Being open-minded is not a sign of weakness

IN W M Blurton’s letter “Trying to change opinion is pointless” (October 5), we are told that the only ones who are likely to have their opinions swayed are people who do not know their own mind or people who are weak and can be persuaded by others.

Opinions are built up from all manner of things such as people’s life experience; peer pressure; the information at hand; how objective they are about a particular issue; how susceptible they are to logical fallacies such as ad hominem, appeal to authority, personal incredulity; confirmation bias and so on.

While other people’s opinions should be respected, we do not have to adopt them for ourselves and we are free to criticise them and make suggestions.

A letter in the opinions page can: supply information of which the reader was previously unaware; put into context something that the reader had mistaken, or any number of things. The open-minded reader takes on the task of going through the letters page not only to confirm that their own ideas are largely the right ones but, should there be a difference, become enlightened about things that are going on in the world from somebody else’s point of view.

Being open-minded is not a sign of weakness and being able to work out how new information should be evaluated is a strength that, sadly, many people do not seem to possess to any great extent nowadays.

A friend of mine for many years said that the day you stop learning is the day that you are dead. If you never learn anything from the opinions page for fear of being classed by others as “weak” or not knowing your own mind, then that might well be the case.

Paul Grosse, Sinfin