Book Report The Scout Mindset

Overview:

The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't by Julia Galef discusses what it is like to have the mindset of a scout. With this mindset, you tend to know when you are wrong, look for those blind spots you have, and change the direction of such imperfections. In chapter 1, reasoning is brought to the attention that typically we find reasoning in everything we do, and we use different types of reasoning such as motivated reasoning, also called soldier mindset. Julia later says how we do not/should not have to choose between being happy and being realistic in life. There are ways in life to cope with the fears and insecurities we deal with every day. We are all wired with the soldier mindset, but we should come up with ways to move towards the scout mindset rather than stay stuck on the soldier mindset. Make some incremental steps geared towards shifting to the mindset. Such steps could be asking yourself how sure you are with a claim of certainty; when someone is being 'irrational'/'crazy' ask yourself why might they are acting that way and become curious about it. 

My Favorite Part:

My favorite part of the book definitely was chapter 10: How to be Wrong. This chapter talks about how being wrong can actually be beneficial by realizing that being wrong eventually makes you better at being right. For example, Julia talks about how "when a forecaster recognizes he was wrong, it helps him make better forecasts" and "when an investor recognized he was wrong, it helps him make better investments". Another solid point brought up is talking about how when you recognize being wrong does not indicate you did something wrong. 

Related Part:

In chapter 11 the author brings up a story of the homeopathic hospital. In the 1850s, there was a hospital out in London, called the London Homeopathic Hospital where the doctors there would use medicine diluted down to basically holy water in order to 'cure' patients and this would run doctors up the walls. This actually only had an 18% mortality rate, half of that in mainstream hospitals. This research reminds me of the OBEs that were discussed in class talking about anesthesia and how it affected patients.

Related content:

Here is a link to a TED talk by Julia Galed relating the solider and scout mindset

Why "scout mindset" is crucial to good judgment | Julia Galef | TEDxPSU - YouTube