143 | Julia Galef on Openness, Bias, and Rationality

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

Sean Carroll | Wondery

Society & Culture, Physics, Philosophy, Science, Ideas, Society

4.8 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 19 April 2021

⏱️ 92 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mom, apple pie, and rationality — all things that are unquestionably good, right? But rationality, as much as we might value it, is easier to aspire to than to achieve. And there are more than a few hot takes on the market suggesting that we shouldn’t even want to be rational — that it’s inefficient or maladaptive. Julia Galef is here to both stand up for the value of being rational, and to explain how we can better achieve it. She distinguishes between the “soldier mindset,” where we believe what we’re told about the world and march toward a goal, and the “scout mindset,” where we’re open-minded about what’s out there and always asking questions. She makes a compelling case that all things considered, it’s better to be a scout.

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Julia Galef received a BA in statistics from Columbia University. She is currently a writer and host of the Rationally Speaking podcast. She was a co-founder and president of the Center for Applied Rationality. Her new book is The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everybody, welcome to the Mindscape Podcast.
0:02.6	I'm your host Sean Carroll.
0:04.2	And today here on the podcast, we are going to get rational.
0:07.9	I know that a lot of you are thinking, well it's about time, but we always try to be rational,
0:12.3	right?
0:13.3	As I make the point early in the podcast, there are very few people who actively brag about
0:17.9	not being rational, but it's easier said than done.
0:20.7	We would like to be rational, but how do you do it?
0:23.4	How especially do you admit that you are not always rational and reorient your mindset
0:29.0	in a way that helps you be more rational, whether it's in sort of high level problem solving
0:33.9	for some scientific or technical job you have or just in your daily life?
0:38.5	Who to date?
0:39.5	What to have for dinner tonight?
0:40.5	We would like to be rational about all of these different choices.
0:42.9	And so today's guest, Julia Gallif, is a star in the rationality community, someone who
0:48.5	has given a lot of thought into these real efforts that an individual can put into becoming
0:54.7	more rational themselves.
0:56.2	She doesn't want to just give you a list of ways in which you're not rational.
1:00.1	That's been done quite a few times.
1:02.2	She wants to give you useful, actionable advice for becoming more rational yourself.
1:07.6	So she has a new book coming out called The Scout Mindset.
1:11.3	Julia's metaphor here is that in a war, there's a military metaphor going on here.
	...

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