You’re arguing with someone on the internet. Your heart is racing. Your thumbs are flying across the screen, typing out a rebuttal that is objectively, undeniably brilliant. You feel that surge of adrenaline—the "I’m right and you’re an idiot" high.
Most of us live in that high. Julia Galef, co-founder of the Center for Applied Rationality, calls this "soldier mindset." It’s a defensive crouch. When we're in it, our ideas are like a fort we have to protect at all costs. Any piece of evidence that contradicts us is an enemy combatant trying to breach the walls.
But there’s another way to live.
The scout mindset Julia Galef describes in her 2021 book and her famous TED talk is basically the opposite of that defensive urge. Think about what a scout actually does. They aren't there to attack or defend. They're there to map the terrain. A scout who comes back and says, "There's a bridge five miles east," when there actually isn't one, hasn't helped anyone. They've failed. For a scout, the only thing that matters is the truth, even if that truth is inconvenient or makes them look bad.
Why we default to the soldier
Evolution didn't really care if you knew the exact chemical composition of a berry. It cared if you survived. For most of human history, being "right" was less important than belonging to the group. If your tribe believed the moon was made of cheese, and you disagreed, you risked getting kicked out.
In the wild, being alone meant being dead.
So, our brains developed "motivated reasoning." This is a fancy way of saying we decide what we want to be true first, and then we go out and find the evidence to support it. It’s why people can look at the exact same set of statistics about climate change or the economy and come to completely opposite conclusions. We aren't looking for the truth; we're looking for ammo.
The scout mindset Julia Galef argues for requires us to fight that hardwired instinct. It's not about being smarter. It's about being curious. It's about feeling a little bit of excitement when you realize you were wrong, because it means you just got a better map of the world.
The Dreyfus Affair: A Masterclass in Being Wrong
Galef often uses the story of Alfred Dreyfus to illustrate how dangerous the soldier mindset can be. In 1894, Dreyfus, a French Jewish artillery officer, was accused of treason. The evidence was flimsy—basically a torn-up memo found in a wastepaper basket with handwriting that looked somewhat like his.
But the French military wanted him to be guilty. Anti-Semitism was rampant. Once they decided he was the spy, every piece of evidence was filtered through that lens.
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When they searched his house and found nothing? "Aha! He's a clever spy who hid the evidence!"
When people said he was a man of high character? "He's obviously just pretending to be honorable to cover his tracks."
This is the soldier mindset in action. It’s a closed loop. They spent years ignoring the actual spy, Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, because admitting they were wrong about Dreyfus would have been too painful for their egos and their reputation. It took a "scout" named Georges Picquart to look at the evidence objectively and realize they had the wrong man. Picquart didn't even like Dreyfus. He was actually quite anti-Semitic himself. But his commitment to the "map"—to what was actually true—overrode his personal bias. That’s the core of the scout mindset Julia Galef is talking about.
How to tell if you're a scout or a soldier
It’s easy to say you want the truth. It’s much harder to actually want it. Honestly, most of us are soldiers pretending to be scouts.
How do you know the difference?
Ask yourself: Do I ever look for evidence that I might be wrong? When I encounter a person I disagree with, do I try to understand their argument, or do I just look for the weakest part of it so I can tear it down?
Galef suggests looking for "tells." If you find yourself saying things like "it’s common sense" or "anyone with half a brain can see," you’re probably in soldier mode. You’re using social pressure to shut down debate rather than engaging with the facts.
Another big one: pride.
Do you feel proud when you admit you were wrong? Or do you feel ashamed? A scout feels a sense of accomplishment for correcting their map. A soldier feels like they’ve lost a limb.
The "Lean In" to the Wrongness
There’s this weird idea that being a scout makes you weak or indecisive. We like our leaders to be bold and "certain." But extreme certainty is often just a mask for the soldier mindset.
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Think about the most successful people you know. Not just the loud ones, but the ones who actually get things done. Most of them are surprisingly willing to pivot. Jeff Bezos famously says that people who are right a lot are the ones who change their minds often. They don't get married to their ideas. They treat their beliefs like hypotheses, not identities.
If you want to practice the scout mindset Julia Galef recommends, you have to start small.
Next time you’re in a minor disagreement about something—maybe where to go for dinner or how a specific movie ended—try saying: "Actually, I might be wrong about that. Let me check."
It feels weird at first. Kinda vulnerable. But it's also incredibly freeing. You don't have to carry the weight of being right all the time.
Practical ways to upgrade your map
You can’t just flip a switch and become a scout. It’s a muscle. You have to train it.
One technique is "Steel-manning." You’ve heard of straw-manning, right? That’s when you take your opponent's argument, simplify it into something stupid, and then kick it over. Steel-manning is the opposite. You try to build the strongest possible version of the other person's argument. You try to make it so good that they would say, "Yeah, that’s actually better than how I put it."
If you can’t steel-man the other side, you don’t really understand the issue yet.
Another trick is the "Pre-Mortem."
If you're making a big decision—like quitting your job or moving to a new city—imagine it's a year from now and the decision was a total disaster. Everything went wrong. Now, ask yourself: Why did it fail? By forcing your brain to work backward from a failure, you bypass the "soldier" urge to only see the upside. You start seeing the holes in your plan that you were previously ignoring because you wanted the plan to work.
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The Social Cost of the Scout
We should be honest here: being a scout can be lonely.
Most people want to be told they’re right. They want to be part of a "team." When you refuse to join the soldier ranks, when you say "I'm not sure" or "The other side has a point," your own "side" might see you as a traitor.
Galef acknowledges this. The scout mindset Julia Galef outlines isn't a magic wand for social popularity. It’s a tool for accuracy. It’s for the person who cares more about being effective in the real world than being popular in a bubble.
But there’s a flip side. Scouts tend to have better relationships in the long run. Why? Because they’re actually listening. They aren't just waiting for their turn to speak. They're trying to learn. People can feel that. It changes the energy of a room.
Actionable Steps for Today
If you want to start moving toward a scout mindset, don't try to overhaul your whole personality. Just try these three things:
- Update your "Identity" list. Identify the things you feel most strongly about. Politics? Diet? Parenting? These are your "danger zones" where you're most likely to be a soldier.
- Find a "disagreement partner." Find someone who is smart but disagrees with you. Not an internet troll, but someone you actually respect. Ask them: "What’s one thing you think I’m fundamentally getting wrong about this?" And then—this is the hard part—just listen. Don't argue. Just try to see their map.
- Celebrate being wrong. Literally. The next time you find out you were mistaken about something, even if it's small, say out loud: "I was wrong! Good to know." It sounds cheesy, but it re-wires your brain to associate correcting a mistake with a positive emotion rather than a negative one.
The world doesn't need more soldiers. We have plenty of those. We have enough people screaming at each other from behind their respective fortresses. We need more people willing to go out into the tall grass, look around, and tell us what's actually there.
It's not about winning the argument. It's about winning the game of life by having the most accurate map possible.
Start looking for the "bridge" that isn't there. Your future self will thank you for it.