The Scout Mindset

The Scout Mindset Plot Summary

Introduction

Our ability to see reality clearly is often compromised by our natural tendency toward motivated reasoning. We instinctively defend our existing beliefs, seek evidence that confirms what we already think, and dismiss information that challenges our worldview. This defensive posture—what Julia Galef calls "soldier mindset"—may feel protective, but it ultimately distorts our perception and impairs our judgment. The alternative approach is what Galef terms "scout mindset"—a way of thinking that prioritizes discovering what's actually true over proving ourselves right. Unlike soldiers who are motivated to defend territory, scouts are motivated to create accurate maps. This distinction isn't merely academic; it affects every aspect of our lives, from personal relationships to professional decisions to societal debates. Throughout these pages, we'll explore the psychological forces that pull us toward soldier mindset, examine the concrete benefits of adopting scout mindset, and learn practical techniques for seeing reality more clearly, even when the truth is uncomfortable or inconvenient.

Chapter 1: The Soldier vs. Scout Mindset Distinction

At the heart of our cognitive landscape lies a fundamental distinction between two modes of thinking. The soldier mindset approaches reasoning as a form of defensive combat. When we encounter information, we unconsciously ask ourselves: "Can I believe this?" about ideas we want to accept, and "Must I believe this?" about ideas we'd prefer to reject. This directionally motivated reasoning leads us to apply different standards of evidence depending on whether information supports or challenges our existing views. Scout mindset, by contrast, approaches reasoning as mapmaking. The driving question becomes simply: "Is it true?" A scout isn't invested in any particular conclusion but rather in creating an accurate representation of reality. When scouts find errors in their maps, they don't experience this as a defeat but as an opportunity to improve their understanding. Finding out you were wrong isn't a threat; it's valuable information. The metaphor extends to how we process evidence. Soldiers seek out information that can fortify their position and defend against attacks. They're quick to spot flaws in opposing arguments while remaining blind to weaknesses in their own. Scouts, meanwhile, actively look for evidence that might reveal errors in their thinking. They welcome the discovery of blind spots because each correction makes their map more accurate. This distinction isn't merely theoretical—it manifests in concrete behaviors. Consider Colonel Georges Picquart, who investigated the infamous Dreyfus Affair in 19th-century France. Despite his personal anti-Semitism and professional incentives to maintain the status quo, Picquart followed the evidence where it led, eventually proving that Alfred Dreyfus had been wrongfully convicted. When asked why he risked his career to uncover the truth, Picquart simply replied: "Because it was my duty." This exemplifies scout mindset: a commitment to accuracy that transcends personal preferences. The soldier/scout distinction helps explain why intelligent, educated people can reach radically different conclusions about the same evidence. Intelligence and knowledge are tools that can be deployed in service of either mindset. A brilliant mind in soldier mode will simply generate more sophisticated defenses of its preferred beliefs, while the same intelligence in scout mode will produce more accurate understanding.

Chapter 2: Why We Resist Accurate Beliefs

Why do we so often default to soldier mindset rather than scout mindset? The answer lies in understanding what soldier mindset protects. Far from being a simple cognitive error, motivated reasoning serves important psychological and social functions that make it difficult to abandon. Emotionally, soldier mindset offers significant comfort. When faced with disappointment, we tell ourselves "it wasn't meant to be" or "everything happens for a reason." When worried about potential disasters, we rationalize that "there's nothing I can do anyway." These mental moves shield us from anxiety, regret, and fear. Similarly, soldier mindset protects our self-esteem by allowing us to maintain flattering narratives about ourselves. If we perform poorly on a test, we might conclude "standardized tests don't measure real intelligence" rather than confronting our lack of preparation. Soldier mindset also bolsters our morale when facing challenges. Entrepreneurs notoriously overestimate their chances of success—with most believing they have a 70-90% chance of succeeding despite baseline success rates closer to 10%. This irrational optimism helps them persevere through difficulties that might otherwise seem insurmountable. As one motivational blogger put it, "You have 100% chance of being successful if you commit yourself and do it every day." Beyond these emotional benefits, soldier mindset serves crucial social functions. It helps us persuade others more effectively—as Lyndon Johnson demonstrated with his technique of "working up," where he would practice arguing a position with such passion that he eventually convinced himself it was true. Soldier mindset also helps us manage our public image by allowing us to adopt beliefs that make us appear sophisticated, compassionate, or principled. Finally, it facilitates belonging by aligning our views with those of our social groups. Given these powerful benefits, it's no wonder that traditional approaches to reducing motivated reasoning—like teaching critical thinking skills or explaining cognitive biases—have shown limited effectiveness. We're not engaging in soldier mindset because we don't know any better; we're doing it because it serves valuable functions in our lives.

