Mindscape 143 | Julia Galef on Openness, Bias, and Rationality

Patreon: / seanmcarroll
Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: www.preposterousuniverse.com/...
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.
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.
Mindscape Podcast playlist: • Mindscape Podcast
#podcast #ideas #science #philosophy #culture

[@ExistentialistDasein]

Julia Galef is great. Thank you for having her on the show:)!

[@StayPrimal]

I imagine Professor Caroll with Ariel sleeping on his knees the whole conversation, and it makes me feel good. Thank you professor for making monday amazing.

[@seionne85]

Thanks in advance for giving me something to think about while I drive! Love your work Sean, excited to hear your ideas Julia!

[@themagicpancakes]

Julia is amazing. This interview was amazing. Thank you!

[@Emanresu56]

I always go back to Sean Carroll's podcast and similar podcasts when I'm feeling down. Music helps too of course.

[@chewyjello1]

WOW. I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would! The two of them should write a book together...it would be amazing.

[@HarryNicNicholas]

all his women guests have been brilliant, it's encouraging to see so many women making it onto these sorts of programs.

[@robertglass5678]

Sean interviewed Julia because when you do a KZbin search for Bayesian Statistics, hers is one of the first to come up.

[@limweixuan7479]

Amazing! I just discover her then now it comes

[@naturallaw1733]

I Love hearing Julia spread this knowledge. 🤝

[@ryrez4478]

awesome episode!

[@ezbody]

The problem of achieving rationality is much more complex than simply learning how to be rational. Indoctrination; tribalism; cult(ish) environment; dysfunctional family; no developed habit of habitual cleaninness, organization and discipline; undetected, undiagnosed, ignored physical, emotional, psychiatric and psychological health issues; lack of proper education; lack of communication skills; lack of emotional intelligence; lack of clearly defined rules for rational thinking and thought organization (i.e. disorganized, chaotic thought process); etc. Edit: The main reason that I am even aware of it is because most of the factors listed above either have been, or still are an issue in my own life. :)

[@idhaiwandari7573]

Agreed!

[@relaxbro5605]

Yes, unfortunately, the topics discussed are much more complex than the way in which they are addressed in her ideas.

[@naturallaw1733]

@@relaxbro5605 I learned a lot from her on my way to becoming a Rationalist so..... 🧐

[@relaxbro5605]

@@naturallaw1733 whatever that means but if it makes you happy... you do you. I'm happy for you.

[@naturallaw1733]

@@relaxbro5605 "whatever that means" ? thanks I guess..😕

[@seth4766]

episode number 143 is very appropriate cos Julia I LOVE YOU

[@andrear.berndt9504]

Thank you for the new episode!

[@GreenPatches]

Something to listen to with lunch, thanks!

[@naturallaw1733]

Enjoyy!🤗

[@sasstemir]

This was so good, thank you

[@woody7652]

Thanks, Sean!

[@Daniel-ih4zh]

Waiting for this :)

[@Tom-sx4tw]

Love topics about rationality!

[@edansw]

I didn't like the use of politics as an example. Politics are beliefs on unknown future, which no evidence is really sufficient to detriment one side to be more rational. On the other hand, our brain optimizing survival and re-production, which are likely to affect rational thinking. Studying these conflicts and methods to overcome our primitive needs is very interesting.

[@ezbody]

With the amount of widespread irrational thinking and beliefs present in humanity, I am surprised that we even got to where we are at today.

