Do you want to be right or do you want to get it right?
You might manage to do both at the same time, but the question isn’t about your result. It’s about your underlying intention or aim.
It’s an important question because the answer determines how you process information. And how you process information can have a considerable influence on how well you succeed at accomplishing what you set out to do.
Soldier or Scout?
Julia Galef, president of the Center for Applied Rationality in Berkeley, has come up with a great metaphor to describe these two different mindsets: the soldier and the scout.
She says that when you operate from the soldier mindset, your actions stem from reflexes rooted in a need to protect yourself and your side and to defeat the enemy, whoever or whatever it may be.
On the other hand, when you operate from the scout mindset, your actions are based not on attacking or defending but on understanding the terrain and potential obstacles. You want to know what’s really there as accurately as possible.
Confirmation or Feedback?
In the grand scheme of things, both mindsets are valuable. Obviously there are times when you need to defend and protect—and maintain the status quo. But if you’re trying to change your status quo, you need to know how to distinguish relevant information from irrelevant information. You also need to pay attention to what happens when you take steps to achieve your goals. You can interpret what happens as either confirmation or feedback.
If you’re aiming to confirm and defend your pre-existing beliefs (soldier mindset), you won’t be inclined to examine what happens with any degree of objectivity. Instead you’ll be quick to jump to a conclusion and then build a case to support it by what’s referred to as motivated reasoning.
But if you view what happens as feedback (scout mindset), you tend to be curious about it. You want to understand it because the better you understand it the better you’ll be at making accurate course corrections. People with a scout mindset, Galef says, “are more likely to feel intrigued when they encounter something that contradicts their expectations.”
The soldier mindset is easier to access because System 1 is often more concerned with being right than it is with getting it right. Soldier mindset is automatic. You don’t have to do anything to slip into it. It’s easier to jump to conclusions than it is to be deliberate and thoughtful and willing to acknowledge doubt and uncertainty.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. —Voltaire
You can end up paying a very high price when you aim to be right instead of to get it right. It’s easier to dig your heels in than it is to admit you’ve made a mistake or have changed your mind. But if you can’t change your mind, you won’t be able to change your status quo.
Bias and the soldier mindset come naturally to us. But in order to master the art and science of change, we need to develop critical thinking skills and operate from the scout mindset more than we do from the soldier mindset.
This is a short story about soldier & scout mindsets. A friend and I were on our way back to ABQ from a weekend in Phoenix. Al was driving. Just north of Payson, we encountered some snow, and were seeing a lot of elk. Al is a hunter, and a good scout, and while he was pointing to some elk huddled along the side of the road, I noticed a big cow sauntering into our path up ahead. I think I pointed and yelled, “What about that one!” He saw her, slowed down to a crawl, and she stopped right on the other side of the road center line. We passed within two feet of her, standing as tall as the truck, with the window rolled down to better see her up close. Shortly after, we began a discussion about soldiers and scouts. The end
Soldier or Scout; To be or not to be?
I was recently very excited to join a local history group, finding it full of seemingly well-read and educated folks with a good bit of travelling experience. A couple at the long, noisy dinner table on my right (I was at the head of the table) leaned over, at some point in the night, to discuss with the group leader, how Jews had become so powerful. Of course I immediately perked up, wondering what would be said.
Mrs. Couple had a simple explanation: “Well, the Jews were the only ones who could handle money back in ‘those days’, because Christians had been forbidden. THEY (meaning the poor Christians) didn’t know that they were giving away their power.” She sat back, satisfied that she had made her point.
I felt my blood beginning to boil and my senses beginning to “tunnel”. I managed to stay polite and said only, ‘That’s a bit of an over-arching generalization. And what power are you speaking about, exactly?’ Mrs. Couple looked at her husband, startled, then looked back at me, with wide eyes. Neither she nor the group’s organizer, to whom she’d been speaking, said a word. I left it at that, knowing that I would go off in “Soldier” Mindset Mode if I said anything else, and that things might get unpleasant.
Good God, I thought, on the way home. Not THIS crap again! I couldn’t stop thinking about it over the next week, muttering witty comebacks as if the conversation were still going on. Then I decided to get seriously studious, and went into “Scout” Mindset Mode, looking up as much history as I could about that myth, which has led to this belief, which as persisted all the way to modern day society. I’m ready for her, should she, or anyone else in that group, bring it up again.