Chapter 3: Developing Self-Awareness and Calibration

Developing scout mindset begins with recognizing when we're in soldier mode. This is challenging precisely because motivated reasoning doesn't feel like motivated reasoning from the inside. When we're defending our beliefs, it feels like we're simply being objective and rational. Several false indicators can reinforce this illusion. Feeling objective doesn't make you a scout. The more objective you think you are, the more you trust your intuitions and the less inclined you are to question them. Intelligence and knowledge don't guarantee scout mindset either. Studies show that on politically charged topics like climate change, people with higher scientific literacy and reasoning ability are actually more polarized in their views, not less. Their intellectual capabilities simply make them better at defending their preferred positions. The true signs of scout mindset lie in behavior, not self-perception. Scouts tell others when they realize they were wrong, as Abraham Lincoln did when he wrote to General Grant: "I thought you should go down the river... I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right and I was wrong." They respond constructively to criticism rather than defensively. They occasionally prove themselves wrong, as journalist Bethany Brookshire did when she fact-checked her own viral tweet about gender bias and publicly corrected herself when the data didn't support her claim. Scouts also take precautions against fooling themselves. Physicist Saul Perlmutter, who won the Nobel Prize for discovering that the universe's expansion is accelerating, used blind data analysis to prevent his team's expectations from influencing their results. Finally, scouts can name thoughtful critics of their own views—people who disagree with them but whose objections they consider reasonable and worth engaging with. Beyond self-awareness, scouts develop calibration—the ability to accurately assess their confidence levels. Most people express excessive certainty, claiming to be "100% confident" about predictions that frequently turn out wrong. Scouts, by contrast, quantify their uncertainty and strive for perfect calibration, where their "60% confident" predictions are correct 60% of the time, their "90% confident" predictions are correct 90% of the time, and so on. This calibration skill can be developed through practice. By treating your degree of certainty as a prediction about your likelihood of being right, you can train yourself to distinguish between the feeling of "95% sure" versus "75% sure" versus "55% sure." Techniques like the equivalent bet test—comparing your confidence in a belief to your willingness to take specific gambles—can help pin down exactly how certain you really are about something.

Chapter 4: Thriving Without Self-Deception

A common objection to scout mindset is that self-deception is necessary for psychological well-being. Don't we need comforting illusions to cope with life's hardships? Don't we require inflated self-confidence to maintain motivation? The evidence suggests otherwise. Consider Steven Callahan, who survived seventy-six days adrift at sea after his sailboat capsized in 1981. Facing this life-or-death situation, Callahan recognized that self-deception would be dangerous. "I have often hidden things from myself," he reflected. "But Nature is not such a dolt." Instead of denying his dire circumstances, he found honest ways to cope: counting his blessings, reminding himself he was doing everything possible, and coming to terms with the possibility of death. This pattern extends beyond extreme situations. For every self-deceptive coping strategy, there exists an honest alternative that works just as well. Instead of denying problems, we can make concrete plans for addressing them. Instead of rationalizing mistakes, we can focus on the lessons learned. Instead of exaggerating our strengths, we can redirect our focus to goals we genuinely value. The research supposedly showing that self-deception promotes happiness turns out to be deeply flawed. Studies claiming that "positive illusions" are associated with mental health typically conflate positive beliefs with illusory ones. They assume that anyone who rates themselves as above average on positive traits must be self-deceiving, ignoring the mathematical reality that many people genuinely are above average on various dimensions. Similarly, the notion that irrational optimism is necessary for motivation misunderstands how successful people actually think. Elon Musk estimated only a 10% chance of success for both SpaceX and Tesla. Jeff Bezos gave Amazon a 30% chance of succeeding. Yet they pursued these ventures anyway because they understood something crucial: a bet can be worth taking even when failure is the most likely outcome. This "bets worth taking" framework offers a more robust approach to motivation than self-deception. Instead of telling yourself "This will definitely succeed," you can say "This probably won't succeed, but the potential payoff makes it worth trying anyway." This allows you to maintain motivation while still seeing reality clearly—what entrepreneur Trevor Bauer calls "accepting variance." The result is a more resilient form of morale, one that doesn't require protection from reality because it's rooted in truth.

