I started with the Scout Mindset owing to a random Youtube video that was dropped in my feed this month. This was a monologue by Julia Galef, and what I liked the most about this video was that there was no ambient 10% music, absolutely nothing. I could hear her voice loud and clear, with an occasional lexical filler here and there. It’s surprising to notice that such videos are very hard to notice. Authenticity was a rare pokemon in the wild, especially since most of the videos you see nowadays are heavily edited, with B-rolls, fancy AI-generated thumbnails that are rigorously A/B tested, and all that jazz. This was everything that wasn’t. She goes on articulating her point of view, in this five minutes span. And I was curious to then see if there were any other written words of her, and that’s when I also discovered that she had this blog of hers, and wrote a lot about the ideas that flashed by, mostly touching the field of rational behavior, and when irrationality seeps in. Almost like a successor of Daniel Kahnemann, and I just loved the world view she offered.
I wanted to immerse myself in her world view, not as a Youtube video, not as a blog post, but as a book. I agree with Sasha Chapin, in the fact that books are not merely efficient information transfer devices, they are actually subjectivity merging devices.
It’s obvious that most books aren’t efficient information transfer devices. There are few people who have 300 pages of compelling information to share with you, and, even if they do, what are the odds that you, in particular, need to hear those 300 pages of information? And what are the odds that you will retain all of it?
This is not that important to me, however. I agree that most books aren’t worth reading. But not for this reason. Books aren’t information transfer devices, they are subjectivity-merging devices.
When you read a book, you aren’t just accessing a series of propositions. You are becoming immersed in a worldview, through the rhythms of a given prose style, the facts selected and omitted, and the author’s chosen self-disclosures. Reading is hypnosis. Just like hypnotists lead you into a trance in which a simple suggestion can become forceful, skillful writers, by absorbing you in their pages, give you a perspective, from which certain selected facts take on greater relevance.
A good book doesn’t usually give you a hundred pieces of valuable information. (Is there such a thing, unless you’re actively engaging in some focused research project?) Instead, a good book gives you, maybe, 2-12 impressions that you absorb deeply because they make sense within the book’s frame. It’s like a conversation with a close friend or mentor, in which, due to a progressively cocreated intimacy, a quickly-said platitude, or a couple of relatively banal words, can have a life-changing impact.
Now, let’s talk about some key ideas from this book. Julia talks about two different mindsets throughout the book (the soldier, and the scout). The soldier boy actively tries to defend existing ideas (even if they’re false). If we take the standard evidence hierarchy, we have (a) expert opinion, (b) case reports, (c) observational studies, (d) controlled trials, (e) randomized control trials, (f) systematic reviews, (g) meta-analyses, (h) umbrella reviews.. how many of our core beliefs are backed up by the highest grounds of evidence? Do we have umbrella reviews to back all our claims up? The chances of even finding solid peer reviewed research that are RCT backed (randomized control trials), are in itself hard. So we do hold beliefs that are at different levels of evidence, and we’re also okay with it.
Sometimes, we wouldn’t even want to look at the evidence, afraid of knowing what true is. We might be looking at the sour grapes, and be convinced that it’s the sweet lemon. Galef talks about this quite a lot: when certain problems dont seem feasible to fix, we may try to convince ourselves that our “problem” is actually a blessing, and that we wouldn’t want to change it even if we could. Even for childbirth, the clergy once argued that this pain was a good thing, because it promoted spiritual growth, and the strength of character. “Labour pains were alloted by God”, “and most wisely we cannot doubt”, one obstetrician assured people in 1856.
Whereas, the scout mindset is a more curiosity-driven mindset, where you’re in this detective mode, trying really hard to see what’s wrong. In this mindset, you’re constantly attempting to do a - “is this risk worth it?”, “was I at fault with this piece of argument?” etc. etc. We’re the most easiest to be tricked, and as Feynman once said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you’re the easiest person to fool”.
Even the most simplest of questions such as “Why do magnets repel each other” is hidden in a sea of assumptions we take for granted. When Feynman was once asked by an interviewer on BBC’s 1983 Fun to Imagine series, Feynman’s answer flipped the mundane question upside down, started questioning the questions, and creating even better ones. The essence of his answer was that before we ask why, we must ask: what foundational facts is my question built upon? What implicit assumptions am I taking for granted? what conceptual framework am I asking this question in? Perhaps, not everyone can be like Feynman, as he seems to be the personal embodiment of what the scout mindset quality represents.
In that period, being Jewish was having a lot of racial prejudice, and Dreyfus was the only jewish member of the French general staff. The book actually starts with the story of Dreyfus, the Jewish man who was wrongfully convicted of being a spy, and was put to solitary confinement by a military court, which found him guilty of treason in 1894. All the while, the real spy, Esterhazy, who was still lurking around, flees the country and eventually dies of poverty. The police officer, Picquart in charge of this case, couldn’t believe that Dreyfus was innocent, despite shaky evidence. The anti-seminitic bias was so overwhelming at that time, that despite the best attempts, he wasn’t to objectively see the evidence for what is.
Eventually, the officer, Picquart, despite his strongest impulses to stereotype the person, who was already implicated, changes his mind on the basis of stronger evidence. This is not an usual phenomenon, some people do change their mind, while others don’t. This book is all about understand how this “flipping” of a previous stance works for only certain individuals?
Even in this very force of a “knock-down” argument, our mindset may play to be defensive (soldier mode).
We might encounter a knock-down argument against something we believe. Our positions might get challenged, destroyed, undermined, or weakened. So we look for evidence to support, bolster, or buttress our position. Over time, our views become reinforced, fortified, and cemented. And we become entrenched in our beliefs, like soldiers holed up in a trench, safe from the enemy’s volleys.
The problem here is that to shake the foundations of the belief tree, i.e to kill your foundational assumptions is equivalent to performing regicide. You’re trying to shuffle and stir up everything underneath, by killing the king on top.
Realistically speaking, how many of our core beliefs are actually backed up by peer-reviewed research? The conclusion I can draw from this, is that the belief is not actually serving as a representation of the truth, it functions more like a dress which we wear, and that explains why the term “luxury belief” is coined.
Different people like to present themselves differently with their clothing, and the same is true with beliefs. One person might be drawn to nihilism because it makes him seem edgy, while another might be drawn to optimism because it makes him likeable. Still another might gravitate toward moderate positions on controversial issues in order to seem mature. Note that the goal here isn’t to get other people to share your beliefs, the way it is in the case of “Persuasion.” The nihilist isn’t trying to get other people to believe in nihilism. He’s trying to get them to believe that he believes in nihilism.
Obviously there is more examples to what belief represents, and when we switch from scout mode to soldier mode, and vice versa, but at some point, the book became quite pedantic and I lost interest. I want non-fiction to be a narrative adventure which I take for a ride, this was rather dry.
