[quote]Note: WOW this came out longer than I thought it would. Feel free to just respond to the title.[/quote] I mean really expose yourself. Not just reading quotes or jokes about the people you don't agree with, or only looking at the fringe elements of those groups, but actually going in and reading their doctrine and trying to understand why they think that way? My guess is that your answer is not often. It's difficult to expose yourself to fundamentally different beliefs; primarily because deep-down, you're concerned they'll shake your conviction in your own. About a year ago, I lost all conviction in the things I believed in, and I was an agnostic (yeah, there's really only a few steps down from there...). For awhile, I was really, really, depressed (I'm guessing I'd still qualify as that now, but -blam!- you I'm not taking pills), but then I noticed there was something positive in all this. I could believe whatever I wanted. I could choose any viewpoint I felt like. I know this seems incredibly obvious, but how many of you can actually say you've felt this? Actually felt you could consider [i]anything[/i] without some sense of "morality" nagging at you that it wasn't right? It's an extremely liberating feeling, although I'm sure it would be distressing if you hadn't already lost everything. In that time, I've become somewhat addicted to understanding different viewpoints. I've been reading through religious sites, feminist sites, lgbtq sites, neo-[url=http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law]-godwinslaw!-[/url] sites, transhumanist sites, white-power sites, Islamic-extremist sites; everything interesting I can find. And what has this accomplished (besides probably flagging my IP and laptop to every government agency there is)? Well, I came to a realization; the doctrines of every last one of those groups makes sense... with the information they have. We're often quick to think "oh, those people must be crazy or evil to think that way," but that isn't it; it's just that they have a different set of information to go on than we do. Most human beings (except the truly insane or damaged) seem to think the same way, but the huge variance in the information a specific human can possess makes them seem radically different. I'd surmise that this is the result of there being no truly objective information in this existence (that we know of), and that each human being has a unique perception of reality. Again, this sounds obvious, but I don't think a lot of us truly grasp that concept when facing opposition to our beliefs. But the coolest thing that I saw from [i]this[/i] viewpoint is that such viewpoints can be changed [i]just[/i] by introducing new information. On one of the neo-[url=http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law]-godwinslaw!-[/url] sites, I introduced them to some information about Israel that challenged and changed the way many of them saw its relationship with the US. Mind you that I didn't do it from a pedestal of "oh you're all evil anti-semites and should be ashamed"; I did it in their own lingo in a way that complimented their own information set, and it worked. [b]That[/b] is what (ironically) I see a lot of "tolerance" groups fail to realize; shaming doesn't work if they don't share your beliefs. I guess what I find a little sad is that in this day and age, when we have access to virtually all the information in this world, we respond by shutting ourselves off into echo chambers. In a way, I guess it makes sense; we want to hold on to what makes us comfortable. If you take anything away from this blog of a post, I guess it would be that if you really want tolerance or understanding across the human race, you need to realize it's a two-way street. [spoiler]And you should be against anything that limits access to information without cause. [/spoiler]