The Scout Mindset

I saw this book get mentioned on fedi a while back, so got around to reading it. Its goal is to help people "see more clearly". The main metaphor of the book is to that we are often stuck in a "soldier mindset" (motivated reasoning to defend your beliefs, where being wrong feels like a mistake) and that we should try to have more of a "scout mindset" (finding the lay of the land and seeking truth, where being wrong means updating your map and is always a positive).

We use motivated reasoning not because we don't know any better, but because we're trying to protect things that are vitally important to us--our ability to feel good about our lives and ourselves, our motivation to try hard things and stick with them, our ability to look good and persuade, and our acceptance in our communities.

Some of this I'd heard before, but I learned a good bit too; this was a surprisingly practical book and a quick read.

Bits I enjoyed and that stuck with me:

• gives practical strategies for ways to catch yourself in the act of motivated reasoning
• says that knowing about biases (like we all do) is not enough to convince yourself you are not falling prey to them
• dismissing the idea of "filter bubbles", in that if you want to learn from disagreement, it has to be with somebody you like or respect
• gives several tricks for ways to more accurately estimate your level of confidence
• has an analysis of every time Spock made probability claims and how accurate he was