Book Review: 3/5 Impact On Me (Book By Julia Galef)
Read more about the book here
When I read "Scout Mindset," it felt similar to "Growth Mindset". Both teach you some new terminology and the right actions. But the right actions seem obvious. Yet, I wasn't sure how close or far I was from the ideal. From this book, I understand scout mindset versus soldier mindset, motivated reasoning versus accuracy-based reasoning, and Bayesian vs frequentist probabilities.
The book quotes Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. They say the odds of success of their startups were 10% and 30%. The author suggests they are realistic. But, considering less than 5% or 2% of startups succeed, they still seem optimistic, not realistic. I'm not sure about the effectiveness of these examples.
The book also relates to the book "Super Forecasters," which discusses having accurate ways to think about the odds of events happening rather than just seeing things as certainly true or certainly false. It encourages thinking in shades of gray, like considering something 85% likely to happen.
On the one hand, it shows me the value of having a soldier mindset when defending beliefs against adversity, like when executing difficult tasks (the book says rock climbing; I think running from my endpoint back home) with no alternative but success. Similarly, if you are in a company's PR department, you'll want to show your company in the best light, even while encouraging internal debates.
On the other hand, the book will help me be more aware of confirmation bias in myself or others.
Very nice book. But, I rate the impact of this book on me as 3 because I felt I knew most of it. For example, I set success criteria, WTP, etc., for projects or items before looking at the data to avoid biases.