THE LEGENDS OF THE PYRAMIDS: Myths and Misconceptions
about Ancient Egypt. Jason Colavito. Colavito researches the connections
between science, pseudoscience, and speculative fiction.
Ancient Egypt is perhaps the oldest and best example. He
looks at “the way people imagined (and outright
fabricated) Egyptian history from Alexander’s conquest
in 322 BCE down to the present.” He examines how
religious belief has bent history to its demands and how
race, ethnicity, nationalism, and culture have sought to
revise Egyptian history to favor certain groups. And he
traces the influence of “a powerful and compelling—but
fictitious—idea that the pyramids had a deep and abiding
connection” to forbidden knowledge and supernatural
creatures. The book is about the power of storytelling
and legend-making, which illustrate why, despite the
facts, “pop culture sees Egypt as a land of walking
mummies, booby-trapped tombs, ancient wisdom, and
powerful magic.” Red Lightning Books, 2021, 222 pp.,
$20.00.
THE SCOUT MINDSET: Why Some People See Things Clearly
and Others Don’t. Julia Galef. In The Scout Mindset, Galef, a
cofounder of the Center for Applied Rationality and
longtime host of the
Rationally Speaking podcast, examines cognitive
errors, tribalism, motivated reasoning, the
(underappreciated) role of identity in beliefs,
self-deception, and much more. The subtitle might set a
few teeth on edge, but as Galef demonstrates, it’s a
simple fact that some people see things more clearly
than others; it’s not a matter of intelligence but
instead critical thinking. Galef’s thesis about the
scout versus soldier mindset first came to widespread
attention in a 2016 TEDx talk. Applying a military
metaphor to critical thinking, Galef compares two
functions: a soldier (trained to defend
territory/cherished beliefs) and a scout (trained to
survey territory/cherished beliefs). While the former
role often involves certainty of position and fighting
opposing views, the latter is more interested in gaining
information and establishing the accuracy of that
knowledge. Both are useful in some contexts, but the
titular scout mindset is more helpful for gaining useful
knowledge. The book is divided into five parts: The Case
for the Scout Mindset; Developing Self-Awareness;
Thriving Without Illusions; Changing Your Mind; and
Rethinking Identity. Each is broken into three chapters,
and the individual sections tend to be bite-sized,
usually only a page or two long. Galef draws from many
disciplines and illustrates her points using a wide
variety of anecdotes and examples, from Alfred Dreyfus
to Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin to
Star Trek. The Scout Mindset covers
some territory familiar to skeptics, psychologists, and
critical thinking promoters, much of it couched for lay
readers—making the book useful both as a refresher for
some and an introduction for others. Penguin/Random
House, 2021, 273 pp., $27.00.
—Kendrick Frazier and Benjamin Radford