Could we use this to make a new heuristic for knowing when one is being closed-minded? You're good at coming up with those sorts of things.
The "X is exactly the same as Y" is one, I think. I got in an argument with someone who asserted that Twitter was exactly the same as the old Unix utility 'talk'. Of course, how do you distinguish between obviously boring reinventions and stuff that really will have an impact?
My Intro Philosophy professor phrased it like this: "If you want to sound smart in front of your friends, make a distinction."
Our judgments of how intelligent people are usually come from how many relevant details they are able to see that we would otherwise have missed. So someone who asserts that Twitter is exactly the same as 'talk' is dumb. Someone who asserts that Twitter is exactly the same as 'talk', except that it's on the web, and it can broadcast to multiple people, and it's limited to 140 characters, and the social norms surrounding its use are different, and it's frequently used to share URLs that are automatically shortened, and that this practice is controversial because it breaks the decentralized nature of the web, sounds slightly more intelligent.
Yeah, but I think your philosophy prof was suggesting that useless distinctions are the stock in trade of tiny minds.
For instance, a web client that allows you to use IRC protocol is generally Just-The-Same-As-IRC. Putting it on the web doesn't do anything really different, except maybe that one doesn't have the inconvenience of installing IRC software.
But let's say that you had a really good help channel for your website, but that users of your website didn't typically find their way to IRC. Putting an IRC client right in the web page itself, configured to go straight to this help channel, is suddenly more of an innovation.
I don't know how to phrase this right, but there is a knack of noticing material distinctions, rather than useless ones. Maybe it's in noticing when certain limitations have been removed or added.
Maybe the real problem is that we're often unaware of how limited our world is, and what is doing the limiting. Perhaps the only way to notice when limitations have been removed is by sheer luck or that mysterious force called "creativity".
You couldn't have a mind that was constantly probing every tool for every limitation. Could you?
"""I don't know how to phrase this right, but there is a knack of noticing material distinctions, rather than useless ones. Maybe it's in noticing when certain limitations have been removed or added.""""
Knowing when a distinction is material frequently depends on context, goals, and experience. As Louis Pasteur said, "Chance favors only the prepared mind." I would be a little more generous, but still he's essentially right.
The problem is, some of the biggest discoveries have been of the form "x is the same as y."
Interesting question whether you could auto-detect closed mindedness though. One sign might be when people stop being surprised, or realizing that some earlier theory of theirs was wrong (which amount to the same thing).
The "X is exactly the same as Y" is one, I think. I got in an argument with someone who asserted that Twitter was exactly the same as the old Unix utility 'talk'. Of course, how do you distinguish between obviously boring reinventions and stuff that really will have an impact?