The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

by Julia Galef

The best description of motivated reasoning I’ve ever seen comes from psychologist Tom Gilovich. When we want something to be true, he said, we ask ourselves, “Can I believe this?,” searching for an excuse to accept it. When we don’t want something to be true, we instead ask ourselves, “Must I believe this?,” searching for an excuse to reject it.

First, you don’t need to hold your opinions with 100 percent certainty in order to seem confident and competent. People simply aren’t paying that much attention to how much epistemic confidence you express. They’re paying attention to how you act, to your body language, tone, and other aspects of your social confidence, all of which are things you can cultivate without sacrificing your calibration.

Even my fellow cheerleaders for changing one’s mind tend to say things like, “It’s okay to admit you were wrong!” While I appreciate the intentions behind this advice, I’m not sure it makes things much better. The word admit makes it sound like you screwed up but that you deserve to be forgiven because you’re only human. It doesn’t question the premise that being wrong means you screwed up.

All too often, we assume the only two possibilities are “I’m right” or “The other guy is right”— and since the latter seems absurd, we default to the former. But in many cases, there’s an unknown unknown, a hidden “option C,” that enriches our picture of the world in a way we wouldn’t have been able to anticipate.

To give yourself the best chance of learning from disagreement, you should be listening to people who make it easier to be open to their arguments, not harder.

The problem with identity is that it wrecks your ability to think clearly. Identifying with a belief makes you feel like you have to be ready to defend it,

As Megan McArdle memorably put it: “It took me years of writing on the Internet to learn what is nearly an iron law of commentary: The better your message makes you feel about yourself, the less likely it is that you are convincing anyone else.”

Personally, I find all those facets of scout mindset inspiring—the willingness to prioritize impact over identity; the confidence to be unconfident; the courage to face reality. But if I were to name one single facet I find most inspiring, it’s the idea of being intellectually honorable: wanting the truth to win out, and putting that principle above your own ego.