202. Julia Galef — The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t

<p>When it comes to what we believe, humans see what they want to see. We have what Julia Galef calls a “soldier” mindset: a drive to defend the ideas we most want to believe — and shoot down those we don’t. But if we want to get things right more often, argues Galef, we should train ourselves to have a “scout” mindset. Unlike the soldier, a scout’s goal isn’t to defend one side over the other. It’s to go out, survey the territory, and come back with as accurate a map as possible. Regardless of what they hope to be the case, above all, the scout wants to know what’s actually true. In <em>The Scout Mindset</em>, Galef explores why our brains deceive us and what we can do to change the way we think.</p>