[@naturallaw1733]

hear! hear! 🤷

[@stephencolbertcheese7354]

i luv sean & julia sooooo much...get them talking 2gether & im in heaven (atheist heaven that is) (& sorry real stephen colbert)

[@yurona5155]

Thanks for a delightful conversation (and keeping it light and exploratory where other self-described 'rationalists' might have taken the road to improvisational evopsych halfwittery ;)). On the choice of metaphors: Although "scout vs. soldier" probably is most suited to the US context, Julia's "judge vs. lawyer" alternative actually works really well in countries with more Roman law-type legal systems (e.g. most of continental Europe) where discovery is almost entirely "judge-driven". P.S.This may be my soldier mindset talking, but an idealist's "graph of despair" is a materialist's "graph of duh" (it's not necessarily comforting, i know). ;)

[@HarryNicNicholas]

27:00 speaking as a psychopath i think this is true, being intelligent means you can be good at arguing (and persuading people) of your point of view, even if you know it has, er, flaws.

[@DjSapsan]

I discovered Julia recently and Sean instantly made Mindscape with her. Therefore god!

[@seionne85]

This is the most rational thinking I have ever heard!

[@wynonahshawamd2271]

Do the right thing. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

[@_ARCATEC_]

A measure of rationalisation of values as a functional combinator @ P6 D4 . Agency of Mind .

[@calvingrondahl1011]

In the movie Dancings with Wolves... the Scout mindset.

[@ProfessorBeautiful]

Just to clarify the terms... Bayes Rule is a rule, Bayes Theorem is a theorem. The evidence can point to X over Y (Bayes theorem), while the optimal decision could be the reverse because it also weighs in the loss function, which may say the consequence of being wrong is much much worse if Y is true (Bayes rule). This distinction occurs a lot in medical decision making. Full disclosure; Keep in mind that people much smarter than me conflate the two.

[@eugen10min]

i cant afford to be a patreon, but i wonder could it be that all we se it;s a transformation, from the compressed space of a black hole to our free light rooming universe?

[@life42theuniverse]

Scout and soldier mindset made me contemplate the impacts of ancient Greeks, Romans, Sparta and Alexander the Great.

[@myothersoul1953]

26:00 What the graph of despair shows is people over generalize from the results of surveys and questionnaires. The replication crisis in the social sciences is result of that propensity. The study did have a large number of participants but they were all active in a public opinion research firm respondents pool. And even if the sample from that pool was chosen to match the demographics of the larger population it may not have accurately represented that population. We should neither discount the result or read much into it until it has been replicated with other means of sampling the population.

[@AlexMoreno-zj7po]

thanks for introducing me to Julia Galef

[@LLlap]

They mention a person that understood that his purest good intentions actually caused harm and then go on to claim that it`s good to help and encourage young kids actually CHANGE THE WORLD. Clearly defunding the police will improve police performance. Now go and spread the word, my beautiful children!

[@tjthreadgood818]

I agree, and keep in mind that GENETIC mutations are random, and so nearly always either neutral or deleterious. On the other hand, the beliefs of rational agents (e.g. humans) differ from genes in that rational agents have the potential to model potential changes, however imperfectly, and reject many counterproductive ideas. A selfish gene is always best served by complete dedication to conservation of its genetic code. Changes in a rational agent’s beliefs can be vetted before being adopted in a way that mutations can not be [even temporarily setting aside the fact that a gene is by definition it’s code, and so a mutation is effectively death for a gene]. Therefore It’s appropriate for [even selfish] rational agents to significantly relax the genetic imperative to deny change as much as possible. In a rational agent appropriate resistance to change is a balance between accepting productive change and rejecting counterproductive change, while leaning just a bit towards conservation because of the imperfect nature of the vetting process.

[@nickhall1632]

What I like is that there is no direct definition of rationality other than updating one's view in light of new evidence. That is a fair definition but a lot of their argument for the use of rationality comes from the moral praiseworthiness of using rationality. This moral praiseworthiness comes from an intuition about what is morally good and also about what is morally good about the use of rationality. Neither of which can be confirmed in any objective sense. Rationality will not lead you to the Truth and there is no way to ensure that your rationality doesn't simply just track your subjective set of beliefs. We can try to not be motivated nor hold cognitive biases but that requires a surprising amount of control over ourselves. This is why talks about rationality really only excite those who believe rationality is praiseworthy and it is likely that most of those who are champions of rationality use it to abuse others.

