Have you ever taken a position you believe to be original with yourself, either here on SC or elsewhere on the internet, then heard it echoed on a radio program or other mainstream media?

One that I can think off the top of my head is my long held belief that Ritalin shouldn't be given to kids. I've heard some criticism of the drug but very little.

good question

I don't really think any of my beliefs are original with myself, even my most 'out there' one.

Original with yourself? (I would hope that we all are original with ourselves. Who/ what else would we be?) Heard it echoed? (I have no idea what that is suppose to mean)

I get what you're asking and I think it's an interesting topic. I think something like this must have happened to me, but probably not recently, so it's hard to give you specific example. I think using the term "position" narrows this perhaps more than need be as well. In a more abstract sense, it might have been a joke, expression, or observation I made that I later saw echoed in the mainstream.

It also seems likely to be an effect and not necessarily a case where I had an original idea of some sort. I'm influenced so much by my envrionment and I don't keep track of all my sources.

Yes, although now I can't remember what it was.

Yes!! This happens to me all the time. It's eerie as hell, the synchronicity of it.

A lot of times, it sort of pisses me off.

I thought I was the only one who ever thought that maybe I was the only "real" person and everyone else was robots.

Sorry, I don't understand the question.

With 6 billion people on the planet, I think it's unlikely that I could take a position all of my own!

I hear any position or creative idea in my head echoed somewhere eventually, sometimes seconds later, sometimes as much as 15 years.

It's no more eerie than two people in a person's dream wearing the same shirt. It all comes from the same creative source.

If you're an inventor or artist trying to have a unique or patentable solo career, it can be quite frustrating though. Our social system isn't arranged around cosmological truth, but the idea that we are all unique competitive individuals.

Yes, all the time. I'm not alone in this world after all.

Yes; mostly too many to list here. I tend to be a bit (no a lot) eccentric and have particular beliefs. There are those who are Anti-Government, anarchists, and other non-mainstream types who tend to have similar ideas so it is only natural that they also come to the correct position unlike all the rest of you drones and lemmings out there who are brainwashed and brain dead.

Yes. The position I took in this survey:http://surveycentral.org/survey/31191.html#C999899 I referred back to it in this survey:http://surveycentral.org/survey/31347.html Now I first took this position back in 1995 or 96 on Usenet in a discussion with some real hardcore environmentalists who I viewed as attacking humanity in general. The position is that human beings are a natural part of Earth's environment and therefore whatever we do is completely in accord with nature. The very first time I heard this position echoed in the real world was this past Tuesday, listening to NPR's All Things Considered. It was an email they had received from a listener concerning their recent series on climate change. The listener wrote that human beings are are as much a part of Earth's natural environment as any other critter, and that therefore the Earth's atmosphere was still in a natural state having not been adulterated by any unnatural process.

I expect such ideas were published by philosphers in the 1700's, if not millenia ago.
When is an idea really new anyhow? Digital screens can be seen as extensions of sand paintings or the skin of chameleons.

No, but my wife says a lot of things about politics and finds Glenn Beck and others saying the exact same thing a week or two later.

People is people. Though I do have a lot more unique angles and edges to my opinions than homogenized mainstream views.