Are you a fan of [b:Thinking, Fast and Slow|11468377|Thinking, Fast and Slow|Daniel Kahneman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1317793965l/11468377.SX50.jpg|16402639], [b:The Story of Us|52020998|The Story of Us|Tim Urban|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1569229112l/52020998.SX50_SY75.jpg|73492182], or [b:Rationality: From AI to Zombies|25131230|Rationality From AI to Zombies|Eliezer Yudkowsky|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1440562023l/25131230.SX50.jpg|44828040]? Or are you interested in having more accurate beliefs, making better decisions, and persuading people more often? Then I predict with high probability that you will enjoy reading this book and get something valuable out of it.
At its core, this book is about a different mindset from the one we use most often, where instead of holding our beliefs as positions we must defend, we instead view them as our current best map of reality, which must be updated when we get new information. The main message of the book is that we do not use the scout mindset as often as we should, and we can greatly benefit from doing so more often.
Why do I recommend this book? I'm glad you asked:
- The topic is very important and relevant to today's problems of polarization and tribalism.
- The concept of scout mindset is very compelling and the book gives lots of practical advice on how to become better at it.
- The whole book is a breeze to read thanks to the multitude of well-chosen and interesting examples.
- The writer clearly has a lot of passion for the topic, as well as a lot of experience with explaining it.
So are there any negative points? Well, some parts of the book are written from a very personal perspective of the writer, who is a member of the communities around rationality and effective altruism. I did not mind these personal touches at all, but I am very much aligned with the ideas of these communities myself. For someone with a different background these personal touches might be a bit jarring or even be a barrier to appreciate the core ideas in the book, which would be a great shame since (as the book also demonstrates) you do not need to belong to any specific community to benefit from using the scout mindset.
Overall this is by far the most impactful book I read this year, and I rate it an easy 5/5.
Below is my own chapter-by-chapter summary of the most important points from the book. This was mostly meant as a summary for myself and does not contain any of the examples that make the book so compelling, so this summary might not make much sense if you have not yet read the book yourself.
Chapter 1: Two Types of Thinking
- The soldier mindset views beliefs as positions to attack or defend, asking questions like "can I believe it?" or "must I believe it?". In the soldier mindset, being wrong means admitting defeat.
- The scout mindset views beliefs as our currently best map of reality, asking questions like "is it true?". In the scout mindset, being wrong is an opportunity to improve your beliefs.
Chapter 2: What the Soldier is Protecting
We use soldier mindset not because we don't know better, but because it has tangible benefits.
Three emotional benefits of soldier mindset:
- Comfort: it helps us avoid negative feelings of fear, stress, and regret.
- Self-esteem: it helps us to protect our ego by finding flattering narratives.
- Morale: it helps us to motivate ourselves to do hard things.
Three social benefits of soldier mindset:
- Persuasion: it helps us be more convincing to others
- Image: it helps us to project a certain image of our beliefs
- Belonging: it helps us to fit in with social groups
However, soldier mindset can backfire or just be suboptimal.
Chapter 3: Why Truth is More Valuable Than We Realize
Benefits of scout mindset:
- It helps us make better decisions on how to pursue our goals.
- It helps us to notice when we are wrong faster and more often.
- It helps us to learn everything we can from our mistakes.
- It helps us to cultivate the habit of being honest with ourselves.
Reasons why we are biased towards soldier mindset:
- Its benefits are immediate but its drawbacks are not.
- Predicting the negative consequences of self-deception is very hard.
- How we come across to other people feels more important than it actually is.
- Scout mindset was less useful to our ancestors since they didn't have the same opportunities to fix things in their lives.
Chapter 4: Signs of a Scout
We often think we are in scout mindset even when we don't:
- Motivated reasoning feels like you are being objective.
- Being smart doesn't protect us from motivated reasoning, but it gives us a false sense of security in our own reasoning.
- It feels good to think you are using scout mindset, but that does not mean you actually are.
Signs that you are actually using the scout mindset:
- You tell other people when you realize they were right.
- You accept and act upon honest criticism.
- You prove yourself wrong.
- You take precautions to avoid biases in your decisions.
- You recognize and value good critics of your cause.
- You can point out occasions where you were in soldier mindset.
Chapter 5: Noticing bias
Thought experiments can help us to notice when we are biased:
- Double standard test: What would you think if the situation was reversed?
- Outsider test: What would you expect an outsider to do in this situation?
- Conformity test: If other people no longer held this view, would you still hold it?
- Selective skeptic test: If this evidence supported the other side, how credible would you judge it to be?
- Status quo bias test: If your current situation was not the status quo, would you actively choose it?
Chapter 6: How sure are you?
There is a big difference between making a claim and actually trying to guess what's true.
Being well calibrated means you can accurately predict your own likelihood of being right. Many people are very poorly calibrated but you can quickly improve your calibration through practice.
Equivalent bet test: At what odds would you be willing to bet on your current beliefs?
