Scout Mindset
by Julia Galef · first published 2021
78% recommend19% neutral3% critical
Why HN recommends it
Readable, practical case for seeking what's true rather than defending your beliefs (scout vs. soldier mindset), with concrete steps for spotting your own biases; suits anyone wanting to think and debate more clearly.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"When it comes to what we believe, humans see what they want to see. In other words, we have what Julia Galef calls a "soldier" mindset. From tribalism and wishful thinking, to rationalizing in our personal lives and everything in between, we are driven to defend the ideas we most want to believe--and shoot down those we don't. But if we want to get things right more often, argues Galef, we should train ourselves to have a "scout" mindset. Unlike the soldier, a scout's goal isn't to defend one side over the other. It's to go out, survey the territory, and come back with as accurate a map as po
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I really love Julia Galef's take on this in the book "The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't". It's not quite humility, but it's close. Instead of trying to win arguments, try to find out what's true. Be humble in what you know and don't know.…
on “Combating disinformation with humility” ↗I'd say that The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't [0] is the book for the current moment. Don't be put off by the subtitle. It's not about condemning a particular group as fuzzy thinkers. Rather, it's…
on “Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?” ↗In The Scout Mindset, Julia Galef calls a very related state "the soldier mindset" - this is similar enough to the term you proposed but I think you would enjoy reading the book.
on “Bonhoeffer on Stupidity” ↗Not really. Self-delusion is so-called "soldier mindset" while realistic evaluation is the "scout mindset". You can be pessimistic or optimistic in both cases, they are orthogonal. I recommend a book by Julia Galef with the same name [1]. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42041926-the-scout-minds...
on “Depression is more than low mood, it’s a change of consciousness” ↗…Have Failed - Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics - The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't - Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans - Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage - Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized…
on “Ask HN: What book changed your life?” ↗…ourselves dumb. This is a good insight. Lots of stupidity is a lack of imagination rather than a lack of raw intelligence. This is also an idea that Julia Galef illuminates in great detail in her book "The Scout Mindset." She describes this as the difference between "Scout Mindset", which attempts to figure out what is correct, and "Soldier Mindset", or "stupidity" the way this article describes it, which attempts to…
on “Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing” ↗Hands down The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't [0]. The subtitle might make you think this is a gotcha book about "wrong thinkers" but it's really a practical guide about how to improve your own…
on “Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?” ↗I can strongly recommend the book "The Scout Mindset" by Julia Galef. It's not only an excellent discussion/lesson on exactly this, it's also an incredibly well written book.
on “Be curious, not judgmental” ↗+1 for the appendix reference to Scout Mindset. It's a really great read, with practical steps you can take to start down the path of scout mindset thinking. https://www.amazon.com/Scout-Mindset-Perils-Defensive-Thinki...
on “Cocktail party ideas” ↗Scout Mindset by Julia Galef. It is a light read so I recommend it widely. It is about the general topic of making good decisions and having correct opinions which is helpful to all of us. Caveat: I expect many HN…
on “Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?” ↗For a book around this, I would recommend Scout Mindset by Julia Galef, which close to a self-help-type book but still highly informative while still being digestible. From the ACX review [1]: > Of the fifty-odd biases discovered by Kahneman, Tversky, and…
on “Feynman on group decision-making at Los Alamos (1985)” ↗…attaching to our tools and more time looking at evidence and metrics in a dispassionate way. As Paul Graham once said, keep your identities small. A great book that's vital to grokking this stuff is The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef. She argues we should always just go where the evidence leads. But our monkey brains are bad at this, so it takes a lot of conscious effort or we'll do it poorly. I think JS framework mania…
on “The front end community wants to wash its hands of the decade we lost” ↗…with them. When their belief (and thus their identity) is threatened, people readily perform whatever mental gymnastics allow them to continue believing they're in the right. The excellent book The Scout Mindset covers this in depth.
on “Was everyone stupid back then?” ↗…Fast and Slow: introspection about how the mind may work, common biases and traps. I often think about the fast/slow system divide and notice when I just want to coast along doing fast thinking. The Scout Mindset: very neatly describes a way of being which I rarely attain, but aspire to.
on “Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?” ↗Bayesian probability or Bayesian thinking in general Like many, I learned Bayes' theorem for an exam. I even did well. But it clicked only when I was reading The Scout Mindset (by Julia Galef). I cannot really tell why. I think it helped me connect math formalism with more real-world examples outside of statistics.
on “Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?” ↗