Changing My Opinion

Someone asked for examples of a time when I changed my opinion on something and I thought of a few examples.

This is from a long time ago, but I used to be a bona fide devout Muslim.

My family migrated to the US on the Diversity Visa Lottery but we found out while we were already on vacation here. Our immigration lawyer told us to just cancel our flights back and stay because the process would be much much easier. Three weeks later, I started fifth grade. It's hard to put into words just how jarring the transition was, and the intense pressure to learn the myriads of minutiae about American etiquette. (One of the best expressions of this sentiment I have encountered is the wordless graphic novel The Arrival). It all felt very isolating and depressing, and I tried to find some solace in the faith I was raised in. So I dove in deep throughout high school. Prayed five times a day, didn't stare at girls, researched religious texts constantly, didn't masturbate, etc etc and I basically just felt thoroughly despondent. I had an active desire to die, not through suicide, but through whatever way would get me to heaven right now. The constant lesson I had beaten into me was that the current life is suffering but if you follow these arbitrary directives, you'll get 70 Instagram thots in heaven.

The shake-up for me was dating my first girlfriend, having sex, feeling absolute guilt, breaking up because it was a toxic relationship, and realizing I only stayed with her because of the religiously-induced guilt. That led to a self-reflection episode which quickly had me jettison Islam in favor of atheism. Hasn't changed since.

If there is a downside to the shift for me, it's that I no longer have the comfort of an all-powerful adjudicator tasked with dispensing appropriate justice to all. It makes injustice in the world that much more painful to deal with without that ameliorative fiction.

Other instances of changes:

I became a libertarian/anarchist after studying economics at GMU (Caplan, Hanson, Tabarrok, Roberts, etc were all my professors). Not that much has changed, but I admit I'm far less hardline on the issue of economic freedom. Broadly speaking it's still the ideal to strive towards, but I basically just can't be bothered to care about small differences in tax rates or minor regulatory hurdles. I say this as owner of my solo legal practice and have had to deal with a ton of very annoying administrative costs and also higher income taxes. But in general, the things that the State does in terms of killing or imprisoning people is far more pertinent than economic takings. People who choose states to live in based on income tax rates mystify me. For this reason also, I'm fine with UBI.

I was genuinely excited by Trump's 2016 victory. Sure, maybe most of it was motivated by "fuck you Hillary", but I did have some genuine optimism about an "outsider" potentially shaking things up. I was beaming the night of the election, and walked around my neighborhood just watching very very sad people. What changed my mind was basically everything that happened after.