Personally, I value scepticism. I rarely believe something without sufficient reason to. I constantly question what I believe, and play devil's advocate with myself all of the time. But I have to admit that I'm not perfect. Sometimes I just play along with what's generally accepted, which I'm not very proud of. For an example, I'm libertarian. I usually like to keep my opinions fair and balanced, and have no problem with being pragmatic, but sometimes I find myself believing things that are potentially dangerous for society just because they line up with my political belief. I'm in favour of health care now, but for the longest time I wasn't. I live in Canada, and I can't see a private sector health care system working. That opinion would actually put people in danger of dying, which I'm not proud of.

Generally, I don't let other people influence my opinions. I like to think about it like their ideas influence my opinions. If I had bias towards the actual person, then I'm not being fair to the idea. My family sometimes has more effect than I'd like on how I make decisions, but rarely do they influence what I think. My hope is to be as independent as possible. I prefer to do the research myself.

I apply my opinions very pragmatically. If something would work better, or more efficiently, I'm all for it. I don't limit myself to what I believe. Sometimes other things and ideas work better. I'm cool with that. But ideally, I apply my opinions with high standards. If I react one way to something, I try to hold the standard to react the same way to any similar situation, provided that I did not change my opinion between then and now.

I hope that I'm honest about my opinions. I don't like to fool myself into believing I'm better than I am. As I said, sometimes things slip by because they are easier to accept, but if I'm aware of something I believe, I like to hold myself responsible for what that opinion is and what it does to my life.

I don't act on opinions unless I think it's necessary. This is really open to what situation I'm in, so it's difficult to quantify when and how I act on opinions.