The Scout Mindset

Author: Julia Galef

Part 1

Directionally Motivated Reasoning: (Also just called motivated reasoning). Can I believe this? vs Must i believe this? Unconscious motivations can affect the conclusions we draw…Blanket category for confirmation bias, rationalization, denial, wishful thinking, etc.

Soldier mindset — “Can I believe it?” for things we want to except and “must I believe it” for things we want to reject.

Reasoning as Defensive Combat

“When we reason, it feels like we’re being objective.”

Points out that lots of nomenclature and terms around reasoning are somewhat militaristic… Select examples: 

“built on facts…backed up by arguments” 
“someone might poke holes in our logic or shoot down our ideas” “our position might get challenged, destroyed, undermined, or weakened..”

Accuracy Motivated Reasoning: Evaluate ideas through the lens of “is it true?” Contrast with directionally motivated. Instead of “Can I believe it? Must I believe it?”

Solder Mindset — Directionally motivated reasoning Scout Mindset — Accuracy motivated reasoning

Being in scout mindset means wanting your “map”—your perception of yourself and the world—to be as accurate as possible.

With scout mindset, threats do not exist—Once you identify what is wrong with your map, you fix it and move on.

Chapter 2: What the soldier is protecting.

Chesterton’s Fence — When you advocate changing something, you should make sure you understand why it is the way that it is in the first place.

He posits if you see a wall in the middle of nowhere and decide why it exists and decide to tear it down….You shouldn’t be confident in tearing it down unless you understand why it was constructed in the first place.

If we destroy motivated reasoning, we ought to understand why it exists in the first place.

Emotional Benefits

• Comfort: Avoiding unpleasant emotions.
  • Soldier mindset can help alleviate fear, stress & regret
• Self Esteem: soldier mindset “protects our egos by finding flattering narratives for unflattering facts.”
  • Psychologists distinguish between self-enhancement (Boosting your ego) and self-protection (Guarding your ego)
• Morale: blind optimism can be needed to confidently make bold moves & tough choices.

Social Benefits

• Image: : Choosing beliefs that make us look good. Psychologists call this “impression management” evolutionary psychologists call it “signaling”
• Belonging: Demonstrating loyalty, rejecting evidence to fit in..endorsing statement without considering implication. *

Tall poppy syndrome?? Being too ambitious, or sticking out from the group—get cut down to size.

Chapter 3: Why Truth is More Valuable Than We Realize

• Trade off between judgement and belonging

Part II - Developing Self Awareness

Chapter 4: Signs of a Scout

A key factor preventing us from being in scout mindset more frequently is our conviction that we’re already in it.

feeling objective doesn’t make you a scout.

Viewing yourself as rational can backfire — The more you trust your own intuitions, insights, etc, the less you question them.

Being smart and knowledgeable doesn’t make you a scout.

Cites interesting Dan Kahan study. The more scientific knowledge folks had on politically charged issues such as climate change, the more they diverged.

Is people become better informed, we would expect them to converge on the truth—but the Kahan study suggests the opposite.

** Signs of Scout**

• Do you tell people when you realize they were right?
• How do you react to personal criticism?
• Do you ever prove yourself wrong?
• Do you take precautions to avoid fooling yourself?
• Do you have any good critics?

Chapter 5: Noticing Bias

You can’t detect motivated reasoning in yourself just by scrutinizing your reasoning and concluding that it makes sense.

Some different Bias Tests

The Double Standard Test

Am I judging other peoples behavior by a standard that I wouldn’t apply to myself? Gives the example of “dan” in a school with 30 girls & 250 boys. He’s upset that the girls pick the guys with the best characteristics, things he doesn’t poses. At first, he writes off all women and then realizes he would do the same thing if the numbers were flipped.

opposite double standard — The opposite happens too. Judging yourself to a standard you wouldn’t apply to others.

The Outsider Test

Shares story of intel. Intel started as a memory company, a new Japanese competitor starts to take over the market with better products, intel can’t compete. Two cofounders ask themselves, ‘what would the new ceo do if the board kicked us out’ … Get out of the memory business…

outsider test: Imagine someone else stepped int your shoes—what do you expect they would do in your situation?

The Conformity Test

Tells a childhood story of listening to music with her cousin as young children. The cousin tells her “this song is my favorite” to which the subject said it was hers as well. Then the cousin reveals it was a trick to see if she’d copy.

conformity test: Imagine this person told me that they no longer held this view. Would I still hold it? Would I feel comfortable defending it to them?