Chapter 5: Changing Your Mind Effectively

Changing your mind is a skill that can be developed, and superforecasters—people with exceptional ability to predict global events—offer a model for how to do it well. What distinguishes them isn't superior intelligence or specialized knowledge, but their approach to being wrong. Superforecasters change their minds frequently, making subtle revisions as they learn new information. The highest-scoring forecaster in one tournament, Tim Minto, typically adjusted his confidence level dozens of times on a single prediction. Rather than seeing beliefs in binary terms—right or wrong—superforecasters think in terms of probability and make incremental shifts. If they're 80% confident in a position and encounter contradictory evidence, they might adjust to 70% confidence rather than abandoning the belief entirely. This incremental approach makes changing your mind less threatening. When you see the world in shades of gray, encountering evidence against your beliefs becomes a low-stakes adjustment rather than a high-stakes confrontation. It also creates opportunities to learn from your mistakes. Superforecasters systematically analyze their errors, asking "What does this teach me about how to make better forecasts?" One forecaster realized he had been projecting his own reasoning onto world leaders; this insight improved his subsequent predictions. Even when you're wrong about something seemingly trivial, you can extract domain-general lessons that improve your thinking across contexts. Journalist Bethany Brookshire's incorrect tweet about gender bias taught her about confirmation bias and recency bias—lessons applicable far beyond that specific issue. These domain-general insights about how your mind works are valuable precisely because they transfer to other areas of your life. Perhaps most importantly, scouts view changing their mind differently than most people. Rather than seeing it as "admitting a mistake"—something embarrassing that requires contrition—they frame it as "updating." This term, borrowed from Bayesian probability theory, treats belief revision as routine maintenance rather than failure. As tech CEO Emmett Shear put it: "As I've gotten older, it's gotten easier to be wrong. Not even to be wrong. It's just an update: I learned this new thing... what's the issue?" This attitude is exemplified by organizations like the Humane League, an animal rights group committed to following evidence wherever it leads. Their leader, David Coman-Hidy, tells new employees: "If we're not doing something totally different in five years than what we're doing now, then we failed." This willingness to abandon strategies that aren't working, even after significant investment, has allowed them to save billions of animals from suffering.

Chapter 6: Rethinking Identity and Beliefs

Our beliefs often become intertwined with our identities in ways that make it extraordinarily difficult to think clearly. When a belief becomes part of who you are—whether it's being a Democrat, a feminist, an optimist, or a breastfeeding advocate—questioning that belief feels like questioning your very self. This identity-belief fusion happens through two main mechanisms. First, feeling embattled creates solidarity with others who share your belief. When you feel your view is under attack or marginalized, defending it becomes a matter of principle. Second, beliefs become identities when they represent virtues you take pride in. For cryptocurrency enthusiasts, belief in blockchain technology signals rebellion against centralized power. For self-identified optimists, positive thinking demonstrates moral virtue and strength of character. The signs that a belief has become part of your identity are numerous: using the phrase "I believe" rather than simply stating your view; getting annoyed when an ideology is criticized; using defiant language like "proud," "unapologetic," or "fearless"; adopting a righteous tone; engaging in gatekeeping about who counts as a "real" member of your group; feeling schadenfreude when ideological opponents are humiliated; using epithets to describe those who disagree; and feeling compelled to defend your view whenever it's challenged. The problem isn't that identity-laden beliefs create social division—though they certainly do. The problem is that they wreck your ability to think clearly. When a belief is part of your identity, you reflexively reject arguments that feel like attacks on you or your group. Empirical questions like "How effective is this policy?" become emotionally charged questions like "Am I a good person? Will my friends judge me? Was my side vindicated or humiliated?" This identity-belief fusion can have serious consequences. In the 1980s, evidence emerged that HIV could be transmitted through breast milk. The Centers for Disease Control quickly recommended that HIV-positive mothers avoid breastfeeding. But breastfeeding advocates, for whom the inherent goodness of breast milk was a core belief, rejected this guidance. It took until 1998—and many unnecessary infant infections—for leading pro-breastfeeding organizations to acknowledge the risk.

