I found out about her from a FITs owner, who was very enthusiastic. It looks like he was right. Here is Michael Shermer reviewing her new book, The Scout Mindset.
Scouts, Ms. Galef explains, “revise their opinions incrementally over time, which makes it easier to be open to evidence against their beliefs.” They also “view errors as opportunities to hone their skill at getting things right, which makes the experience of realizing ‘I was wrong’ feel valuable, rather than just painful.” In fact, the author suggests, we should drop the whole “wrong” confession and instead describe the process as “updating”—a reference to Bayesian reasoning, in which we revise our estimations of the probability of something’s being true after gaining new information about it. “An update is routine. Low-key. It’s the opposite of an overwrought confession of sin,” Ms. Galef continues. “An update makes something better or more current without implying that its previous form was a failure.”
It’s a sensible concept but is this really new ground that warrants an entire book? Most books should be a blog post, most blog posts should be a tweet, and most tweets should never be sent.
“If you want to believe the correct answer to some objective question, you must try to overcome the common instincts to, among other things, take things too personally, to be too defensive of your own ego or reputation and also too offensive in terms of being nasty to those who disagree, to prioritize group loyalties and rivalries over accuracy, and to be unreasonably overconfident and stubbornly closed-minded. You should maintain a healthy sense of skepticism and favor claims based on thorough logic and solid evidence. You should try to be more open-minded, rigorous, fair, neutral, flexible, civil, provisional, and humble, and you should actively seek out and welcome contrary evidence, give counterarguments a fair opportunity to be heard, and maintain a positive attitude which embraces correction as a benefit, not an embarrassment. You should also know this is really, really hard to do well and consistently, and most people who try hard still often miss the mark, and almost always when it relates to matters of hot social controversy. Not just *those* people over there, but you, all your friends, and all the people you most respect too. So that means you need to be aware of the problem, dedicate yourself to persistently working hard at it, and know that you are still probably only going to get just a little bit better and you’ll still be confidently wrong about most things.”
Ok, that doesn’t fit it a single tweet, but with a little effort it could have.
Still, to me, these are mostly “applause lights” in which one is making appeal to a description of reasonable and virtuous behaviors that few would object to on principle. Also, while I have no objection to frequently reiterating old wisdom, it’s also true that none of this would have seemed unfamiliar to the Ancient Greeks, so I have my doubts as to the answer to your question of, “is this really new ground that warrants an entire book?”
The problem with all this is that you get a lot of people who genuinely but very mistakenly *think* they are in “scouts club”, that they are in the “reality-based community” of people who are rational and “follow the science” and more closely hew to all these intellectual best-practices.
But all of that is merely a smokescreen of hypocrisy that ends up being misused as yet another factor to reinforce groupthink and enforce consensus and bolster the legitimacy of the in-group dumping on the out-group, because, after all, *we* are the enlightened ones and *our* ideas are up-to-date and based on better epistemology, unlike those stupid, deluded, superstitious, tribal liars over there. Which is why we *deserve* to triumph and rule over them, and not the other way around.
In the abstract, there is no need to raise the status of ‘scout’, because most intellectuals *already* think that scouting is good and believe in the conceit that they already are one. The trouble with raising the status of scouting even further is that it is quite intentionally trying to lower the status of ‘soldiers’. Which you may think is fine, but by doing so, it provides a perfect smear to answer the question of how one who identifies as a scout views people who disagree. What you have given them is a perfect rationalization to dismiss all criticism and counterargument, because *we* scouts believe X, and if you don’t, then you are only *pretending* to be a scout, but are actually a low-status bad *soldier* for your tribal cause. Why should someone who is just being a ‘soldier’ for their cause be granted a voice or a platform for a fair hearing? Error has no right.
This is exactly the wrong thing at the wrong moment. Instead of expected criticism from opponents being part of the social epistemic security system of accountability, there is now a wonderful justification and alibi to suppress, silence, dismiss, and ignore all that low-quality soldier noise. “Well, that’s what a soldier *would* say, pay no mind. You wouldn’t want to get kicked out of scout club, right?” It’s also a great cover story for censorship and sanction, “typical soldier misinformation.” “Why are we polarized? Well fellow scouts, I think you already know why, and it’s because the other pole is just a bunch of soldiers.”
I think this is a bad – or at the very least risky – idea and project, and just as bad as telling defense attorneys that they will face personal negative consequence for defending infamous clients. Socially undesirable claims and opinions really are like the accused in a criminal trial and face similar obstacles, which is why critique of prestigious and influential personalities and institutions on behalf of those claims needs all help it can get. Right now, the toleration of such forms of adversarial critique is collapsing.
Being a scout in one’s own field of investigation is fine by me. But in the actual real world we learn almost everything socially and thus must try to decide between competing social claims. To do that, to be a good juror and judge, you want to be exposed to the best arguments and counterarguments by motivated advocates on both sides in structured dialectic and with fair opportunity to present their arguments , and *then* try to decide which has made the better case and where the truth really lies.
And what is required for that process to produce its fairness and epistemic benefits is that the lawyers themselves are held in high regard precisely for being the best champions and most vigorous advocates for their side of the dispute. Lowering the status of critics as argumentative and disagreeable ‘soldiers’ is going exactly in the wrong direction.