with it but there is a certain subset of people who are never going to function in society and there is no cure for it and they need to have a bathroom and bed and be able to sit inside during the day (shelters are only a place to sleep so they spend the day outdoors or prefer their tents). We also need to bring back mental institutions and allow families the ability to commit family members. It is a broken, useless system for most people. For those who do want a leg up and the help provided, more power to them! But it's a minority who do.

Agree

+1 million

Anonymous wrote:Homelessness. Working in a field where the issue was adjacent to what we did, I learned a lot about them. The majority of them don't want "help" and "services" which means giving up their freedom and agency or means having to do something in return for shelter. They don't want job training or drug treatment. They don't want to live in a shelter. We should just give people housing and have some rules with it but there is a certain subset of people who are never going to function in society and there is no cure for it and they need to have a bathroom and bed and be able to sit inside during the day (shelters are only a place to sleep so they spend the day outdoors or prefer their tents). We also need to bring back mental institutions and allow families the ability to commit family members. It is a broken, useless system for most people. For those who do want a leg up and the help provided, more power to them! But it's a minority who do.

Agree

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Military service. I used to assume anyone who enlisted as a very young person flat out did not have better options. Probably, they weren't all that smart.

Now I know that while this may be true for some people, there is actually a huge range of very good, high impact career options within the armed forces that do not involve ordnance, blowing things up, killing people or brain injuries. That there are so many off-ramps to excellent and high-paying civilian careers in intelligence, medicine, engineering of all kinds, CS / cybersecurity. One of the smartest people I know was a nuclear engineer in the Navy who later landed at Amazon and designed the original distribution framework for Prime.

I am ashamed of the way I used to think, btw. Stupidly elitist without evidence.

Work in DoD and you will go back to your original thought.

I do work in DoD now, and that's what led my views to evolve.

Agree, same here. There is definitely a mix though of those that had nothing better to do versus the ones who took the opportunity and rode with it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Military service. I used to assume anyone who enlisted as a very young person flat out did not have better options. Probably, they weren't all that smart.

Now I know that while this may be true for some people, there is actually a huge range of very good, high impact career options within the armed forces that do not involve ordnance, blowing things up, killing people or brain injuries. That there are so many off-ramps to excellent and high-paying civilian careers in intelligence, medicine, engineering of all kinds, CS / cybersecurity. One of the smartest people I know was a nuclear engineer in the Navy who later landed at Amazon and designed the original distribution framework for Prime.

I am ashamed of the way I used to think, btw. Stupidly elitist without evidence.

Work in DoD and you will go back to your original thought.

I do work in DoD now, and that's what led my views to evolve.

Anonymous wrote:Military service. I used to assume anyone who enlisted as a very young person flat out did not have better options. Probably, they weren't all that smart.

Now I know that while this may be true for some people, there is actually a huge range of very good, high impact career options within the armed forces that do not involve ordnance, blowing things up, killing people or brain injuries. That there are so many off-ramps to excellent and high-paying civilian careers in intelligence, medicine, engineering of all kinds, CS / cybersecurity. One of the smartest people I know was a nuclear engineer in the Navy who later landed at Amazon and designed the original distribution framework for Prime.

I am ashamed of the way I used to think, btw. Stupidly elitist without evidence.

Work in DoD and you will go back to your original thought.

Military service. I used to assume anyone who enlisted as a very young person flat out did not have better options. Probably, they weren't all that smart.

Now I know that while this may be true for some people, there is actually a huge range of very good, high impact career options within the armed forces that do not involve ordnance, blowing things up, killing people or brain injuries. That there are so many off-ramps to excellent and high-paying civilian careers in intelligence, medicine, engineering of all kinds, CS / cybersecurity. One of the smartest people I know was a nuclear engineer in the Navy who later landed at Amazon and designed the original distribution framework for Prime.

I am ashamed of the way I used to think, btw. Stupidly elitist without evidence.