[@naturallaw1733]

I'm a Rationalist and all it means to me is having a more Broader and Nuanced view of the World. and to come to more Reasonable views, beliefs based on that more comprehensive understanding and perspective. to think this way, is essentially the Opposite of Ideological thinking. and the World is really Stuck on different Ideologies so that is why it's so difficult for a lot of people to think Rationally.

[@Finkledorfed]

Thanks for being a great host sean. She was hard to listen to until the last quarter of the podcast.

[@dmarsub]

11:00 thank you sean for calling that out. To be clear i really value her work. I am sure she *hears* a lot of people who hold such opinions, but 5 minutes ago she talked about people misrepresenting and misunderstanding her position. Even though she has a larger body of work out there and she just sees shortform tweets she can interpret. This seems like a classic unintentional strawman. Of course there are some people who hold more subtle positions, but the extreme she portrays seems a bit out of place.

[@snackentity5709]

I disagree. Sean has a serious blind spot and tendency to ignore the anti-science dogma coming from the woke left. Sean's a smart guy, but he's in a hard-science ( and left-leaning) academic bubble and simply is not exposed to what is happening on the woke-left front. It's ironic that he exposes his own information bubble in this podcast in attempt to bring to light the hypothetical bubble of Julia, who is much more sensitive to the concept of information bubbles. Julia also brought up "Q-anon" in the same vein - no push back from Sean there. How prevalent is Q-anon in the broader society? More prevalent than the anti-science woke left? It certainly isn't supported by mainstream media and social media like the woke left stuff is. But this just goes to show you, it doesn't matter how smart you are, if you're not exposed to information, your intelligence can't operate on/filter/sift through it. Both the right and left media do this - prop up the extremes of the opposite side, and omit the extremes of their own side. You'll have intelligent right-leaning people that have no idea that Q-anon even exists.

[@grahamhenry9368]

The world needs more rationalists

[@JustOneAsbesto]

But noted philosopher James T. Kirk taught us that pure logic wasn't enough!

[@charliesteiner2334]

I can't find it, but I'm reminded of the short story where Spock says "Captain, we must take evasive maneuvers to avoid the black hole - if we go much closer we only have a 2.3% chance of survival." Kirk replies "Damn the probabilities, we've always pulled through before!" "Yes, captain, I have also noticed that we tend to succeed in surprising ways, especially when the stakes are high. I have attempted to model this effect, and have validated the correction term to our success rates by making advance predictions for our last 3 surface missions." "Even the..." "Even that one, yes. So when I say 2.3%, this is after taking our ability to defy the odds into account - without it, the chance would be several orders of magnitude smaller." "And you're so confident, Spock, that you've captured our grit and determination in your equations? That we won't pull through in the nick of time if we buzz right by the black hole?" "Yes, captain." "Well damn. Guess we'll go around then."

[@nibblrrr7124]

@@charliesteiner2334 Julia Galef herself mentions that exact example (at least the premise) in her "Straw Vulcan" talk. ;)

[@mikeg9b]

5:20 "How do you know that everyone's always better off being rational?" Answer: Because "being rational" is, by definition, making choices that maximize your well-being? www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rational-choice-theory.asp

[@deeptochatterjee532]

In the podcast, Julia makes a distinction between epistemic rationality, which is how she in the most part was discussing rationality (it's like skepticism and Bayesian reasoning), and instrumental rationality, which is acting to optimize some kind of metric. The question she is asking is "How do you know that everyone's better off acting according to epistemic rationality?". If she were referring to instrumental rationality, then the answer would be yes by definition, as you pointed out

[@mikeg9b]

@@deeptochatterjee532 Thanks. I only listened to about 6 minutes of this podcast.

[@eljeorgo]

Not bad.

[@peteryyz43]

I like to imagine that in a parallel universe, I'm married to Julia.

