I want to like this idea, but I’m not sure yet. The process of writing down your own reasoning and assumptions seems incredibly valuable to me. But I wonder how much the framing of this exercise would actually help someone who is already introspective enough to attempt it.
Do you think it could mitigate certain cognitive biases? I can easily imagine different people writing contradictory children’s picture books, just as they write contradictory blog-posts. Not because they’re lying, but because of confirmation bias.
Also, if you take the framing too literally, there may be the temptation to oversimplify. Your global warming example has a lot of complexity for a children’s picture book. :-)
I think the main way this mitigates cognitive biases is by causing someone to worry less about what the things they choose to say reflect on them as a person, and to write more content in a way that makes it easier to identify contradictions or uncertainties (as I did with whether CO2 blocks sunlight). It’s hard to realize a contradiction in your implicit beliefs without first making that contradiction explicit. However, this exercise at first only mitigates a subset of the cognitive biases, though it’s possible that enough repeated iteration would correct most biases by making them more obvious.
The complexity depends on what we mean by “child”; here I’m thinking of 7-12 year olds, who can read books that use the concepts I was using (though I would have to expand the explanation for some parts).
I want to like this idea, but I’m not sure yet. The process of writing down your own reasoning and assumptions seems incredibly valuable to me. But I wonder how much the framing of this exercise would actually help someone who is already introspective enough to attempt it.
Do you think it could mitigate certain cognitive biases? I can easily imagine different people writing contradictory children’s picture books, just as they write contradictory blog-posts. Not because they’re lying, but because of confirmation bias.
Also, if you take the framing too literally, there may be the temptation to oversimplify. Your global warming example has a lot of complexity for a children’s picture book. :-)
I think the main way this mitigates cognitive biases is by causing someone to worry less about what the things they choose to say reflect on them as a person, and to write more content in a way that makes it easier to identify contradictions or uncertainties (as I did with whether CO2 blocks sunlight). It’s hard to realize a contradiction in your implicit beliefs without first making that contradiction explicit. However, this exercise at first only mitigates a subset of the cognitive biases, though it’s possible that enough repeated iteration would correct most biases by making them more obvious.
The complexity depends on what we mean by “child”; here I’m thinking of 7-12 year olds, who can read books that use the concepts I was using (though I would have to expand the explanation for some parts).