[NT] NT's and open mindedness......

[tinkerbell]

Same.
Just catch me a leprechaun and I'll get back to you on it. Okay?

Gottcha.....tag your it

 

[tinkerbell]

Oh, and I refuse to change my thinking to match yours until you change your thinking to match mine. Open-minded-ness doesn't mean agreeing with you, it means that I consider your point of view before taking a position, which I have already done. And it works both ways, meaning that just because my opinion is different than yours, it doesn't mean that your way of thinking is better than mine.

LOL I don't think my way of thinking is any better than anyone else's, I just get ticked off by instnat dismissal without review of any information..... just seems a bit short sighted...

Lets face it if you reveiwed everything you'd spend your life with a nose in a book.

L

 

[6.4]

Look if astrology was real it would be a trillion pound industry, do you honestly think it hasn't been subject to rigorous scientific testing. Stars are the slaves of gravity right? So if the stars predict your life, you could predict the movement of the stars and therefore predict the future lol It doesn't work move on.

What's next? Fairies? Where did they come from? What purpose do they serve? What did they evolve from? What do they eat and where do they fit into the energy cycle? Are they separate from the energy cycle and everything we know about entropy has to be rewritten? Think of everything we know about biology, where do fairies fit into the grand scheme? Nowhere, they were made up by the human mind, they're just too ridiculous, too out there. Everything is connected, I map it all out in my mind (to the best of my ability) and if someone says something that has absolutely no relation to my map, I throw it away and assume you're wrong.

 

[LunarMoon]

The biggest problem with it is 'ethereal in nature'. There are a lot of animals that people have traditionally attributed 'magic' and that is consistently unfounded.

Ethereal in a sense of being non-solid, not ethereal in a sense of being magical.

If these small creatures have 'magic' that makes them not only invisible but also intangible, well... we're going to have such a hard time finding them that they may as well be negligible.

Just because something is difficult to see with the naked eye doesn’t turn it into a meaningless discovery. Not since germ theory at least.

We haven't found any other animals that can do this. Why start now?

The same could be said for just about any groundbreaking discovery that has occurred within human history. What makes it groundbreaking is that nothing of its kind has been seen before.

Another problem with so many cryptozoology animals is that so many places insist that there is only one. This seems a bit impossible, especially if people are still claiming to 'see' them in these places. Wouldn't it make a lot more sense if there were, well, a lot of them? So they could, you know, reproduce? That's a part of the myth, that there is only one, so that people feel special for seeing it (or any sticks and branches that sort of look like it.)

I agree, and it is part of the reason for why I have been unable to greatly entertain the possible existence of the Loch Ness Monster. However, most of cryptozoology doesn’t focus on one organism specimen but on an entire species of a kind.

There are too many people who want to believe that it'd be too difficult for these things to be proven, especially because the people who aren't believers tend to think it's a waste of time. Nobody would be impartial enough to do it.

Agree with the first sentence but not with the second. Science, far from being an impartial field, is frequently plagued with this conundrum, and yet several differing theories are proven and disproven each year.

However, if we do find a hairy species of humanoid primates who walk on two feet and live in the Yukon, then by all means, call them Homo Sasquatch. It's just that I guarantee, they will be a week-long blip on the news and that place will be a tourist spot for a few years, and what used to be wonder about what could be out there will be replaced with a bit of useless trivia.

That does tend to happen when a discovery becomes accepted as common knowledge, even more so in terms of technological advancement.

 

[Haphazard]

The same could be said for just about any groundbreaking discovery that has occurred within human history. What makes it groundbreaking is that nothing of its kind has been seen before.

Ah! You got me.

I still don't think this is a reason to go on a fairy hunt, though. If there are any out there, we'll find them eventually. Most of the best discoveries happen on accident, anyway.

 

[Aerithria]

LOL I don't think my way of thinking is any better than anyone else's, I just get ticked off by instnat dismissal without review of any information..... just seems a bit short sighted...