[@aresmars2003]

I see a "scout mindset" is useful when dealing with critics, to help you isolate your own biases and self-deceptions. That is instinct says take a "soldier mindset" when listening to a critic, so we need a way to avoid falling into a state that prevents you from really hearing what you don't want to hear. Well, that's why we talk of "constructive criticism" and you can tell the difference is when someone can show where they agree and disagree.

[@dmtgallardo]

im just a big simp

[@eklim2034]

Many of us are the products of our parents' irrationality. Irrationality keeps the evolution ball rolling.

[@aresmars2003]

I think "scout mindset" can include "popularity" (rumor?) as a factor in evaluation. If lots of people believe something exists, like religions, then they are more worthy for attention, EVEN if they are not physical reality, they are "psychic reality" of the world you're trying to understand.

[@jesperburns]

8:30 Many political beliefs have nothing to do with evidence or scientific facts. Just because you disagree doesn't mean they're wrong. Note: I dislike Giuliani and his beliefs.

[@jonathanhenderson9422]

Many political "beliefs" are about subjective values, not objective truth; but Giuliani was literally the guy spearheading the "election fraud" campaign that was concocted without any evidence. So, yeah, his quote about changing one's mind with evidence is absolutely hypocritical as his actions were the epitome of irrationality.

[@jesperburns]

@@jonathanhenderson9422 There was some small scale (or single instances of) election fraud, and no valid investigation has ever been done. There was *probably* no large scale election fraud and Trump wouldn't have won anyway.

[@jonathanhenderson9422]

@@jesperburns The claim wasn't about "small scale" election fraud, but election fraud widespread and systemic enough to change the outcome of the election: there was never any evidence of THAT. Every single study that's ever been done on the subject says the same thing: election fraud (even isolated cases) is extremely rare. It's still deeply irrational to throw out all of those past studies and insist that this time it must've been different based on nothing.

[@wynonahshawamd2271]

Numero Uno! WE♥️💎🍑🏹

[@relaxbro5605]

I really like and respect her but she hasn't put enough thought into many crucial things. One of the most important questions you must reflect on is for example the question about the definition of rationality. She, it seems, has not put tons of thought on this in advance. If she wants to make a difference, she needs to put more thought into this. Otherwise she's risking to be just another person following a career by following her agenda. I think she's great but she needs to be better prepared and put more thought in the philosophical fundamentals of what she's talking about.

[@lakshmisharma3412]

Rationality means make sure the ideas you hold are pragmatic and reasonable to follow .I read her book in which she described that how religious people says that labour pain is good by giving reason that it's good for spiritual growth, and that some person are harmed saying that it's god's gift .So rationality means you accept the ideas but be sure that is it pragmatically possible I think that's her definitely.Like using you tool in a way which is realistic not radical.So e.g the idea of animal injustice it is good but so many people need animals so how can we pragmatically fight for this cause

[@b_tang]

It's interesting that this expert on bias and rationality t several points demonstrated bias and faulty reasoning. I expected a different conversation in this podcast. Sean is clearly a more clear and unbiased thinker which made her deficits stand out to me.

[@aresmars2003]

Soldier mindset: Just ask "Is this the hill you want to die on?" George Bernard Shaw: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

[@aresmars2003]

Ha! 1:19:40!

[@aresmars2003]

Current debate, people who are CERTAIN that wearing masks outdoors serve the greater good, even if they have almost no practical impact in reducing covid spread. and trying to socially shame people who disagree and creates unnecessary opponents who otherwise completely agree caution is warranted.

[@thiagodemelo608]

If you use 0.75 the playback speed, you can undesrtand.

