The Scout Mindset

In this enlightening book, Julia Galef draws up a panorama of the biases we fall victim to in our reasoning and our understanding of reality. At the very front is “motivated reasoning”: we construct our reasoning in order to arrive at what we want to believe, to the point of sometimes denying any fact that doesn’t support our views. A good example of motivated reasoning is the Dreyfus affair, in which the military officers in charge of the second investigation systematically discarded any proof of Dreyfus’ innocence, so as to avoid the dishonor of having wrongly accused him. It is nonetheless possible to combat these biases by taking inspiration from the figure of the scout, who seeks to describe a territory as accurately as possible, as the survival of their camp depends above all on a proper understanding of the land. To this end, Julia Galef provides us with a toolbox of practices and tests aimed at reinforcing our lucidity and at ensuring that our reasonings and hypotheses do not omit any crucial facts.