I think there is a contradiction – or at least some tension – between this metaphorical framing of being a ‘scout’ and your conception of ‘social epistemology’.
The concept of social epistemology says that you are who you copy. If you copy people with a scout mindset, (a) you are likely to have a scout mindset and (b) the opinions you take on are likely to fit better with reality.
What we are observing in journalism and academia is the rapid abandonment of the scout mindset. That means that we have to search more carefully for people to copy. The heuristic of “trust the journalists to give us the news” or “trust academics to give unbiased analysis” works much less well today than it did a few decades ago.
Armold;
I think you are perhaps missing his point – the question is ‘are you copying the scout product or the scout process?’
If you copy the scout process – that requires a constant updating and evaluation of myriad potentially incompatible inputs, but perhaps it leads to a ‘better’ conclusion for each question you address.
If you copy the intellectual products of others who you asses to have a scout mindset, you are not yourself a scout, you are something else. If you defend and reinforce the products of people you believe to be effective scouts, you are a soldier for the scouts… which may not be a bad thing. But of course, soldiers for soldiers for scouts also exist.
You can’t copy a scout if you can’t see her.
If you copy scouts, but I control which scouts you see and which ones you don’t, then I control what you think.
You won’t be able to see that good scout’s map – or even discover she exists – if, because her map is disfavored by those gatekeepers who control access to scout-watching places, she is not allowed to be seen. You certainly cannot assume that because someone is a reliable scout in an area which is safe, that they will stick to the same standards and be likewise reliable when talking about matters which are not safe.
The big social epistemic security vulnerability then is for your epistemic hacker to simply to filter inconvenient scouts out of the sight of all the would-be copiers. One may think he is picking scouts, but they are being picked for him. The scouts who agree are the seen, those who would disagree – if they could – are the unseen, which makes it look like a solid scout consensus, with an even more powerful impact on his social psychology. Pwned.
This seems like an intractable problem – to the extent that we can call it such. It seems to me that there will always be external filters. To be sure, I think the current filters are terrible, hence my support of Arnold’s project. But I’m having a hard time envisioning a social environment that is devoid of such filters. And even if such an environment were possible, there are myriad internal filters to contend with. Perhaps I’m not understanding what you envision as the ideal, or perhaps more importantly, as the possible.
Unless one can find a way to scale up the “good scouts” their group will be just a bunch of niche eccentrics. The problem is how to change the institutions so that they are not monolithic propagators of a Woke agenda with the ability to selectively use laws and norms to reward their friends and silence their enemies. Center liberals and conservatives 50 years ago were convinced that being tolerant and open would solve all problems. The Far Left saw their chance. And having grabbed the reins of power, they are pulling up the ladder so no one can climb in and throw them out. No repeat of mainstream American mistakes of the 70s to 90s.