[@tech-utuber2219]

How effective is it to be advising people to consider to be more rational while ignoring the highly level of immaturity among many grown adults? Many adult Americans exhibit limited reasoning and poor emotional regulation when challenged, suggesting that we are seeing strong symptoms of unhealthy families for many children. Also, it is not uncommon to people who seem to posses cognitive skills while exhibiting social immaturity and dysfunctional discourse. It's alarming how many Americans look like adults but are actually developmentally stunted, reactive children, who often resort to defensive, simplistic reasoning, and often leads to disagreements being taken as personal affronts. She is bright, motivated, and has a good cognitive skill set however, I would have advised her to delve deeply into what constitutes functioning maturity in adults and get at least 10 more years experience under her belt before tackling a subject like this as her approach seems naive to me, although I can only comment on what I heard today, since I am not familiar with her book. I would speculate that she is not familiar with the stages of mental development which fosters much of what she is advocating, the important point being that it unfolds in a naturally emergent manner, when children are raised by healthy, functioning adults. It seems quite common for physics and science people to have little to no understanding (a kind of silo affect?) of what underpins what was discussed in this podcast. It's a shame because since the mid 90's, neuro-imaging technology has led to vast improvements in many aspects of mind and psychological research topics.

[@walkingcarpet420]

I asked my meteorology professor what he thought the effect of Earth's weakening magnetosphere (10-15% weaker now than 150 years ago) had on weather / climate, and he said he hadn't heard about that and proclaimed that plant food in the atmosphere measured in parts per million was the only factor that mattered. Lost a lot of faith in the "experts" and "scientific consensus" regarding climate after that.

[@ticklefights]

On climate change specifically... if everyone had been saying for 40 years that we were going to run out of oil and have global famines and a bunch of other vaguely Malthusian claims - and then we didn't - would this make you more or less sure of it, in principal? At one time, Phrenology was consensus science. In science, we go on what the best scientist says as based on the ability of their theories to predict things, not consensus. Climate change theory, if you want to call it that, hasn't really predicted anything. To the contrary, the things that it was predicting decades ago that would happen by now, have not happened at best or are vague things that have kind of happened since recorded history at worst.

[@seionne85]

As someone who listened to rush Limbaugh for 15 years or so, I have recently come to the conclusion that I was obviously manipulated into looking at the problem the wrong way. There is a scientific consensus that humans are screwing stuff up across the board, and if you don't buy it then you've been indoctrinated

[@ticklefights]

@@seionne85 Again, there was scientific consensus around Phrenology. But I do love to learn - what predictive claim have climate change proponents made? Like, what was said in 2000 about 2020 that was rooted in the idea that humans are causing climate change that has come true?

[@seionne85]

@@ticklefights just because bad predictions were made doesn't mean that releasing huge reserves of carbon into the climate isn't going to cause runaway greenhouse effect. Instead of looking for bad predictions, look at all the evidence of positive feedback loops that we are currently feeding into. I'm nobody so don't trust me, all I ask is you treat the people who are telling you it's not a problem the same way, don't trust them look at the actual science. It took millions or even billions of years for life to accumulate all that carbon in the form of oil and we are burning it. That's never been done before and if you think that sticking your fingers in your ears is the right approach then I hope you are a minority

[@seionne85]

@@ticklefights hold up did you just use an example of some 18th century brain study to disprove climate change? Do you not see how bias your view is?

[@ticklefights]

@@seionne85 I'll say two things. One, we are clearly dealing with an issue of scale. If we nuked the poles this would have an impact on global warming, obviously. And if I pass gas this has an impact on global warming, if perhaps less obviously. Two, what I am arguing primarily is that science isn't about unchecked predictions. That's just guessing. So far, to me, climate change looks more like unchecked predictions than real science. It looks like guessing because, 1, its treated like an in-group / out-group religion that you can't question (which isn't particularly scientific) and 2, it hasn't made any predictions yet that have come true, at least that I am aware of. Science: there's good reason to think the higgs boson exists, lets build an LHC and see if we're right. Not-science: our model says climate change will destroy everything, but our model keeps being wrong over multi-decade periods in its predictions. If you don't believe it, though, you've been duped. How would one, even in theory, go about proving climate change as caused by humans to a scale that it will destroy everything incorrect?