The Scout Mindset is my new go-to book recommendation for people interested in an introduction to decision-making and “applied rationality”. It is delightfully accessible and informative without being culty or condescending (which can be rare for this genre).
One of the book’s key concepts is motivated reasoning – a subset of confirmation bias in which we more readily believe something we wish to be true, and similarly, have harsher standards of evidence for things we wish to be false – “can I believe this” vs “must I believe this”. Scout mindset is the opposite: aiming to have an accurate view of reality regardless of what you want to be true.
Rather than just explaining why we are flawed decision-makers and telling us how to fix it, Galef provides quite an empathetic take, walking us through the psychological and social reasons for motivated reasoning. In this vein, she also deftly addresses common concerns, like the idea that self-deception leads to happiness, making a persuasive case that scout mindset is something to aspire to.
Having established this, Galef provides highly practical methods for avoiding motivated reasoning – little thought experiments that we can use when analysing situations. For example, the Conformity test: if nobody else held this view, would you still hold it?
The Scout Mindset is a fantastic launching point. For people who find themselves inspired by the book and want to learn more about applied rationality, several of the other works Galef references (e.g Superforecasting, Thinking, Fast and Slow) are good followups.
Scout mindset: “the motivation to see things as they are, not as you wish they were”.
Motivated reasoning:
Misconceptions:
Practical techniques:
COMMON THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS The Double Standard Test – Are you judging one person (or group) by a different standard than you would use for another person (or group)? The Outsider Test – How would you evaluate this situation if it wasn’t your situation? The Conformity Test – If other people no longer held this view, would you still hold it The Selective Skeptic Test – If this evidence supported the other side, how credible would you judge it to be? The Status Quo Bias Test – If your current situation was not the status quo, would you actively choose it?