Julia Galef QUOTES

1 " The scout isn’t indifferent. A scout might hope to learn that the path is safe, that the other side is weak, or that there’s a bridge conveniently located where his forces need to cross the river. But above all, he wants to learn what’s really there, not fool himself into drawing a bridge on his map where there isn’t one in real life. Being in scout mindset means wanting your “map”—your perception of yourself and the world—to be as accurate as possible.
Of course, all maps are imperfect simplifications of reality, as a scout well knows. Striving for an accurate map means being aware of the limits of your understanding, keeping track of the regions of your map that are especially sketchy or possibly wrong. And it means always being open to changing your mind in response to new information. In scout mindset, there’s no such thing as a “threat” to your beliefs. If you find out you were wrong about something, great—you’ve improved your map, and that can only help you. "

― Julia Galef , The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

2 " Discovering you were wrong is an update, not a failure, and your worldview is a living document meant to be revised. "

― Julia Galef , The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

3 " The best description of motivated reasoning I’ve ever seen comes from psychologist Tom Gilovich. When we want something to be true, he said, we ask ourselves, “Can I believe this?,” searching for an excuse to accept it. When we don’t want something to be true, we instead ask ourselves, “Must I believe this?,” searching for an excuse to reject it.4 "

― Julia Galef , The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

4 " Just as there are fashions in clothing, so, too, are there fashions in ideas. "

― Julia Galef , The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

5 " So I’ve given it one. I call it scout mindset: the motivation to see things as they are, not as you wish they were. Scout mindset is what allows you to recognize when you are wrong, to seek out your blind spots, to test your assumptions and change course. "

― Julia Galef , The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

6 " Do you tell other people when you realize they were right? "

― Julia Galef , The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

7 " Social costs like looking weird or making a fool out of ourselves, feel a lot more significant than they actually are. In reality, other people aren’t thinking of you nearly as much as you intuitively think they are, and their opinions of you don’t have nearly as much impact on your life as it feels like they do. "

― Julia Galef , The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

8 " scout mindset: the motivation to see things as they are, not as you wish they were. "

― Julia Galef , The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

9 " When law students prepare to argue for either the plaintiff or defendant in a moot court, they come to believe that their side of the case is both morally and legally in the right—even when the sides were randomly assigned. "

― Julia Galef , The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

10 " Do you have any good critics? "

― Julia Galef , The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

11 " As the late physicist Richard Feynman once said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. "

― Julia Galef , The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

12 " IMAGE: CHOOSING BELIEFS THAT MAKE US LOOK GOOD "

― Julia Galef , The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

13 " Thought experiments aren’t oracles. They can’t tell you what’s true or fair or what decision you should make. If you notice that you would be more forgiving of adultery in a Democrat than a Republican, that reveals you have a double standard, but it doesn’t tell you what your standard “should” be. If you notice that you’re nervous about deviating from the status quo, that doesn’t mean you can’t decide to play it safe this time anyway. What thought experiments do is simply reveal that your reasoning changes as your motivations change. That the principles you’re inclined to invoke or the objections that spring to your mind depend on your motives: the motive to defend your image or your in-group’s status; the motive to advocate for a self-serving policy; fear of change or rejection. "

― Julia Galef , The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

14 " Not all overconfidence is due to motivated reasoning. Sometimes we simply don’t realize how complicated a topic is, so we overestimate how easy it is to get the right answer. But a large portion of overconfidence stems from a desire to feel certain. Certainty is simple. Certainty is comfortable. Certainty makes us feel smart and competent. "

― Julia Galef , The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

15 " That’s an extreme case, but all social groups have some beliefs and values that members are implicitly expected to share, such as “Climate change is a serious problem,” or “Republicans are better than Democrats,” or “Our group is fighting for a worthy cause,” or “Children are a blessing.” Dissent may not get you literally kicked out of the group, but it can still alienate you from the other members. "

― Julia Galef , The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

16 " The better your message makes you feel about yourself, the less likely it is that you are convincing anyone else.”15 "

― Julia Galef , The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

17 " None of these approaches have shown much promise in changing people’s thinking in the long run or outside of the classroom. And that should not surprise us. 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. "

― Julia Galef , The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

18 " But most of the time, being wrong doesn’t mean you did something wrong. It’s not something you need to apologize for, and the appropriate attitude to have about it is neither defensive nor humbly self-flagellating, but matter-of-fact. "

― Julia Galef , The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

19 " Darwin didn’t consider himself a quick or highly analytical thinker. His memory was poor, and he couldn’t follow long mathematical arguments. Nevertheless, Darwin felt that he made up for those shortcomings with a crucial strength: his urge to figure out how reality worked. Ever since he could remember, he had been driven to make sense of the world around him. He followed what he called a “golden rule” to fight against motivated reasoning:
. . . whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favourable ones.
Therefore, even though the peacock’s tail made him anxious, Darwin couldn’t stop puzzling over it. How could it possibly be consistent with natural selection?
Within a few years, he had figured out the beginnings of a compelling answer. "

― Julia Galef , The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

20 " Even if you’ve never heard the phrase motivated reasoning, I’m sure you’re already familiar with the phenomenon. It’s all around you under different names—denial, wishful thinking, confirmation bias, rationalization, tribalism, self-justification, overconfidence, delusion. Motivated reasoning is so fundamental to the way our minds work that it’s almost strange to have a special name for it; perhaps it should just be called reasoning. "

― Julia Galef , The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't