If there’s a line to be drawn between skepticism and mere nay-saying, or even downright cowardice, these comments have crossed it.

“New experiences can be bad experiences,” is so incontrovertible as to be meaningless, akin to a reminder that we are going to die some day.

The possibility of failure and/or disaster exists in every human undertaking. Whether it be going from the earth to the moon, from europe to the New World, or from your house to the grocery store, yes indeed, something bad can happen.

So. Not only can NEW experiences be bad experiences, so can the ones you’ve had a hundred times before. Clearly the smart move is to eschew not only the novel, but the routine as well.

I am surprised that the BA — who posed smiling and proud (and justifiably so) in front of the Space Shuttle, would put forth the effort to cut-and-paste such tommyrot.

[As others have noted, if the quoted comments were simply very poorly constructed sarcasm (one hesitates to use the word satire), please forgive my two cents.]

He would always try anything once, but if he didn’t like it then he’d never ever repeat the experience.

That seems like a fairly good rule of thumb to me. After all- there’s an old saying in Tennessee – I know it’s in Texas, it’s probably in Tennessee – that says, fool me once, shame on … shame on you. It fool me. We can’t get fooled again.[/quote]

Close, it’s
“Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”

At least that’s how it goes here in Texas.

I think my definition of “judgement” is different than yours… and probably different than most peoples. I’m going to have to think about this.

I agree that self-preservation is pretty much instinctual, btw. I’m just not sure if I agree with what level of intelligence and thought is needed for a “judgement” to occur.

By my personal definitions of these insufferably popluar terms, most of the ‘closed-minded’ folks i know tend to ignore important details like statistical evidence of potential harm, while ‘open-minded’ people are sufficiently alert to the possibility.

I’ll readily admit SOME RELATIVELY SMALL PROPORTION of the ‘open-minded’ are hyper-credulus to all sorts of nonsense. These may be balanced by a similar proportion of ‘closed-minded’ folks who couldn’t tell whether its dangerous to sleep on train tracks even after they’ve consulted their favorite soothsayer.

MAYBE, if “closed-mindedness” can ALSO can be defined as an inability to accept and rationally process real information, AND “open-mindedness” can ALSO be defined as a capacity to accept new information, then (MAYBE) the terms as so often ‘defined’ aren’t worth the considerable breath expended on them.

In my humble opinion? Attaching to these ambiguous terms the presence or lack of intellectual wherewithall is an extraordinarily ‘closed-minded’ exercise that isn’t nearly ‘open-minded’ enough to suit the messy details that are evident in the actuality. Closed or open, it is ludicrously meaningless, and tiresome beyond endurance.

http://www.glasbergen.com/images/sat.gif

“I think we need a new term for people who have an open mind, but just accept as true whatever is only remotely possible, rather than investigating honestly.”

The word “vacuous” seems appropriate for such a mind since it’ll suck in any bit of fluff it happens to come across. We could even make a distinction between the normal use of the word (e.g. meaning “empty-headed”) by spelling it “vacuuous”.