"Being open minded isn’t about accepting things mindlessly. Being open minded is about having the information and then making the best decisions you can. A chap called Ian Rowland who wrote a good book on cold-reading made the point that if you’re a chef and you think, ‘well I know if I put poison in this soup and give it to these 200 people it’s going to kill them but, hey, I’ll be open minded’, that’s not being open minded, that’s just being ignorant. That’s just not working with the information you’ve got. So we have information on things like placebo effect and information about cold-reading. These things exists – false memories and anecdotal [evidence], all those things that are important – and taking that on board is just about being able to make better decisions. That’s about being truly open minded. Ignoring them and putting them to one side in this pursuit of easy answers and ‘intuition is the be-all and end-all of truth’, that’s not being open minded at all. I think that’s very narrow minded and certainly to laugh at people who say that evidence is important, I think that’s hypocrisy of the worst kind, to call them narrow minded."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Derren_Brown
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Derren Brown
160 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Derren Brown →
Related Quotes
"I decided that my magic had to change. That I had to give serious thought to presentation. That, in fact, my presenta…"
"Magicians do not, as a rule, presume that their audiences are intelligent and sensitive enough to want the magic to b…"
"Few things make me more livid than insulting bad theatre of any sort. Conversely, perfectly realised and exquisitely …"
"One minute she is a sweet old silly, knitting herself a set of syringe covers and talking about her favourite flowers…"
"Not believing in something is not in itself a belief or a philosophy: it is the 'ism' at the end that tends to cause …"
"Uninformed strong opinions - and I particularly include religious ones, which for some reason get special treatment -…"
"One can be a true believer in anything: psychic ability, Christianity or, as Bertrand Russell classically suggested (…"
"The appreciation of a painting or a piece of music, for example, or even falling in love, is all about our subjectivi…"
"We are allowed to question people about their politics or ethics and expect them to defend their beliefs, or at least…"
"I deeply, and widely, believe that performance is a very personal affair, and that one must pursue one’s own sense of…"