Chapter 7: Building a Scout Identity

If identity is so problematic for clear thinking, should we strive to avoid identifying with any beliefs? Not necessarily. A more practical approach is to "hold your identity lightly"—treating it as a contingent description rather than a central source of meaning and pride. This means maintaining a sense of your own beliefs and values independent of your tribe's, and acknowledging where they diverge. It means being willing to say, "I'm a liberal, for as long as it continues to seem to me that liberalism is just." Barry Goldwater exemplified this approach throughout his political career. Though known as "Mr. Republican," he held his partisan identity so lightly that he could publicly defend Democratic senator Sam Ervin's integrity during the Watergate investigation, criticize Republican president Ronald Reagan over the Iran-Contra affair, and even defend Democratic president Bill Clinton against what he saw as unfair accusations. Holding your identity lightly makes it possible to pass the "ideological Turing test"—the ability to articulate opposing viewpoints so accurately that others can't tell whether you actually hold those views. This requires emotional distance from your own position and genuine curiosity about why reasonable people might disagree. Most attempts fail because people can't help slipping back into their own voice, caricaturing those they disagree with as irrational or malicious. This capacity to understand opposing perspectives is crucial for effective activism. The citizen scientists who helped turn the tide of the AIDS crisis in the 1990s had to set aside ideological purity to work with government researchers they had previously vilified. Their willingness to prioritize impact over identity allowed them to develop more effective treatments that ultimately reduced AIDS mortality by 60 percent. Perhaps most powerfully, you can make scout mindset itself part of your identity. Susan Blackmore, who spent years researching paranormal phenomena, ultimately abandoned her belief in the paranormal despite the social costs. "Deep down," she explained, "I was a scientist and always have been. These results were telling me something very loud and clear. I was wrong!" By taking pride in your commitment to truth-seeking, you can harness the motivational power of identity for clear thinking rather than against it. Your communities play a crucial role in shaping this identity. Surrounding yourself with people who reward intellectual honesty rather than conformity creates a tailwind for scout mindset. Online platforms like ChangeAView.com foster productive disagreement by awarding status to those who change others' minds through respectful, evidence-based arguments. Finding role models who embody intellectual virtues—like the Oxford zoologist who graciously thanked a younger colleague for proving him wrong after fifteen years—can inspire you to live up to those same standards.

Summary

The scout mindset represents a fundamentally different approach to thinking—one focused on discovering what's true rather than defending what we wish were true. By understanding the psychological forces that pull us toward soldier mindset, developing self-awareness about our own reasoning, learning to cope and stay motivated without self-deception, and holding our identities lightly, we can see reality more clearly and make better decisions as a result. This journey toward clearer thinking isn't about becoming cold and dispassionate. On the contrary, scout mindset offers its own emotional rewards: the equanimity that comes from understanding risk and coming to terms with the odds you face; the satisfaction of being able to change your mind when the evidence warrants it; and the freedom to follow your curiosity wherever it leads, unconstrained by what you're "supposed to" think. The path from soldier to scout isn't always easy, but it offers something precious: the ability to navigate life's complexities with both intellectual integrity and emotional resilience.

About Author

Loading...

Julia Galef

Julia Galef is co-founder of the Center for Applied Rationality. She hosts Rationally Speaking, the official podcast of New York City Skeptics, which she has done since its inception in 2010, sharing the show with co-host and philosopher Massimo Pigliucci until 2015.

Read more