Yes, I have changed my mind on fundamental issues.
When I have done so, it has always been a result of first being exposed to the issue so that I learn to recognize it as being an issue, and then observing reasoned discussions over an extended period, to help me thoroughly understand what are the underpinnings of the various positions.
Before arriving here, I was probably what you’d call a Biblical literalist (if you were being polite), although it would be fair to say that due to other dialogues, I was clinging to that position by my fingernails.
It all fell to pieces a short while after I came here and I’m glad about that; it was like climbing out of a hole in the ground.
here you go, Weird_Al
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=123877
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=124655
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=110252
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=100040&highlight=counter+steering
I think the “war on drugs” is where I had my biggest change of heart. It wasn’t until the past few years that I began to believe that it was wasteful and didn’t accomplish anything except filling prisons. I’ve caved on complete legalization of marijuana but harder stuff like coke and heroin I think still needs to be illegal.
Oh and I wouldn’t smoke pot if it was legal or not.
I used to honestly believe that everyone who did drugs was either a bad person or extremely easily influenced by those bad people. I really hurt a lot of high school friends - they drank most weekends. I’ve done a lot of apologizing in the past year and a half! People who use drugs aren’t bad - in fact, MANY drugs themselves aren’t bad. It’s all about consumption. If you take things slowly and are careful, you’ll be fine, and have great life experience by doing so. At least, IMHO. 
You were voting twice?!?
As others have also commented, the death penalty was my big reversal. I supported it until I was in college. I now reject it along with all other forms of violence, state-sponsored or otherwise. The reversal was not so much centered on the death penalty question in particular as it was the pacifism issue. Pacifism itself was not a “reversal” for me as I always supported many aspects of it.
On the reproductive rights question, while I have not reversed myself and remain firmly and unalterably pro-choice, I do find that the hard core anti-choicers are the most consistent in their views. Even the most ardent pro-choicer has qualms about abortion under some circumstances, but the hard core antis have no qualms about outlawing it under every and all circumstances. No “rape or incest or life of the mother” exceptions for them! In a way I kind of admire that level of consistecy, since to an anti-choicer who truly believes in the fundamental personhood of every fertilized egg, the circumstances of the conception should make no difference. Ultimately though what’s fundamental for me is that I have no right to tell someone else not to have an abortion and that’s something I don’t envision changing my mind about any time soon.
Not due to this board but I came around from the educational system’s we are all basically good and all basically the same to there is true evil in this world (aka some people are not good) and people are fundemently different.
The last part about people being different does not make one ‘better’ then another on the whole but can mean that one may be better at somethings then the other and there is absolutley nothing wrong with that.
Not due to this board, but used to be pro death penalty, now am anti. I used to be anti-drugs (i.e. pro war on drugs) but now I believe that all drugs ought to be legal. (though I have never done any illegal drugs in my life.) I used to think we ought to help the third world, now I increasingly think they don’t want our help.
In the past three years I have:
-stopped bothering with the whole religion thing. I don’t know if there’s a god, and I don’t really care one way or another.
-changed my position on abortion from usually pro-life to extremely pro-choice.
-gone from not really caring about gay rights to being very much in favor of them.
-gone from not reading much at all in my free time to reading maybe 40-50 books a year (not exactly “fundamental,” but it has definitely improved my life :))
Not due to this board, but used to be pro death penalty, now am anti. I used to be anti-drugs (i.e. pro war on drugs) but now I believe that all drugs ought to be legal. (though I have never done any illegal drugs in my life.) I used to think we ought to help the third world, now I increasingly think they don’t want our help.
Fundamental? Hum. I’ve certainly become more conservative as I’ve gotten older, which is largely a function of learning just how awful human nature can be. Much of what we call “liberal” is deeply, even ludicrously, optimistic about human perfectability, and even more ludicrously optimistic about the government’s inclincations once liberalism gives it the power to enforce that perfection.
It takes a while to realize this.
I also have acquired a much greater respect for the military, and a much greater willingness to sanction its use. I used to think pacifism was an ideal; I now think it a self-indulgent, delusional travesty.