Chapter 7: Coping With Reality
There are many ways to cope with negative feelings of anxiety, disappointment, regret, and fear without resorting to self-deception:
- Remind yourself of the things that did go well.
- Remind yourself you're doing everything possible.
- Notice the positive aspects of the current situation.
- Remind yourself that each failure is an opportunity to improve.
- Remind yourself that you've dealt with similar problems in the past.
- Take a deep breath and count to ten.
- Make a plan for what to do when your fears materialize.
- Focus on a different goal instead.
- Remind yourself that things could be worse.
Much research into whether self-deception makes people happier conflates positive illusions with positive beliefs and is therefore not very reliable.
Chapter 8: Motivation Without Self-Deception
Motivating yourself by being overconfident is problematic because it prevents you from thinking realistically about the risks.
It is important to have an accurate picture of your odds of success:
- It helps to decide whether a goal is worth the risk
- It helps to find alternative goals that are equally desirable
- It helps to adapt your plan over time
- It helps to decide how much to stake on success
Instead of being motivated by the promise of guaranteed success, you can motivate yourself without resorting to self-deception:
- Remind yourself that some things are worth trying, even if it is likely you will fail.
- Accept that there is always some element of chance involved in being successful.
- Judge yourself based on making the right bets rather than on their outcomes.
Chapter 9: Influence Without Overconfidence
There are two types of confidence:
- Epistemic confidence (aka certainty) is how sure you are about what's true.
- Social confidence (aka self-assurance) is how secure you are in social situations.
People trust you based on your social confidence, not your epistemic confidence. Hence projecting confidence does not require self-deception.
There are two types of uncertainty:
- Uncertainty caused by your own ignorance or lack of experience.
- Uncertainty caused by the fact that reality is messy and unpredicable.
People distrust you when you express the first kind of uncertainty, but not when you express the second. Hence you do not need to promise success to be convincing.
Three rules for communicating uncertainty:
1. Show that the uncertainty is justified
2. Give informed estimates
3. Have a plan
Chapter 10: How to Be Wrong
Discovering that you are wrong is not a failure, but an opportunity to improve your beliefs:
1. By updating your predictions often, they become more accurate and it will be easier to incorporate future evidence.
2. By recognizing when you were wrong and what mistakes you made, you become more likely to be right in the future (even on completely different matters).
3. By not feeling bad about changing your beliefs, it will be easier to accept when you are wrong.
If you are not changing your mind in face of new information, you are doing it wrong.
Chapter 11: Lean In to Confusion
Confusion (by an event, by people's behaviour, ...) is often a sign that you are missing important information. Hence when you notice you are confused, don't explain the confusion away but instead investigate its source.
The accumulation of many confusing observations can eventually lead to a paradigm shift to a new and better model of reality. Hence you need to keep track of the information that does not fit within your current paradigm instead of forcing it to fit.
Chapter 12: Escape Your Echo Chamber
Trying to listen to the "other side" in an argument usually does not lead to a change in mindset. One reason is that the most visible people for a cause are usually the most disagreeable or extreme.
Reasons why it is harder to learn from disagreements than we think:
1. We misunderstand each other's views.
2. We mistake good arguments with similar-sounding bad arguments we've heard before.
3. Changing one belief often requires changing many others as well.
To actually learn from disagreement, listen to people:
- who you respect in some way
- with whom you have something in common
- who are reasonable and argue in good faith
- who share your goals
Chapter 13: How Beliefs Become Identities
Any belief you have can become part of your identity (not just politics and religion), if you feel embattled or proud about it. Once a belief is part of your identity, it wrecks your ability to think clearly about it or to change your mind.
Signs a belief might be an identity:
- Using the phrase "I believe ..."
- Getting annoyed when an ideology is criticized
- Using defiant and unapologetic language
- Refusing to accept the complexity of an argument
- Gatekeeping
- Schadenfreude with opposing ideologies
- Using epithets to describe members of opposing ideologies
- Feeling the need to defend your view when it is challenged
Chapter 14: Hold Your Identity Lightly
To keep identities from colonizing your thoughts and values, you need to think of them as descriptions that are contingent on certain conditions, rather than as a central source of meaning and pride in your life.
The ideological Turing test: Can you explain it convincingly enough that a true believer would accept what you are saying? The idelogical Turing test not only tests your ability to understand the other side's beliefs, but also whether you hold your identity lightly enough.
When you hold your identity lightly, you can...
- ...understand the other side better, which is a prerequisite for changing other people's mind
- ...focus on actions with the highest impact without fear of "betraying your cause".
Chapter 15: A Scout Identity
By making the scout mindset itself a part of your identity, it becomes rewarding to avoid motivated reasoning and admit when you are wrong.
Ways to make the scout mindset part of your identity:
- Surround yourself with people who are open to different views and argue in good faith.
- Demonstrate scout mindset yourself to attract others with similar mindsets.
- Join communities where people are encouraged to change their mind.
- Choose role models who embody aspects of the scout mindset that are compelling to you (holding your identity lightly, being comfortable with uncertainty, the courage to face reality, wanting the truth to win out, ...)