The Selective Skeptic Test

Imagine this evidence supported the other side. How credible would you find it then?

The Status Quo Bias Test

A motivation to defend whatever situation happens to be the status quo.

Possibly a popular bias because we are loss averse

The pain we feel from a loss outweighs the pleasure we feel from a similar-size gain.

Chapter 6: How Sure Are You?

We like feeling confident (My thoughts, it’s just more self soothing)

Not all overconfidence is due to motivated reasoning. Sometimes we simple don’t realize how complicated a topic is

…

a large portion of overconfidence stems from a desire to feel certain. Certainty is simple. Certainty is comfortable. Certainty makes us feel smart and competent.

A bet can reveal how sure you really are

Bet’s are just betting on horses. Bet is any decision where you stand to gain or lose something of value depending on outcome—Money, health, time, reputation, etc.

Equivalent Bet Test

Imagine 4 balls in a container, one is grey—if you reach in and pull the grey ball you get $10k. Compare that to some other bet—IE. electric cars will be on the road within the year. If the cars bet is true, you get $10k. Which bet would you feel comfortable making??

Part III: Thriving Without Illusions

Chapter 7: Coping with Reality

Self-justification— a type of motivated reasoning, convincing oneself after-the-fact that they made the right choice.

Makes point that this isn’t entirely necessary, without self-justification we would

prolong the awful pangs of embarrassment. We would torture ourselves with regret over the road not taken…

Additionally, self justification can aid in resilience—easier to bounce back if you don’t hold yourself to account.

Chapter 8: Motivation without Self Deception

Self-belief model of success: If you convince yourself that you will succeed…you will find motivation to attempt hard things & persist. ^^ problematic mindset, because “you’re not supposed to think realistically about risk”

• An accurate picture of the odds helps you adapt your plan over time
• An Accurate picture of the odds helps you decide how much to stake on success
• Accepting variance gives you equanimity —> Cool graph showing vacillations but general positive trending on something. Remember random variance occurs and things can look bad immediately but zoom out & there may be a bigger, better trend.

Scouts rely on a different kind of morale. Instead of being motivated by the promise of guaranteed success, a scout is motivated by the knowledge that they’re making a smart bet, which they can feel good about having made whether or not it succeeds.

Chapter 9: Influence without Overconfidence

Common wisdom suggests confidence is a prerequisite for success and persuasion. Provides Bezos example— he repeatedly told investors they likely had a 70% chance of losing their money.

Types of confidence

epistemic confidence Certainty, how sure you are about what’s true.

social confidence Do you speak as though you are worth listening to? Do you act as though you belong there? Etc. Self Assurance.

People tend to judge you on social confidence, not epistemic confidence.

Explains study where students confidence is rated—Study concluded that

The more a student participated in conversation, used an authoritative voice, and had a relaxed demeanor, the more competent they seemed.

Two types of uncertainty.

• One is your own incompetence
• The other is due to a messy world People are less off-put by the latter.

Give informed estimates.

Have a plan.

One reason people don’t like hearing uncertain answers is that it leaves them at a loss for how to act.

Part 4 changing your mind

Chapter 10 - how to be wrong

Tetlock study reveals how poor experts are at predicting global events

mentions super forecasters—70% more accurate than professionals. credits their success with being able to be wrong?

super forecasters don’t justify position when wrong. instead they reevaluate and update model. They view errors as opportunities to improve.

You can incrementally revise beliefs.

Recency bias - giving more weight to what you have recently observed

Different types of lessons..

domain-general Applicable to many domains. Observations about how the world works, how your brain works or what kind of biases tend to influence your judgement.

domain-specific Specific to a single domain.

View being wrong/saying you’re wrong less as admitting a mistake and more as updating.

If you’re not changing your mind, you’re doing something wrong

Chapter 11 - Lean Into Confusion

Our ability to change our minds depends on how much we react when the world confounds your expectations.

Generally, we react to these situations my explaining them away.

If you want to become better at things, don’t shrug off situations where outcomes are unexpected.

Gives example of Spock dismissing others as illogical instead of trying to understand an emotional reaction (Particularly firing weapons on alien ships to demonstrate superior strength….Allens respond in anger instead of respecting the weapons which is fairly predictable)

The instinct to judge other people’s behavior as stupid, irrational, or crazy is very common, and it’s also a sign that there’s something you’re missing.

de minimus error an attempt to minimize the inconsistency between observations and theory.

