hawkeye10 wrote:a closed mind can't be a good thing. Not only is there always new information available for consideration but the mind needs to ripen with age. For many people this does not happen, they might be middle aged but they are essentially the same people they were in high school. But ideally the mind and the person as a whole keep growing. A closed mind is a mind that has shut down development, it has started the process of death. The same goes for the heart, a person with a closed heart is dieing.
Talking about open/close mindedness is not a game, it is an observation of what is. To be open minded and open hearted is to be fully alive, as apposed to dieing or dead as the closed mind and closed hearted are. Yes, one state is better than the other, open minded people are better than close minded people.
I agree with most of this - except perhaps for the categorical statement at the end of the 2nd paragraph. The truth is which is better (by some as yet undefined standard) depends on the circumstances.
It is an interesting, observable, and much commented on fact of the history of both mathematics and physics that most revolutionary discoveries and innovations - particularly those involving fundamental conceptual innovations - have almost all been made by very young people, mostly men in their early twenties (but that may be merely a cultural aberration). Moreover there are numerous examples of these same formerly young, revolutionary innovators themselves later stubbornly rejecting the next generation of conceptual innovation. Einstein is perhaps the most prominent example in the last century. This suggests that the intellectual "growing" and ripening" we do with age, education and experience not only may not contribute directly to some aspects of creativity and open mindedness, but may well bring its own "closing" of at least some facets of what we call "mind". Not necessarily all facets - experimental physics and applied mathematics & engineering generally do not exhibit this prominence of very young practicioners in the innovations and breakthroughs that occur. On the contrary, in these areas the innovators generally are much older and more experienced.
All this suggests that we have only scratched the surface of what we mean by "mind" in this discussion. Francis has correctly pointed out that our perceptions of the "minds" of others are just that - perceptions often heavily influenced by their ability to communicate and, by inference, ours to understand them.
We are also infected with various fallacious categorical prejudgements. Dagmar's example of the soldier is an example. I spent a career in naval aviation and am now enjoying a second successful one in the engineering & construction business. I can tell you that the young pilots in the squadrons I served in were generally far more alert to new information, even that which contradicted their prejudgements, and were far better at dealing actively with contradictions until the game played out than are the very well educated engineers I encounter in my present activities. The reason is simple - that is an elementary survival skill in air combat: it is not in engineering. I could make a similar observation about more senior military leaders and their counterparts in business (this too often defies popular prejudgements).
Finally, I believe that most of us vary a good deal by day, by season and by subject matter in the degrees of our open and closed mindedness. It is, after all an imperfect subjective judgement, made by an observer himself subject to the same uncertainties, and very often dependent on the specific issues in dispute as well as numerous other emotional and situational factors.