There are two French terms that come up so often when I think of much of the European left and its American admirers: soi-disant and bien-penser. The former is really “self-proclaimed,” but with an extra overhang of solipsism. The latter, slightly Orwellian overtones, means that you have the thoughts that are approved as good - and approved by an elite. It’s a terrible problem when the elite is not only self-perpetuating, but intellectually and morally bankrupt.
My father was, and I believe still is, a firm believer in a pseudo-science called Orgonomy. We all went to regular therapy with an Orgone Therapist, whether we wanted to or not. Said therapist’s primary activity consisted of poking his fingers hard into tense muscle groups in a manner similar to acupressure but with more pain involved.
In my teen-age years, I became a True Believer in orgone energy myself. I liked its promise of emotional “orgastic potency”, wherein I would become so enormously wonderful and confident that happiness would just gush through me by the bucketful. I also liked its promise of a limitless cosmic energy field that would allow humanity to cure all the world’s physical and psychological diseaes, build free-energy motors, control the weather, and defy gravity.
I have since relinquished my once-comforting beliefs in Orgonomy. While that might not sound like much to most of you, with me, it was practically like renouncing the family religion!
I’ve grown disillusioned with Catholisism. Parodoxicaly, I’ve grown more religious or spiritual if you will, while distancing myself from Catholosism. Strange.
Too many bells and whistles unneccessarily for me. It’s more like a club than the practice of Christianity. Just me though.
Nothing very specific. I tend not to lump people of various persuasions together anymore, mostly as result fo SDMB conversations with members of those groups.
Now that I have kids I’m less pro-choice than I used to be. I’m not against a right to choose, but I think it needs to be done more deliberately. I came within a hair of losing my oldest daughter to one of my now ex-wife’s depressive episodes 15 years ago, and had to go toe to toe with her to keep the baby (we were married at the time with no kids). That was a serious wake up call about deciding what your moral and personal priorities are.
One vote for Sanchez and Kirk from me, another from my wife.
And–come to think of it:
Sometime in the early/mid 90’s I went from being anti-Death Penalty to pro-Death Penalty.
And a very minor one: I was one of the two or three people in Texas who, ca. 1990-92(?), actually voted against having a state lottery. Now, as soon as it comes up for a vote in North Carolina–if it ever does–I’m a solid “yes” vote. This doesn’t seem that fundamental, except that my reasons in the early 90’s for my anti-lottery vote were for allegedly “altrustic” reasons; I’m fundamentally much, much more cynical now.
And if you’re spelling it that way, you must be pretty distant from it already!
(Er … sorry. I couldn’t resist.)
I used to think the death penalty was okay, if used judiciously. I am now against it in all cases. I don’t believe the state has the moral authority to kill its citizens.
I changed my mind after becoming a Doper, but I don’t know that the SDMB had much to do with my decision.
I also have become a much more cynical person in recent years. I was a very idealistic young college student at one point. While my political beliefs haven’t really changed much (as in, my views on one subject or another remain the same), I’m less optimistic and more realistic about how the process actually works. Things are not nearly as black and white as I had previously believed. I spent my third year of college abroad in Jerusalem, and nearly went crazy trying to figure out which side of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict was “correct” until I realized that right and wrong aren’t that easily defined.
I have gone from being afriad that most medical science is just guess work to being absolutely convinced that it is.
I have gone from having no faith in the use of quantitative methodology for the studying of the social sciences to realising that this is just silly. It is all about HOW you use your box of tricks after all.
I have gone from hating all things American to just hating President Jnr and obscenely wealthy (and not just the american one’s mind you). Oh and Ricky Lake of course.
Well, former creationist --> evolutionary theist.
Anti-abortion --> pro-abortion.
Neutral on gambling --> anti-gambling.
Of course -
Pro-death penalty --> pro-death penalty.
Some things don’t change.
Regards,
Shodan
I used to be very hard-core pro-life, but now I consider myself pro-choice. This switch happened about the time when A)I reached the age when I could have children and B)I realized how much having a child at this point in my life would change my future plans. But given that, I’m still not sure that I would have an abortion. My view now is–don’t like abortion? Then don’t have one.