You’re a Republican, having a casual conversation at the YMCA with someone you know only as Bob, who happens to be a Democrat. You’re discussing your latest work project when the topic shifts to a recent school shooting. Bob suddenly says, “Can you believe how these Republicans won’t do anything about gun violence? They don’t care one iota about our children.”
Immediately, you feel that tightness in your gut. You tense up, defensive. Your mind begins racing through all the usual counterarguments—your critiques of Democratic policies, your beliefs about the Second Amendment, your concerns about government overreach. But this isn’t the time or place, so you steer the conversation elsewhere.
That night, though, you’re still unsettled. You find yourself texting Bob, launching into a debate about guns. The two of you go back and forth, each digging in, defending your side, growing more frustrated—and getting nowhere.
This is what Julia Galef, in The Scout Mindset, calls the soldier mindset. It’s the impulse to protect your beliefs, to marshal arguments and fend off threats to your worldview. In this mindset, you’re not trying to find the truth—you’re trying to win.
The alternative is what Galef calls the scout mindset. A scout’s job is to survey the terrain and draw the most accurate map possible. The scout is curious, open, and motivated by understanding—not by defending. In the book, Galef explores how the soldier mindset manifests through various fallacies and biases, and how adopting a scout mindset can help us see the world more clearly.
Importantly, Galef doesn’t pretend that the scout mindset is easy—or natural. We’ve evolved to be soldiers. Tribal loyalty, identity, and survival instincts push us to defend what we already believe. Letting go of that identity can feel like letting go of part of ourselves. But Galef urges us to “hold our identities lightly,” to stay open to the idea that we might be wrong, and to continually update our mental maps as we gain new information.
Though I still feel the instinct to defend what’s closest to my identity, I’ve learned to hold my beliefs more loosely. Especially in politics and religion, I try to sit with uncertainty and remain open to new evidence. That doesn’t mean I don’t have convictions—I do—but I’m more comfortable now with the idea that I might be wrong, and more interested in discovering where that might be true.
I highly recommend this book if you want to learn how to better understand the world and your place in it. In a time when so many conversations turn into battles, The Scout Mindset is a call to curiosity, humility, and intellectual courage. I think that’s vital to a life well lived. Is there a belief you hold tightly that might benefit from a scout’s curiosity?
