Essay talk:Quantifying Openmindedness

I think belief in impossibility means that you believe something can be impossible, which makes more sense *continues reading* -- Nx / talk 14:50, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Ahhhhh, you're right. I'm gonna change that now. Thanks. SJ ^Debaser 14:53, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Conclusion = WIN -- Nx / talk 15:01, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

It's definitely my strongest conclusion yet, with highly supportive evidence. SJ ^Debaser 15:03, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly with the conclusion. I think the big problem is that being a creationist, conservative and probably mentally retarded, he's incapable of thinking in non-black and white terms. In order to be open minded, you can't think like that. All of his questions are yes and no ones, to someone with a genuine open mind, those sort of things don't exist. Impossible for the Shroud of Turin to be genuine? He's railroading anyone who takes this test (seriously) into just the answers he wants to hear.

However, if all the pitfalls and forcing in the questions were intentional then you could say he's reasonably intelligent and knows very well what he's doing to get the results he wants (how open minded is it saying that!). ^bomination 15:30, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Thing is, it's so obvious that he's asking biased questions I am beginning to question whether or not he is a parodist - even though I know he's not. But I genuinely wonder how he can expect anyone to believe it as a real test. Maybe it's just cuz I'm a Brit, and over here we have a more moderate church following without the extreme right "mainstream" movement, so I'm not quite accustomed to the American Christian way of thinking. SJ ^Debaser 12:58, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

absolute truth

I love this line from the intro:

By "open-mindedness" I mean a genuine willingness to consider the evidence before rejecting an idea. I do not mean tolerance, or a rejection of absolute truth, or skepticism.

So he's supporting his view of the existence of his version "absolute truth" while presumably suggesting that other people keep an open mind about their views. 'Cause if you believe you have knowledge of "absolute truth" you can hardly have an open mind about it, can you?--Bob^{Not Jim} 19:50, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

I know. It's unreal. SJ ^Debaser 11:13, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Number 3

I know the poor man has difficulties expressing himself. But what does he mean by: "Do you resist the possibility that Hollywood values result in significant harm for those who believe in them, and to innocent bystanders? "

How do you "resist a possibility"? You could resist "admitting a possibility" I suppose - but at some level one could argue that everything has some (perhaps minute) possibility. Gagh - It's just garbage really.--Bob^{Not Jim} 12:25, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

He'll just say anything as long as it holds the most minute support for his cause. I was looking at an old CP newstalk archive last night and found one from about 19 months ago when Heath Ledger died - a user was criticising them for posting it on the front page and sticking the "Hollywood Values" label on it. Andy just kept saying the overdose was a result of Hollywood Values. Absolute Moron. SJ ^Debaser 12:33, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

12 and gravity

While it's also written on the Conservapedia:Open Mind article here, it might be worth adding in that if you had the open mind to say yes, I mean, no, (he fleets about with the wording, doesn't he) to no.12 you may as well be open to the possibility that 2 + 2 = 4.000001. There are some interesting physics essays and papers on the subject of maths, I think one is called On the Unreasonable Application of Maths to the Real World or something like that, and it is astonishing how simple sums describe the universe, but there's nothing special about it.^bomination 16:12, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I've never understood maths so I don't really pay much attention to Andy's mathematical ramblings, but just the fact he's the man saying it and the way he's worded it - "do you resist the possibility that this isn't actually true?" - makes it obvious he's going against established laws. 2 + 2 = 4.000001 is a good point though. SJ ^Debaser 16:36, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Dammit, I knew it was on RationalWiki: A mechanistic and hand wavey derivation of the inverse square law from first principles ^bomination 16:39, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I think we can consider this definitive evidence that Schlafly is actually just a chatbot. All of these questions could have easily been procedurally generated, and it looks like he's just running into floating point rounding errors here. -MVHVTMV (talk) 11:07, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

New questions

It looks like Andy's added a few new questions here. Some real winners, too. Any plans to update the essay? I'd do it myself if I wasn't in essay space. Colonel of Squirrels (talk) 21:09, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I'll have a look at it later when I have more time. Thanks for the update. SJ ^Debaser 12:01, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Basically JAQing off

Schafly's piece is basically "just asking questions" to make liberals look bad. Qzekrom (talk) 03:30, 14 October 2015 (UTC)