The Scout Mindset (’s new book) sharply distills many key ideas from the rationalist world, but the framing is unusual and (I think) better! It presents motivated reasoning as rooted in important emotional functions which truth-seeking advocates must address/provide.
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Writing about rationality often imagines that if only we could just *explain* people’s biases to them and show them some Bayesian reasoning, they’d start thinking clearly.
But JG sees that motivated reasoning provides comfort, belonging, &c; alternatives must handle these needs.
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Of the functions discussed, I found “persuasion" the most surprising. Do you have to be confident to be compelling to others? Yes… but it’s enough to be *socially* confident; you don’t also have to be epistemically confident.
One function I’d like to see more writing/exploring about is “morale” (believing things to motivate ourselves). This can be brittle and short-sighted, and a truth-seeking mindset will likely produce better results… but can it also be made to provide strong morale?
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JG suggests that a clear-sighted understanding of one’s odds can create a liberating sense of freedom, which I think is right… but it’s not *quite* the same thing as morale/motivation! Could it be?
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Problem is that it feels a bit icky to be socially confident when you're not epistemically confident.
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I do think being socially confident when you're not epistemically confident is a form of lying fwiw (and arguably a *worse* form of lying if you believe your interlocutor is operating in the social rather than the epistemic domain!).
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I get what you’re saying, and I see why it seems that way, but I don’t think what Julia talks about in the book has this problem. It’s hard to compress the delta into a tweet; read the book! :)
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