The Scout Mindset - Galef

Julia Galef’s first book, about the differences between motivated reasoning (“soldier mindset”) and truth-seeking (“scout mindset”), and why people engage in one rather than the other.

I expected this to mostly be a distillation of CFAR/LessWrong-style ideas for a pop audience—which it does do, and which is great. But what really interests me about Julia’s approach is that she focuses on the root causes of motivated reasoning as emotional/attitudinal, rather than cognitive. Writing about rationality often imagines that if only we could just explain people’s biases to them and show them some Bayesian reasoning, they’d start thinking clearly. Instead, Julia recognizes that motivated reasoning fulfills important emotional and social functions. By default, a truth-seeking mindset generally doesn’t fill those functions, so if we’d like to get people to adopt the “scout mindset,” we’ve got to address those needs head-on.

The six needs Julia identifies: {comfort (avoiding unpleasant emotions)}, {self-esteem (feeling good about ourselves)}, {morale (motivating ourselves to do hard things)}, {persuasion (convincing ourselves so we can convince others)}, {image (making ourselves look good)}, {belonging (fitting into social groups)}.

Much of the meat of the book is indeed distilled ideas that I might expect to see in LessWrong, but written through these lenses—generally meant to address emotional challenges, rather than cognitive ones.

The proposed solutions to the six functions of motivated reasoning:

• comfort and self-esteem (ch. 7): a small subset of coping strategies don’t involve misleading yourself; choose these! e.g. make a plan, notice silver linings, reframe the goal, count your blessings, notice things could be worse
• morale (ch 8): here she mostly argues that motivated reasoning behaviors which produce motivation are a bad idea, and you’d be better off without them. She suggests that truth-seeking behaviors can be liberating, but I don’t think this really serves the same function.
• persuasion and image (ch 9): people overrate how important epistemic is in these functions; actually, people mostly estimate competence from social confidence; also, epistemic humility is inspiring
• belonging (ch. 13-15): the argument is mostly that this is dangerous, and that we should be wary of too strong a sense of belonging to a social group.

Calibration test

She includes a test for calibrating your confidence. My results:

• 55% confidence: 56%
• 65%: 75%
• 75%: 67%
• 85%: 100%
• 95%: 100%

Q. Define the “comfort” function which soldier mindset serves.
A. Maintaining a belief to avoid unpleasant emotions.

Q. Define the “self-esteem” function which soldier mindset serves.
A. Maintaining a belief to feel good about ourselves.

Q. Define the “morale” function which soldier mindset serves.
A. Maintaining a belief to motivate ourselves to do something hard.

Q. Define the “persuasion” function which soldier mindset serves.
A. Maintaining a belief so that we can be more convincing to others.

Q. Define the “image” function which soldier mindset serves.
A. Maintaining beliefs which make us look better to others.

Q. Define the “belonging” function which soldier mindset serves.
A. Maintaining beliefs to fit into social groups.

Thought experiments for noticing bias

Q. Name three thought experiments Julia introduces to notice bias.
A. double standard test, outsider test, conformity test, selective skeptic test, status quo bias test

{Double standard test} (thought experiment for noticing bias): {are you judging a person by a different standard than you’d use for another person group?}

{Outsider test} (thought experiment for noticing bias): {what would you think if this weren’t your situation?}

{Conformity test} (thought experiment for noticing bias): {if others no longer held your belief, would you still?}

{Selective skeptic test} (thought experiment for noticing bias): {if this evidence supported the other side, how credible would you find it?}

{Status quo bias test} (thought experiment for noticing bias): {if your current situation wasn’t the status quo, would you choose it?}