Are you a scout or a soldier?

In her Ted Talk, Julia Galef uses this great metaphor for two very different types of mindsets.

A soldier mindset is driven by motivated reasoning: The drive to attack or defend ideas, trying to make some ideas win and others to lose. A judgement strongly influenced unconsciously by which side you want to win. On the contrary, a scout mindset is driven by seeing what's really there, trying to get an accurate picture of reality even when that is unpleasant or inconvenient.

 

What causes having a soldier mindset or a scout mindset?

It's not related to how smart you are or the amount of information you have. The cause is fundamentally emotional.

 

The first, it's grounded in defensiveness and tribalism by linking what they believe it is with their self worth. The second is driven by curiosity, by the pleasure to learn new information and intrigued when encountering something that contradicts their expectations. A scout mindset assumes it's virtuous to test their own beliefs, because their self worth isn't tied to how right or wrong they are on a particular topic. 

 

The question is: what do you yearn for? To defend your own beliefs or to see the world as clearly as you possibly can?