The Scout Mindset - read-along

While it's true that most complainers put hardly any effort in, the actual effort required to do what she suggests requires monastic dedication.

Yes, but also monks are real and you could actually become one if you tried?

Delete your Twitter and Facebook accounts and get off social media. I recommend it strongly. It works very well to remove yourself from that sort of toxicity and such-like things. Living without social media is entirely doable, which I know because I do it. I’m not even a monk.

FWIW that sentence ends with a citation of a forum post written in 2014, so unless you're saratiara2 on WeddingBee, you can probably be confident that it isn't you.

(I originally posted this to Goodreads)

TDLR: A good book with mass appeal to help people care more about being accurate. Fairly easy to read, which makes it easy to recommend to many people.

I've met Julia a few times and am friendly with her. I'd be happy if this book does well, and expect that to lead to a (slightly) more reasonable world.

That said, in the interest of having a Scout Mindset, I want to be honest about my impression.

The Scout Mindset is the sort of book I'm both happy with and frustrated by. I'm frustrated because this is a relatively casual overview of what I wish were a thorough Academic specialty. I felt similarly with The Life You Can Save when that was released.

Another way of putting this is that I was sort of hoping for an academic work, but instead, think of this more as a journalistic work. It reminds me of Vice Documentaries (which I like a lot) and Malcolm Gladwell (in a nice way), instead of Superforecasting or The Elephant in the Brain. That said, journalistic works have their unique contributions in the literature, it's just a very different sort of work.

I just read through the book on Audible and don't have notes. To write a really solid review would take more time than I have now, so instead, I'll leave scattered thoughts.

1. The main theme of the book is the dichotomy of "The Scout Mindset" vs. "The Soldier Mindset", and more specifically, why the Scout Mindset is (almost always?) better than the Solider Mindset. Put differently, we have a bunch of books about "how to think accurately", but surprisingly few on "you should even try thinking accurately." Sadly, this latter part has to be stated, but that's how things are.

2. I was expecting a lot of references to scientific studies, but there seemed to be a lot more text on stories and a few specific anecdotes. The main studies I recall were a very few seemingly small psychological studies, which at this point I'm fairly suspect of. One small note: I found it odd that Elon Musk was described multiple times as something like an exemplar of honesty. I agree with the particular examples pointed to, but I believe Elon Musk is notorious for making explicit overconfident statements.

3. Motivated reasoning is a substantial and profound topic. I believe it already has many books detailing not only that it exists, but why it's beneficial and harmful in different settings. The Scout Mindset didn't seem to engage with much of this literature. It argued that "The Scout Mindset is better than the Soldier Mindset", but that seems like an intense simplification of the landscape. Lies are a much more integral part of society than I think they are given credit for here, and removing them would be a very radical action. If you could go back in time and strongly convince particular people to be atheistic, that could be fatal.

4. The most novel part to me was the last few chapters, on "Rethinking Identity". This section seems particularly inspired by the blog post Keep Your Identity Small by Paul Graham, but of course, goes into more detail. I found the mentioned stories to be a solid illustration of the key points and will dwell on these more.

5. People close to Julia's work have heard much of this before, but maybe half or so seemed rather new to me.

6. As a small point, if the theme of the book is about the benefits of always being honest, the marketing seemed fairly traditionally deceiving. I wasn't sure what to expect from the cover and quotes. I could easily see potential readers getting the wrong impression looking at the marketing materials, and there seems to be little work to directly make the actual value of the book more clear. There's nothing up front that reads, "This book is aiming to achieve X, but doesn't do Y and Z, which you might have been expecting." I guess that Julia didn't have control over the marketing.

TL;DR: Choir agrees preacher’s sermon was very interesting.

So yes, I read this book with no small amount of motivation to enjoy it as I like Julia’s other stuff and am often terrified by the misery that irrationality causes. This is likely not a very impartial comment.

If we assume the goal was to achieve maximum possible swing in total human rationality*, I think it was correct to write the book with a less academic tone than some would have liked. If there had been a load more Bayes’ Theorem in it, people like me would have enjoyed it slightly more, but many others would have stopped reading.

