Are you a scout or a soldier?

#2 Summary of The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef. Learn why you should ask yourself "Is it true?" more often.

Dec 22, 2021

I read. To get more out of what you read it helps to write. Welcome to actionable reading, book summaries with my concrete takeaways. Previous book was Atomic Habits. Please share it, like it or skip it. 🙏

Factual overview

Julia Galef published The Scout Mindset (Goodreads: 4.23, 2k+ ratings) in 2021 after she spent 5 years ensuring that presented evidence holds.

You should check her podcast Rationally Speaking; it’s produced since 2010 when podcasts weren’t a thing yet.

Who should read it?

Everyone who would like:

to ask themselves "is this true?" more often,
to improve the way you think, learn and discuss,
to learn how to change your mind and feel good about it.

Top 5 takeaways

Julia Galef is an important part of the rationalist movement (see also Astral Codex Ten and LessWrong). They value improvement of mental habits, drawing especially from fields of psychology and behavioural economics.

Rationalism is analysis pur. This can mean hyper-analysis and overthinking, but also valuable lessons for everyone; it never hurts to think twice, eh?

The case for the book is built on the famous Dreyfus affair; a Jewish member of the army's General Staff was accused and convicted of treason. He was pardoned after five years in prison because Georges Picquart finally asked himself: "Is it true?" instead of the "Must we believe it?" or "Can we believe it?" of the majority.

1) Soldier mindset is our default

Imagine you are under pressure to get "A" done (=investigation against Dreyfus) and you already invested a lot of energy in it. You are directionally motivated, your unconscious motives affect your conclusions. Galef uses this explanation from Tom Gilovich:

When we want something to be true we ask ourselves, "Can I believe this?", searching for an excuse to accept it. When we don't want something to be true, we instead ask ourselves, "Must I believe this?", searching for an excuse to reject it.

This is motivated reasoning. Also known as "denial, wishful thinking, confirmation bias, rationalization, tribalism, self-justification, overconfidence, delusion." We like what supports our opinion, and ignore what doesn't. For example:

When a politician from the rival party breaks the law, it proves how corrupt that whole party is, but when one of our politicians breaks the law, he's just a corrupt individual.

We reason and defend "our beliefs against threatening evidence," but it really feels like we are being objective, doesn't it? Our "arguments are either forms of attack or forms of defence," and changing our minds feels like surrender.

As soldiers we protect:

our comfort by avoiding negative emotions like fear, stress and regret ("I cannot reach those grapes… ah, it doesn't matter, they are sour anyhow!"),
our self-esteem by using beliefs to defend our strengths or weaknesses (Your grades are weak? "Grades aren't that important after all!"),
our morale by selectively focusing on optimistic parts of the situation and not the pessimistic ones (usually downplaying the relevance of the baseline odds of success),
our ability to convince ourselves and others in what we believe ourselves ("I am a good person", "I am happy with what I do", “My career is flying”),
our image by choosing beliefs that make us look good,
our belonging to a particular group by demonstrating loyalty, strongly identifying with the group and not even wanting to find out the consensus was wrong (flat Earth, anyone?).

Sounds familiar? It does to me! It would help if we weren’t always soldiers, but...

2) scout mindset needs a lot of practice!

Being smart and knowledgeable or feeling objective does not make you a scout yet. Galef provides these guiding questions:

Do you tell other people when you realize they were right? This means you prioritize the truth over your own ego.
How do you react to personal criticism? Did you ever reward/promote your critic or really acted upon criticism?
Do you ever prove yourself wrong? Publicly?
Do you take precautions to avoid fooling yourself? When explaining a tough situation at work to your partner, do you describe the argument without revealing which side you were on?
Do you have any good critics? Are there people who are critical of your beliefs, profession, or life choices AND you consider them thoughtful, even if you believe they are wrong?

In short, scouts learn to spot or prevent their own bias. And this is extremely hard, because our natural state is the one of the soldier.

3) Work on noticing your own bias

We get an offer to use five thought experiments:

Are you judging 'A' with different standard than 'B'?
How would you evaluate this situation if it wasn't your situation?
If other people (or your boss) no longer held this view, would you still hold it?
If this evidence supported the other side, how credible would you judge it to be?
If your current situation was not status quo, would you actively chose it?

This is an exercise of empathy. Scouts look at a situation from different angles, and not just march ahead as soldiers often do.

4) Never argue with the "other" side

Have you ever heard that you should listen to the other side? Escape your bubble, right? Well, it can only work if you listen to people you find reasonable.

You learn from disagreement if you listen to people you like and respect. Otherwise:

People with whom you have some common ground—intellectual premises, or a core value that you share—even though you disagree with them on other issues. People whom you consider reasonable, who acknowledge nuance and areas of uncertainty, and who argue in good faith.

But even in this case, learning from disagreements can be hard:

if we misunderstand each other's views,
if we encounter a good argument that is new to us, we often mistake it for a bad argument we already know,
because beliefs are interconnected: if I want to change one, I probably need to change others.

Listening to someone you do not respect is frustrating. You probably agree if you recently visited Facebook.

5) How sure are you?

100% sure! Probably nothing as long as it is in your area of expertise and if you understand the complexity of a topic. How often were you 100% sure last year?

Certainty is simple. Certainty is comfortable. Certainty makes us feel smart and competent.

What we should do instead is quantify our uncertainty; this degree of certainty is a prediction of the likelihood of being right. Example: When you think something is 80% likely, it actually happens 80% of time. You can try to calibrate your confidence here. It’s trivia and a bit US specific, but you will get the point. It is about how good you are in knowing what you do not know.

Another great method is to think in bets. How much would you be prepared to bet that you are right? 10.000? 100 or only 10? How confident do you feel that you would win that bet from 1-100%?

My personal experience / How did it change me?

Just look at all the questions above. They overwhelm, unless you often return to them or remind yourself, hey, I maybe should stop here and think!

I take them as an eye-opening inspiration and not as a problem solving prescription:

I stopped thinking I need to listen to the (unreasonable) other side.
I try to think: “How sure am I?”
I ask myself “Is it true?” more often.

That is it, Julia. Thanks.

Readwise Notes

My Readwise notes in markdown.

Closing remarks

This book is packed and no summary will do it justice. As always, everyone reads differently and I think you should give it a chance to see what sticks with you. The scout mindset will help you see things are often not as we wish them to be.

A shift to a scout mindset is hard work, but it could be worth a lot because “truth is more valuable than we realise.”

I rated it 5 stars and you should read it. Some evidence could maybe be shortened or dropped. But I guess that’s modern non-fiction?

Next book: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders. Subscribe below. 👇

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