Chapter 12 - Escape Your Echo Chamber

Outlines a casual magazine study where a conservative person and a liberal couple switch news media diets for a week. The conclusion is that everybody walked away convinced the other side was incredibly bias and unaware of the facts.

Additional study structured similarly but instead with conservatives & liberals reading from a twitter bot that rebroadcasted tweets from the other side….Folks being exposed ended up becoming more conservative or more liberal with exposure from outside of their echo chamber.

To give your self the best chance of learning from disagreement, you should be listening to people who make it easier to be open to their arguments, not harder.

Gives example of a subreddit where feminists & mens rights activists could engage in good-faith debates. Rules the moderators had in place included:

• Don’t insult other members or use epithets like feminazi or neckbeard
• Don’t generalize
• Disagree with specific people or specific views, rather than talking about what “feminists” believe as if they’re a monolith.

When we do encounter a good argument that’s new to us, we often mistake it for a bad argument we’re already familiar with.

Part V - Rethinking Identity

Chapter 13 - How Beliefs Become Identities

Mentions mommy wars—Apparently there is a big fight between moms who insist on breastfeeding and others who have no issue with formula…The bigger picture here is that peoples beliefs are becoming part of their identities, making waging war/hostility much easier.

Agreeing with a belief isn’t the same thing as identifying with it.

How does something go from a belief to identity? Why are there proud introvert shirts, but no proud extravert shirts, etc.

Research of identity still ongoing. Author has observed two things: feeling embattled & feeling proud.

beliefs crystallize into identities through the feeling of being under siege from a hostile world.

Signs a Belief Might Be an Identity

• Using the phrase “I believe.” What you believe should go without stating that you believe it. Using this language suggests that you are making a statement about you, what kind of person you are.
• Getting annoyed when an ideology system is criticized. Jumping to defend a perceived criticism might indicate that your identity is involved.
• Defiant Language.. Proud nerd, fearless formula feeder, etc. Proud, standing up, unapologetic, fearless, etc.
• A righteous tone. “The messages that make you feel great about yourself (and of course, your like-minded friends) are the ones that suggest you’re a moral giant striding body across the landscape, wielding your inescapable ethical logic.”
• Gatekeeping. “You can’t call yourself a feminist if X.” Great point here, “when a label is more than just a practical description of your beliefs…then the question of who else gets to wear that label actually matters. It becomes important to police the identity’s boundary.”
• Schadenfruede.
• Epithets. Snowflakes, neckbeards, woke brigade, libtards, etc.
• Having to Defend your view — “The more you’ve argued a position to other people, especially in public, the more it’s become linked to your ego and reputation, and the harder it is to abandon that position later.

Chapter 14 - Hold Your Identity Lightly

Quotes an Essay by Paul Graham titled “Keep Your Identity Small”

The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.

Difficult to live completely without labels, but critical to prevent those labels & identified from “colonizing your thoughts and values.” Which the author calls “Holding your identity lightly.”

Rescoping thing. Instead of calling yourself a vegan or a feminist, say “I am a person who agrees with most of the ideas that are part of the __ consensus”

^^ Sqaushes “someone is wrong on the internet syndrome”

Gives Goldwater example, father of modern American conservatism claiming “I’m not a me too republican” meaning if the party shifted away from his ideals, he would break from them. Gave honorable example of Goldwater urging Nixon to be honest and defending the integrity of the democratic senator spearheading the Nixon investigation.

Idealogical Turing test A way to determine if you really understand an ideology: Can you explain it as a believer would, convincingly enough that other people couldn’t tell the difference between you and a genuine believer?

It took me years of writing on the internet to learn what is nearly an iron law of commentary: The better your message makes you feel about yourself, the less likely it is that you are convincing anyone else.” Megan McArdle

Chapter 15 - A Scout Identity

Gives Blackmore example of a student turned scientist who dedicated a large part of their education and career to studying the paranormal, eventually she realizes there is enough evidence to suggest she’s wrong—but her identity was fairly established…Being a truth seeker first helped her make the switch.

Flip the Script Make the scout mindset (truth seeker) part of your identity. This can help save us from the other issues which pop up as we have a bigger, identity with many things to attach to/defend/etc (as outlined in 2 prev. Chapters)

Identity Makes the Hard Things Rewarding

If you pride yourself on being a scout, it becomes easier to resist the temptation to mock someone who disagrees with you, because you can remind yourself, “I’m not the kind of person who takes cheap shots,” and get a hit of pride.