Getting fresh blood to appreciate the benefits of rationality is huge. Once they’re in, they can explore more academic/technical resources if they want.

And even if you are very familiar with the subject matter, you may still need a hand in stopping your soldier mindset barging around with his ridiculous ideas. I have a Zoom call with friends in a bit, and despite just having read The Scout Mindset and being in the middle of writing this sentence, I’ll probably still get too attached to my beliefs once we start talking politics. There’s plenty of low-hanging fruit out there when it comes to walking the talk.

*Whatever the actual goal was, I don't think this is a terrible proxy.

"Can I believe this?" (searching for evidence something is true) v "Must I believe this?" (searching for evidence something is false)

Tim Urban makes the same point in The Thinking Ladder. In particular, his description of how a Sports Fan thinks, which was inspired by Jonathan Haidt.

Feeling embattled is one of two sources of identity that the book mentions, the other being pride. Re-reading just now, I see that her examples of identity through pride were also embattled ones (formula/breast-feeding activists, cryptocurrency proponents, polyamorists), but it doesn't seem necessary, so patriot and gymbro identities fit in the pride category.

A possible counterexample: I gather that many people identify as being part of the USA, which is the most powerful country on the planet. Do they think of themselves as beset by iniquity from all sides?

Like, identities often feel 'morally powerful'. As the book quotes Megan McArdle saying: "The messages that make you feel great about yourself... are the ones that suggest you're a moral giant striding boldly across the landscape, wielding your inescapable ethical logic". What's so different about feeling like you're a literal giant striding boldly across the landscape, wielding your inescapable power?

But they'd probably have to have years and years of correctly predicted boring missions to make up for the amount of incorrect 99% predictions, right?

Maybe the Star Trek universe has low key solved aging, so even though it doesn't seem like years between episodes, it really is. :P

It could also be due to selection bias.

I think this is a reason why focusing on 'calibration' is sort of a mistake? Like, look, the thing it's doing is making the probabilities you say useful to other people / explicit EV calculations that you do yourself. It's one of the skills in the toolbox; you also want good concepts, you also want accuracy, and so on. 

Looking at the early section on motivational advice, I was reminded of Antifragile (my review, Scott's review). Motivational advice which assures success if one believes hard enough and encourages people to try for things despite long odds doesn't look like it helps those individuals. If this advice is widely spread and followed, who benefits? Possibly society as a whole. If individuals in general overestimate their chances of success, try, and largely fail, then there's a much larger pool to select from, and hopefully the best successes are better than they otherwise would be. Deceptive advice transfers antifragility from individuals to the system. 

On the same subject, I've long felt a disdain for that sort of motivational rhetoric as trite, but I'm still not sure why. The connection to self deception provided by Galef is one possible explanation. Has anyone else experienced something similar, or have an explanation for why that might be the case?

Thank you for doing this! 

I was planning to listen to the book, and I hope I can get around to leaving some comments with thoughts here.

I'm considering buying this book. I would appreciate opinions from anybody who cares to answer.

How does this book compare to the sequences; does it explore topics which aren't covered by the sequences?

Does it function well as an introduction to rationality, as something which I could lend out to friends?

I expect this book to be well-written and have interesting examples, but I expect it will mostly cover ground I'm already familiar with. That's okay with me, the more I go over things, the more they get into my head and new examples help internalize thoughts in  a way factual knowledge doesn't.

I expect I will learn at least one new thing that isn't just an example. 

I expect that after listening to this book these ideas will be more in my head for the next week or month and so I will notice relevant issues and opportunities in my own life, which will help further internalize the ideas. But I also expect that big "in my head"-ness will diminish after a week or two. 

Meta - I often relate to things with personal examples, so that might be a lot of my commentary. 

The title and cover image reminds me of my grandfather who had been a Soviet scout in WW2. His job was to go far ahead closer to enemy lines, and radio back how to adjust their artillery fire to hit more accurately. He got shot out of a tree when the Germans saw the glint off his binoculars. Being a scout can be dangerous!

Julia Galef is a top-notch communicator. I hope to learn how she gets these ideas across to an audience less, um, obsessed with them than I am. I also hope that rather that I can lend the book to a few people and get these ideas across in somebody else’s words rather than my own.