I no longer wish to live in the United States. So I'm leaving. Hurrah!

Adnan Sayed. I used to think he was innocent but now I think he was guilty.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was a staunch agnostic influenced by Carl Sagan ...now I am Catholic and a true believer. This happened around my late 20s. I was highly influenced by my colleagues among whom all religion is a joke.
Similarly with abortion, I used to feel it was regrettable but necessary. After 15 years in healthcare I have seen way too much glibness about this, too many patients with histories of 10+, too much postponement for weeks due to seeing if the father steps up. It should be taken much more soberly and seriously.

How did you come to your conclusion? Did you have an experience that cemented it?

Yes, but not something I'm exposing to the ridicule of atheist DCUM.
Also a lot of reading, CS Lewis and Evelyn Waugh (which I had to order because these books aren't even carried by my public library.)

Is that because they're banned?

Im not sure if youre being disingenuous but no, my local library moved to a new building a while back and "updated their collection" which means they purged most books from the 20th century if they weren't in high circulation. Now we have empty shelves ready for the newest fad books. So I can get any book but it takes a long time and I can't flip through them first.

I went the opposite way. I grew up in a religious family and have done a 180 on religion and then that impacted my then-erroneous dogmatic views on abortion. Today I believe there is no such thing as a moral abortion. Just get an abortion, no questions asked. It’s not something anyone but the woman and her doctor need to have any say in. I don’t think there should be these moral police exceptions because I don’t think there should be restrictions.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was a staunch agnostic influenced by Carl Sagan ...now I am Catholic and a true believer. This happened around my late 20s. I was highly influenced by my colleagues among whom all religion is a joke.
Similarly with abortion, I used to feel it was regrettable but necessary. After 15 years in healthcare I have seen way too much glibness about this, too many patients with histories of 10+, too much postponement for weeks due to seeing if the father steps up. It should be taken much more soberly and seriously.

How did you come to your conclusion? Did you have an experience that cemented it?

Yes, but not something I'm exposing to the ridicule of atheist DCUM.
Also a lot of reading, CS Lewis and Evelyn Waugh (which I had to order because these books aren't even carried by my public library.)

Is that because they're banned?

Im not sure if youre being disingenuous but no, my local library moved to a new building a while back and "updated their collection" which means they purged most books from the 20th century if they weren't in high circulation. Now we have empty shelves ready for the newest fad books. So I can get any book but it takes a long time and I can't flip through them first.

Homelessness. Working in a field where the issue was adjacent to what we did, I learned a lot about them. The majority of them don't want "help" and "services" which means giving up their freedom and agency or means having to do something in return for shelter. They don't want job training or drug treatment. They don't want to live in a shelter. We should just give people housing and have some rules with it but there is a certain subset of people who are never going to function in society and there is no cure for it and they need to have a bathroom and bed and be able to sit inside during the day (shelters are only a place to sleep so they spend the day outdoors or prefer their tents). We also need to bring back mental institutions and allow families the ability to commit family members. It is a broken, useless system for most people. For those who do want a leg up and the help provided, more power to them! But it's a minority who do.

Racism.

More specifically the lasting effects of it and how it's still right at the surface of US society.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was a staunch agnostic influenced by Carl Sagan ...now I am Catholic and a true believer. This happened around my late 20s. I was highly influenced by my colleagues among whom all religion is a joke.
Similarly with abortion, I used to feel it was regrettable but necessary. After 15 years in healthcare I have seen way too much glibness about this, too many patients with histories of 10+, too much postponement for weeks due to seeing if the father steps up. It should be taken much more soberly and seriously.

How did you come to your conclusion? Did you have an experience that cemented it?

Yes, but not something I'm exposing to the ridicule of atheist DCUM.
Also a lot of reading, CS Lewis and Evelyn Waugh (which I had to order because these books aren't even carried by my public library.)

Is that because they're banned?