Scout Mindset
OR How to Ground Beliefs in Reality
I could be wrong, you know. So could you.
I wrote this earlier this year:
This point is far larger and deeper than just political debates, which is where I’ve generally employed it: you might be wrong. Your knowledge might be incomplete and your perspective colored by history or feeling. Your assumptions might not be valid.
In politics this attitude should prompt a careful review of what others are saying about an issue. You should repeatedly reach out and try to understand what other people think and why. If you find yourself dismissing their ideas, or attributing feelings and motivations (anti-Americanism, racism, transphobia, etc.) which they do not recognize, you’re on dangerous ground.
This issue has been hyper-charged in recent weeks, as the Left’s arrogance and distance from reality has been exposed. Some of the believers are self-examining and revisiting priors. This is a psychologically difficult process, though and most believers are consoling themselves with equivocations and hostility toward voters. There’s a tremendous temptation for the winners to laugh, mock, gloat, and celebrate. If you feel the urge, go for it. MANY Americans have been hiding opinions and adopting language (most, according to the polls I’ve seen, have felt compelled to do this) in order to avoid stigma and reputational penalties. A smaller but more aggrieved number have had businesses ruined, careers stalled, reputations destroyed, and relationships soured because of beliefs which are well within the mainstream. The bitterest part of this is that even many of the people persecuting and criticizing these folks didn’t necessarily believe what they were saying. They simply believed that they were on the ‘right’ side (and their targets on the wrong) and this precluded any possibility of grace or mercy-or honesty. Humans can be incredibly cruel when they affiliate against a foe and when they are fueled by self-righteousness.
When humans organize themselves into groups (“us” and “them”) they seem to subconsciously block any possibility of their group being wrong. I imagine it’s a psychological mechanism developed over a million years of brutal intertribal raids and mini-wars. This tendency can become especially sinister and pronounced in an age of social media and large administrative structures though.
Last month I wrote:
There’s something particularly sinister about being lied to openly, without the pretense of either party believing the lie. Both parties know and both know that the other one knows but the forms are still observed. This kind of cynical display is a gesture of pure contempt.
We’re social animals and a lie of that kind is as menacing a message as one can send: “we don’t need to convince you; we know you know we’re lying and it doesn’t matter!” This probably accounts-more than the loss of status or friends-for the unacknowledged psychological devastation of being ‘cancelled’…
We should ALL guard against this tendency to bully and disdain and annihilate the opposition, for it is in all of us.
So celebrate the fact that the country has turned away from ideas which we both agree are badly mistaken and toxic… but understand that if you want to help this process along you will need to continue to demonstrate the validity of your worldview through moral and useful living and you should extend respect and kindness to others who disagree. Many of them are poisonous and hateful (still convinced that THEY are the good guys, as they rage against their fellow citizens and long for political violence). Some are so deranged by the impact of recent events upon their own delusions that they are experiencing genuine mental health crises. You can ignore those folks. But most people (even most people on the Left) still have contact with reality and enough goodwill to talk to. Many of them are victims of a concerted campaign of media and political manipulation. This seems especially common amongst older folks.
When I consider this election I see a very clear dynamic: one side arrogated to itself the role of arbiter and moral referee. Despite being wrong again and again (bail reform, COVID policy, DEI, lavish government spending, gender affirmation) they continued in their happy delusion: they were correct and morally superior. Their superiority came from their worldview (and their credentials, and their exorbitant privileges) and so everyone else was wrong, by definition. Instead of deigning to convince others or fortify their policy proscriptions with data and experience they opted instead to use bullying and ostracism and administrative penalty to isolate and silence dissenters. This strategy can only work when you’re a clear majority though (and when most most other people are cowed by your threats).
The other side continued to live their lives, build businesses, start families. They were less engaged with the hyper-political echo chambers of the privileged but their access to reliable media and ability to converse with others quietly grew apace. They didn’t begin assuming their worldview was correct. They constructed a worldview from a blend of faith, common sense, and case-by-case examination. They started with some basic values and an emphasis on empirical support and logical integrity, and they found the arguments and ideas of the other side wanting.
Instead of jumping into these heterodox and sensible places the Left abstained, clustering on their shrinking archipelago of class privilege and moral blindness.
Now there’s a narrative that it was “right-wing” media ecosystems (which somehow include a suspiciously high number of folk who were, until very recently, Democrats and liberals: Brett Weinstein,
, Glenn Greenwald, Tulsi Gabbard, Joe Rogan, , Arrielle Scarcella, etc., etc.) which defeated the Democrats. In a sense I believe this is correct… but not for the reasons they believe.
Perhaps they’re losing… because they’re wrong?
“We are pragmatists. We don't stick to any ideology. Does it work? Let's try it, and if it does work, fine, let's continue it. If it doesn't work, toss it out, try another one. We are not enamored with any ideology.”- Lee Kwan Yew
Yesterday I read an EXCELLENT piece by
…
In it, she discusses the ‘scout’ versus the ‘soldier’ mindset:
Julia Galef frames it beautifully in her book, called The Scout Mindset.
The Scout Mindset is about truth-seeking. It’s about training yourself to see things as they are, not as you wish they would be.
In comparison, the Soldier Mindset is where you seek to defend your beliefs against all threatening evidence.
I certainly can’t convince anyone to overhaul their epistemic strategies in a brief essay. I wouldn’t even try. Hopefully I can remind you that you might be wrong, though, and that policies aren’t good or bad because you believe them to be (or because their opposites are labelled ‘racist’ or ‘xenophobic’ or something similar). They are good or bad because of experience, because they either improve or degrade the quality of lives of the people they’re applied to.
