
Ask HN: When was the last time you changed your mind? - mrfusion
On something important, I mean.  Maybe political, maybe technical?<p>I just got to wondering this lately when I see so many people digging in so hard on political views (or even programming language stuff.)
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I cannot remember the last time I changed my mind on something important.

But ... I try not to make a decision before I've had a chance to evaluate the
question. Sometimes I find myself having to act prior to having a decent
understanding, but I don't count that, because that's a conscious decision.

I also find that I have a lot of fairly nuanced positions on things. To pick
some HN-relevant examples, I've been writing C++ since the late 80s. To this
day, I cannot clearly state that I like it or don't; similarly, I started
using Java with version 1.0 and again, I don't have a simple "Java is
good/bad" opinion.

Similarly with politics: while I can usually manage to find an "on balance"
position in favor of one person or party, there's never been a case where I
felt an individual was 100% good or bad.

I think the apparent polarization of views is more about manufactured outrage,
about knowingly taking an extreme position to provoke response, and that's
become the dominant mode of discourse online, and from there leaked into RL.
It's somehow more appealing to have an argument with radical disagreement than
a more nuanced discussion where participants can both agree and disagree in
parts.

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mrfusion
That’s a great point. People do seem to argue extreme positions.

I think you might be on to something with the probabilities instead of
thinking something is 100% good.

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mrfusion
Oh feel free to disregard this. But maybe try to refrain from arguing against
people’s changed views. It might discourage comments.