Lets face it if you reveiwed everything you'd spend your life with a nose in a book.

L

Heh, I do review it, it's just not always immediately evident. And considering how commonplace faeries and astrology are, it's not like similar opinions haven't crossed my path before. Present me something that I've never encountered and then perhaps my consideration of the subject will take more than a few moments.

Though you're right, reviewing everything would require a person to be able to sustain themselves without food and never need to go out and make a living. There's just too much useless information existing to be able to consider all of it.

 

[Aerithria]

Apparently I'm double-posting. I apologize in advance for that.

If an organism as large as the Megamouth shark could remain undetected until 1976, is it really so unbelievable for a fairy, something not only small but in some descriptions, ethereal in nature, to go unobserved until now? The giant panda wasn’t discovered until 1869 and the Mountain Gorilla still later in 1902. Would you honestly say that these animals can have no effect on humanity or that you couldn’t care less about their existence?

If I were a biologist or a zoologist, perhaps I'd care, but I can honestly say that I don't. Sure, the giant panda or the mountain gorilla probably do affect our world, but it's not something that interests me that much. And if it so happened that in fifty years or so a fairy was discovered and their existence as a species was proven, I wouldn't feel foolish, because with the current information that I have, to me it's more logical to remain skeptical about their existence. When I'm presented with differing evidence, I'll re-evaluate my beliefs, but until then, I don't feel that it's close-minded not to believe in something that doesn't conceptually make sense to me.

You shouldn't have trouble then. How close are you to 50? North of 49 or south?

Sorry for the late reply, I actually thought I'd posted a response to this already. I think I'm somewhere around 49.5N, but it's hard to say, as where I live isn't listed. That's probably as accurate as I'll get, unless I can find a more accurate map.

 

[LunarMoon]

And if it so happened that in fifty years or so a fairy was discovered and their existence as a species was proven, I wouldn't feel foolish, because with the current information that I have, to me it's more logical to remain skeptical about their existence. When I'm presented with differing evidence, I'll re-evaluate my beliefs, but until then, I don't feel that it's close-minded not to believe in something that doesn't conceptually make sense to me.

To remain skeptical is to remain completely neutral in terms of forming an opinion, not in choosing to believe or not to believe. If that is truly the case in your perceptions then we have no disagreements.

 

[Aerithria]

To remain skeptical is to remain completely neutral in terms of forming an opinion, not in choosing to believe or not to believe. If that is truly the case in your perceptions then we have no disagreements.

Well, I have come to a conclusion in terms of my beliefs, corresponding with what I think I know about our world, but I'm willing to re-evaluate the conclusion if there's a change in that knowledge. It's not quite the neutral skepticism you're suggesting, but I'm guessing it at least partially fits the criteria.

 

[Orangey]

To remain skeptical is to remain completely neutral in terms of forming an opinion, not in choosing to believe or not to believe.

Hmmm...I don't know if it's possible to really achieve a state of neutral non-belief in anything, though. I mean, say with the issue of fairies; one person believes that they exist, another believes that they may possibly exist but doesn't believe that they do per se, and yet another person doesn't believe that they possibly exist at all. These are all separate beliefs. So which one of these people is the more open-minded? Couldn't we say that the person who believes that fairies may possibly exist (but that they also might possibly not) is not really being open to either of the other beliefs, by virtue of the fact that they have chosen their own discreet belief? By believing that fairies may possibly exist, and that they may possible not exist, you are rejecting both the belief that they do exist and the belief that they don't exist (as well as the reverse beliefs that go with each of those). So I don't know...being skeptical seems an awful lot like not believing (or believing in the reverse position). The term, I think, just carries the connotation that it is not a dogmatic disbelief (i.e., that the disbelief is not absolute), and that should evidence appear at a future time to the contrary, the skeptic would be willing to change his/her mind.

