Thinking tool: Adopt a scout mindset
Actually try to figure out the truth, rather than defend a position.
In the army, a scout's job is to map the terrain accurately, while a soldier's job is to defend a position. Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset describes the two ways of reasoning more:
Soldier Mindset Scout Mindset Reasoning is like defensive combat. Reasoning is like mapmaking. Decide what to believe by asking either "Can I believe this?" or "Must I believe this?" depending on your motives. Decide what to believe by asking, "Is this true?" Finding out you're wrong means suffering a defeat. Finding out you're wrong means revising your map. Seek out evidence to fortify and defend your beliefs. Seek out evidence that will make your map more accurate.
People reason more like soldiers than scouts by default, and switching takes effort. But in the long run it's much more valuable to act like a scout, more often.
Some tips to apply this in practice:
- Notice when you're falling into soldier mode. Are you hoping for a specific answer? Do you feel relief when a study shows a certain conclusion, irritation at someone raising an objection, or a reluctance to look up a number in case it comes out the "wrong" way?
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You can still have hopes in scout mode! But being consciously aware of them helps you apply countermeasures.
For example: I hope we're making good progress on a malaria vaccine, to save millions of lives. But I'd still want to see the underlying evidence before asserting we are.
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This is related to mindfulness and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT): awareness of your thoughts and feelings, and how they affect your behaviour, helps you change unhelpful patterns.
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- Make beliefs concrete and checkable. Underspecified beliefs like "group X are bad people" can't be wrong,1
Because the vague "bad" is never precisely defined, no observation can contradict it. People who hold these beliefs can absorb any amount of evidence without moving, which can near-permanently lock in how you treat people.
Historically this is most obviously the behaviour of many far-right groups: discriminating based on race, sex, sexual orientation or similar characteristics.
But more recently, the left seems to also be branding people "bad" because they don't toe the party line on every issue, or because they once associated with ideas now considered bad. There are also vague handwavey assertions that smear large groups - "all cops are bastards", "men are trash" - which feel unhelpful for making progress on specific issues.
My weak sense is this is getting worse as politics polarises. I don't know what pulls someone out of this, individually or at the group level.
which makes them particularly dangerous. Try writing out your entire understanding, including the strongest possible cases for different beliefs. Also see being disagreeable and made-up statistics. - Seek information that would change your mind. Figure out what your cruxes are, then find evidence that might flip them. Talk to the smartest person who disagrees with you. Ask Claude to argue the strongest case against you.
- Don't attach your identity to the answer. It's much easier to change your beliefs when you haven't created costs for changing them. It helps to say "I think" or "I don't know yet" rather than "obviously", and express humility at all times.
Related concepts
This is part of my thinking tools series. These are all ways of putting a scout mindset into practice:
- Be sceptical: dig into a specific claim rather than accepting the version that suits you
- Be disagreeable: state views so they can be wrong, then update when they are
- Run the experiment: when you can just go and find out, do that instead of arguing
- Make decisions with made-up statistics: put numbers on it so your reasoning is exposed to criticism
Footnotes
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Because the vague "bad" is never precisely defined, no observation can contradict it. People who hold these beliefs can absorb any amount of evidence without moving, which can near-permanently lock in how you treat people.
Historically this is most obviously the behaviour of many far-right groups: discriminating based on race, sex, sexual orientation or similar characteristics.
But more recently, the left seems to also be branding people "bad" because they don't toe the party line on every issue, or because they once associated with ideas now considered bad. There are also vague handwavey assertions that smear large groups - "all cops are bastards", "men are trash" - which feel unhelpful for making progress on specific issues.
My weak sense is this is getting worse as politics polarises. I don't know what pulls someone out of this, individually or at the group level. ↩