Essay:Quantifying Openmindedness

We quantify intelligence (IQ), academic performance (grades), body weight (pounds or kilograms), running speed, and all sorts of other personal characteristics. But perhaps more useful than any of those numbers would be a measure of open-mindedness.

By "open-mindedness" we mean a genuine willingness to consider the evidence before rejecting an idea. We do not mean tolerance, or a rejection of absolute truth, or skepticism. Open-mindedness here means what the dictionary says: "receptive to arguments or ideas."

One way to measure open-mindedness is to test for close-mindedness, and then take the converse. A subject for our measurement can be asked if he views certain proposals as impossible. By impossible we do not mean mathematically impossible, but so unlikely as to be considered absurd. Belief in impossibility is a sign of close-mindedness, because it reflects the unwillingness of the subject to be "receptive" to the possibility.

Test Your Open-mindedness

1. Do you resist admitting the possibility that a conservative approach to education is far more effective for students than a liberal one?
2. If it were proven to your satisfaction that some idea yorship reducestar Wars") is impossible?
3. Do you think that it is impossible that the Shroud of Turin is authentic?
4. Do you thine for this idea?

a. If no, then is that because you have never heard of it?.

ii. If more than 1 hour, then ... [Optional question: When, where, what and how did you review the evidence? If the answers are consistent with your claim of spending more than an hour, then ...] ... you gain a point for open-mindedness.

iii. If you have not reviewed the evidence due to lack of time or interest, have you formed an opinion about the idea anyway?

Further Refinements

A more sophisticated approach would be to replace the time threshold (an hour in the above example) with an analog version or formula that converted time spent reviewing the evidence of a new idea into a a variable for openmindedness. For example, the open-mindedness variable O could be:

<math>O = t/60</math>

where t is the time spent in minutes. O could then be summed over a series of topics, and normalized by dividing it by the number of topics.