From: Damien Sullivan (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Date: Thu May 08 2003 - 13:10:55 MDT
On Thu, May 08, 2003 at 10:24:41AM -0700, Hal Finney wrote:
> Damien Sullivan wrote:
> > I think I'm still agnostically opposed.
> If you are trying to be rational, it's something of a danger sign if
> your opinions are unchanged by facts. It could be an indication that
Agreed.
> your beliefs are being controlled by an ideology. In order to protect
> themselves and remain stable, ideologies control your perceptions and
> make it hard to change your mind about things.
Or it's a sign that you have trouble forming a firm opinion. Like I said, I'd
suggest to friends and family that maybe getting rid of Saddam would be a good
thing in of itself, despite the lies and dubious leadership, having worried
myself I was just following my local party line. Over here, with all the
people saying "we gotta stop the WMDs!" I backed my party line. Eventually I
soured on having strong opinions on complex issues with crappy data where my
opinion doesn't really matter anyway.
One change I've had is that I thought at the time that bombing the Taliban was
a fine thing. I said that even if al Qaeda wasn't connected to 9/11 the
Taliban sucked and deserved getting some neoimperialist asskicking. Now... I
still lean that way, but what I hear of Afghanistan makes it harder for me to
feel the case is solid. A bunch of people got killed, Kabul got liberated,
but things outside didn't change that much and there's still no stability.
Which gets back to another anti-war concern, that we'd mess up Iraq and not
have the staying power to clean things up properly. But it's too soon to
change an opinion there.
> Grounds for suspicion only arise if your before-and-after position was
> the one supported by your ideology.
See, my ideologies say "human rights should be enforced" and "Bush can't be
trusted at all and we should oppose anything which help him get re-elected".
You can see the conflict...
-xx- Damien X-)
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