Finding out which is which requires a great deal of curiosity and open-minded investigation, and it requires listening to many kinds of people. OR you could arrange a mental scheme based on ideology and then defend your prejudices with labels and dramatic virtue signals.
These are the impulses (communication, consideration, curiosity) which ideology is organized to forbid and defend itself against. This training probably accounts for a great deal of the fragility and discomfort with the world which we see in young people today. If racism = trauma, and everyone who disagrees with a person about legal policy or educational achievements is racist, then you have fortified that person from ever considering alternate viewpoints. It’s probably the most effective block of dialogue and open-mindedness which can be constructed, short of religious commandment. That is the dead end that millions of young Americans find themselves in right now.
It is quite possible that Republican immigration policies are better for America. It is possible that teachers’ union power are destroying the academic experiences and financial futures of millions of students. It is possible that bail reform has made the poorest people in the biggest cities in the United States less safe. These possibilities might not comport with your personal ideology, but that is irrelevant. Ideology is a terrible guide to reality. Just think: how successful has your ideology proven thus far in litigating real world issues?
again:Consider popular memes that still live on today, after being proven wrong many, many times:
“Capitalism is evil”
Actually, it’s the best economic system that we have so far, though it’s clearly not perfect. Nearly 1B people have been taken out of extreme poverty from 1990 to 2010.
“Nuclear is dangerous”
Actually, it’s the safest source of energy – it’s 800x safer than coal.
“Defund the police”
Actually, almost 80% of Black Americans say they would like more or just as much of a police presence today in their communities.
“Living in the countryside is more sustainable than living in the city”
Actually, the denser the city, the less emissions there are.
Why does this matter? Because policies are downstream of memes, and bad memes can hold back human progress.
I’m a policy nerd and have been for decades. I love poring over social science studies and crime statistics and considering different economic proposals.
Through it all I try to remember that my assumptions might be faulty and my conclusions wrong.
However, in the past few years I’ve encountered MANY people who don’t know much about the subjects they’re ABSOLUTELY confident about, lecturing me on the basis of… a sense of righteousness and 2 shoddy statistics (or something similar-sometimes no facts or statistics; those people are often the most certain). I remain suspicious of believers who won’t honestly present or debate others. How many debates about gender ideology have been shut down by activists who forbid ANY examination of their positions? How many honest discussions of DEI have we had? I know some brilliant black academics dying to have these debates but no one will engage with them. Ideas which demand to be protected from investigation are not formidable… and I suspect that some of their believers know this, deep down. As I noted in 2022: “both sides in the debate are equally passionate - but only one side demands censorship.”
I remain willing to debate ANYONE about ANYTHING but if you won’t have the conversation you don’t get to remain certain of your correctness. It’s a pose that you can maintain for a time, as long as institutional power validates your prejudices (as it has, until now) and fashionable people parrot the same words. Your certainty won’t last forever though. It can’t. Reality always wins.
Thanks for reading! Please like, comment, subscribe, and SHARE.
I agree with the general thrust of the article, but I'm not comfortable with the "Scout vs Soldier" dichotomy. Or, perhaps I should say, I disagree with the use of those particular terms moreso than disagree with the dichotomy itself. It's a semantic issue, but those descriptions don't match the reality of those roles. In actual military organizations, a "scout" is just another work role within the larger category of "Soldier". A "Scout" cannot logically be opposite a "Soldier" when a scout IS a Soldier.
Likewise, as much as I like to joke that "Military Intelligence" is an oxymoron, and readily acknowledge that politicized abuses of the National Intelligence Agencies have certainly earned a clean sweep of the upper echelons by the next administration, I also happen to be familiar with the actual training, doctrine, and practice thereof. Politicians may want to hear only good news, but military commanders, in my experience, very much prefer to receive ACCURATE assessments, firmly grounded in observation, expertise, and proper methodology. I don't know if it's still mandatory reading these days, but I still have a copy of Richards Heuer's "The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis", issued to me by the Army, as it is literally foundational to the entire branch of MI. Characterizing "Soldiers" as anything other than realistic pragmatists simply does not match the theory or practice of Soldiering as I know it. After all, when a politician's reality check bounces because they lack enough sense, it's Soldiers who often pay the ultimate price for it.
After the election the Democratic Party (my party) must rethink many of its policies as it ponders its future.
To have a chance at victory Democrats should try listening to the concerns of the working class for a change. As a lifelong moderate Democrat I share their distain for many of the insane positions advocated by my party.
Democrat politicians defy biology by believing that men can actually become women and belong in women’s sports, rest rooms, locker rooms and prisons and that children should be mutilated in pursuit of the impossible.
They believe borders should be open to millions of illegals which undermines workers’ wages and the affordability of housing when we can’t house our own citizens.
They discriminate against whites, Asians and men in a vain effort to counter past discrimination against others and undermine our economy by abandoning merit selection of students and employees.
Democratic mayors allow homelessness to destroy our beautiful cities because they won't say no to destructive behavior. No you can’t camp in this city. No you can’t shit in our streets No you can’t shoot up and leave your used needles everywhere. Many of our prosecutors will not take action against shoplifting unless a $1000 of goods are stolen leading to gangs destroying retail stores. They release criminals without bond to rob and murder again.
The average voter knows this is happening and outright reject our party. Enough.