For our purposes, though, I don't think that it's possible to adopt a position that doesn't automatically exclude some other position. Therefore I contend that "open-mindedness" is nothing more than a rhetorical device used to criticize someone else for their beliefs (negative or positive). The problem comes when people hold dogmatic beliefs and are unwilling to change them even when evidence is staring them in the face. That is what I would consider to be truly closed-minded. But to call someone closed minded for not believing in the possibility of some thing or other (santa, space tea pot, a perfect state of communism, the innate goodness of humans) is to engage in a sort of closed-mindedness yourself. You want that person to hold your belief instead of their own, and you use the term close-mindedness to try and bully that person into abandoning their belief and adopting your own.

*Please note that my use of the pronoun "you" is not referring to any individual poster. It is a generalized "you".

 

[Jack Flak]

When I was five, my mind was very open, but I've learned, analyzed, and come to conclusions for about twenty-five years since then, so good luck fighting your way in now.

 

[Ilah]

I happy to read your original post. I am INTJ - or at least all the tests say I am - but am into the mystical/metaphysical. That makes two of us at least.

But most NTs I run into will not concider believing in something that cannot be proven. The responses to this post seem to reinforce that.

It seems to me like a high N would make some one more likely to be open to the possibility, but this does not seem to be the case.

Ilah

Hi all

I spend a fair amount of my life among other rationalists, my boss is one, and various other people around my work who are very influencial, along with a few suppliers....

I know science is generally a good thing, but these dudes seem to be rather em, er, closed minded to the more "out of there" topics....

I have read up a fair bit on astrology, can chart, predict etc. My boss and various others think it's all hokey. You should hear him when I try and get him to even consider the topic of fairies or elfs or anything (LOL), he just wont even go there.... LOL

Surely being rational means reading up enough to make an informed decision, rather than simply writing stuff off based on no knoweldge what so ever...

Ok My line on fairys is generally around well if you can't prove they don't exsist surely one should consider it. Ok that whole subject area is a little tounge in cheek but there are so many other main stream subject he is just closed off to. I did mange to get him to an accupuncturist at one point.

Intersting that JK rowling, when she wrote Hermoine Granger and Looney Lovegood, she was drawing parallels to Hermoineys text book learning v's Luna's more creeative thinking, which in book 7 was proven to be more accurate than the closed mindedness of Hermonie..... OK I may be over thinking this a little.

Interested to ehar you NT's thought and those who watch em....

Lis

 

[runvardh]

Sorry for the late reply, I actually thought I'd posted a response to this already. I think I'm somewhere around 49.5N, but it's hard to say, as where I live isn't listed. That's probably as accurate as I'll get, unless I can find a more accurate map.

Haha, I'm a little late too I guess. You shoudn't have trouble seeing that constellation; although, it is getting closer to the sun now. I think I might take a look this weekend...

 

[Nocapszy]

Hi all

I spend a fair amount of my life among other rationalists, my boss is one, and various other people around my work who are very influencial, along with a few suppliers....

I know science is generally a good thing, but these dudes seem to be rather em, er, closed minded to the more "out of there" topics....

I have read up a fair bit on astrology, can chart, predict etc. My boss and various others think it's all hokey. You should hear him when I try and get him to even consider the topic of fairies or elfs or anything (LOL), he just wont even go there.... LOL

LOL

Surely being rational means reading up enough to make an informed decision, rather than simply writing stuff off based on no knoweldge what so ever...

Yes, that's true. You've gotten me curious. Can you refer me to any notable texts you've on elves? I haven't found any, and I have a paper due by the end of the semester.

My teachers are the same way

Ok My line on fairys is generally around well if you can't prove they don't exsist surely one should consider it.

Yeah dude. I'm with you.
I can't prove that global warming isn't true, so I'm going to spend the next four years donating regularly to my local studies for the remedies.

Or what about black holes. No one's ever seen them. How do we know they're there? Maybe it's actually a man in a black cloak standing with a hookshot drawing in everything in reach. How do we know?

I've heard something about these mathematicians... they say they can prove it, but they didn't see! They don't KNOW.