Hello hubski!
I've been trying to come up with some good ideas for a good way to start interesting discussions from my followers. This is what I came up with. For the next week, I plan to post a different topic each day, and open it up for discussion. I will personally make a response in the comments, and hopefully we can get some interesting insights from different people.
This is pretty similar to TNGPODCAST, but a little different in that it's more about the discussion in the comments. So without further ado, let's get started.
The discussion I'd like to have today is about opinions. How you form them, who influences them, how you apply them. Are you completely honest with yourself about what you believe? Are there things you believe but don't act on?
So feel free to discuss! And if you have suggesting for topics, please PM me. Thanks very much.
I like the idea of a discussion series, perhaps a more specific topic would be helpful. I don't have much to say about how I form an opinion. I suppose it's formed out of the aggregate information I possess surrounding a subjective topic. I weigh the information at hand and form my opinion. When new information is presented I may augment my opinion. I have recently been using this rule of thumb for the podcasts, I come up with a topic that I'd personally like to know more about. You learn a lot doing these things. Good luck with it. I'm following you now so as not to miss a post.
Thanks for the advice. I was wondering whether or not the topic would be clear. Tomorrow I plan to do "Political Ideologies" and another good one I have is "Online identities". Interesting idea to do things that your not familiar with. Maybe something about art would work, considering I am very clueless about the subject.
Personally, I value scepticism. I rarely believe something without sufficient reason to. I constantly question what I believe, and play devil's advocate with myself all of the time. But I have to admit that I'm not perfect. Sometimes I just play along with what's generally accepted, which I'm not very proud of. For an example, I'm libertarian. I usually like to keep my opinions fair and balanced, and have no problem with being pragmatic, but sometimes I find myself believing things that are potentially dangerous for society just because they line up with my political belief. I'm in favour of health care now, but for the longest time I wasn't. I live in Canada, and I can't see a private sector health care system working. That opinion would actually put people in danger of dying, which I'm not proud of. Generally, I don't let other people influence my opinions. I like to think about it like their ideas influence my opinions. If I had bias towards the actual person, then I'm not being fair to the idea. My family sometimes has more effect than I'd like on how I make decisions, but rarely do they influence what I think. My hope is to be as independent as possible. I prefer to do the research myself. I apply my opinions very pragmatically. If something would work better, or more efficiently, I'm all for it. I don't limit myself to what I believe. Sometimes other things and ideas work better. I'm cool with that. But ideally, I apply my opinions with high standards. If I react one way to something, I try to hold the standard to react the same way to any similar situation, provided that I did not change my opinion between then and now. I hope that I'm honest about my opinions. I don't like to fool myself into believing I'm better than I am. As I said, sometimes things slip by because they are easier to accept, but if I'm aware of something I believe, I like to hold myself responsible for what that opinion is and what it does to my life. I don't act on opinions unless I think it's necessary. This is really open to what situation I'm in, so it's difficult to quantify when and how I act on opinions.