There seem to be some parents (and their children) here. I myself am the father of 3yo and 1yo daughters. Is there any suggestions you have for raising young rationalists, and getting them to enjoy critical, skeptical thinking without it backfiring from being forced on them?
Julia Galef, President and Co-founder of the Center for Applied Rationality, has video blogged on this twice. The first was How to Raise a Rationalist Kid, and the second is Wisdom from Our Mother, which might be a bit more relevant to you because, in that video, her brother Jesse specifically discusses what his mother did in situations where he wasn’t enthusiastic about learning something. I should say that it has more to do with when your kids think that they’re bad at things than with when they reject something out of hand. To that I would say, and I think many others would say: Kids are smart and curious, rationalism makes sense, and if they don’t reject everything else kids have learned throughout history out of hand, then they probably won’t reject rationalism out of hand.
I also am the father of 3yo and 1yo daughters. One of the things I try to do is let their critical thinking or rationality actually have a payoff in the real world. I think a lot of times critical thinking skills can be squashed by overly strict authority figures who do not take the child’s reasoning into account when they make decisions. I try to give my daughters a chance to reason with me when we disagree on something, and will change my mind if they make a good point.
Another thing I try to do, is intentionally inject errors into what I say sometime, to make sure they are listening and paying attention. (e.g. This apple is purple, right? ) I think this helps to avoid them just automatically agreeing with parents/teachers and critically thinking through on their own what makes sense. Now my oldest is quick to call me out on any errors I may make when reading her stories, or talking in general, even when I didn’t intentionally inject them.
Lastly, to help them learn in general, make their learning applicable to the real world. As an example, both of my daughters, when learning to count, got stuck at around 4. To help get them over that hurdle, I started asking them questions like, “How many fruit snacks do you want?” and then giving them that number. That quickly inspired them to learn bigger numbers.
This sounds like solid parenting; my only concern is that you might not be taking the psychology of children into account. Children sometimes really do need an authority figure to tell them what’s true and what isn’t; the reason for truth is far less important at that stage (and can be given later, maybe even years later).
One issue that could arise is that if you don’t show authority then your child may instead gravitate to other authority figures and believe them instead. A child may paradoxically put more faith in the opinions of someone who insists on them irrationally than someone who is willing to change their beliefs according to reason or evidence (actually, this applies to many adults too). It’s possible that “demeanor and tone of voice” trumps “this person was wrong in the past.”
The point is that children’s reasoning is far far less developed than adults and you have to take their irrationalities into account when teaching them.
The best thing about my Catholic high school was that it was run by the Salesian Order, which prefers a preventive method based on always giving good reasons for the rules.
[This isn’t a direct response to Mark, but a reply to encourage more responses]
To add another helpful framing, if you don’t have children, but think as an adult part of your attraction to LessWrong was based on how your parents raised you with an appreciation with rationality, how did that go? Obvious caveats about how memories of childhood are unreliable and fuzzy, and personal perspectives on how your parents raised you will be biased.
I was raised by secular parents, who didn’t in particular put a special emphasis on rationality when raising me, compared to other parents. However, for example, Julia and Jesse Galef have written on their blog of how their father raised them with rationality in mind.
Thanks for the call to action. In my own case I became a rationalist in spite of my upbringing. So people like me who don’t have that background could really use advice from those who do :)
They left Scientific American lying around a lot. The column that had the fewest prerequisites was Michael Shermer’s skepticism column. Also, people around me kept trying to fix my brain, and when I ran into cognitive bias and other rationality topics, they were about fixing your own brain, so then I assumed that I needed to fix it.
In terms of religion stuff: My parents raised me with something between Conservative and Reform Judaism, but they talked about other religions in a way that implied Judaism was not particularly special, and mentioned internal religious differences, and I got just bored enough in religious services to read other parts of the book, which had some of the less appealing if more interesting content. (It wasn’t the greatest comparative religious education: I thought that the way Islam worked was that they had the Torah, the New Testament, and the Qur’an as a third book, sort of the way the Christians had our religious text as well as the New Testament as a second book.)
Thank for putting up this branch Evan, I don’t have children. I think my raising helped my rationality, but the lens of time is known to distort, so take it with a grain of salt.
Most of my rationality influence was a lead by example case. Accountability and agency were encouraged too, they may have made fertile soil for rational thought.
Ethics conversations were had and taken seriously (paraphrase: ‘Why does everyone like you?’ ‘Cause I always cooperate’ ‘Don’t people defect against you?’ ‘Yes, but defectors are rare and I more than cover my losses when dealing with other cooperators’).
Thinking outside the box was encouraged (paraphrase: ‘interfering the receiver is a 10 yard penalty, I can’t do that.’ ‘What’s worse, 10 yards or a touchdown?’ ‘But it is against the rules.’ ‘Why do you think the rule is for only 10 yards, and not kicked from the game? Do you think the rule, and penalty, are part of the game mechanics?’).
Goal based action was encouraged, acting on impulse was treated as being stupid (paraphrase: ‘Why did you get in a fight’ ‘I was being bullied’ ‘Did fighting stop the bullying?’ ‘No’ ‘Ok, what are you going to try next?’).
I know of families who have used the “tooth fairy” as an opportunity to do critical thinking. I think it has gotten mentioned here before. Apparently sometimes children do this on their own. This post is relevant.
There seem to be some parents (and their children) here. I myself am the father of 3yo and 1yo daughters. Is there any suggestions you have for raising young rationalists, and getting them to enjoy critical, skeptical thinking without it backfiring from being forced on them?
Julia Galef, President and Co-founder of the Center for Applied Rationality, has video blogged on this twice. The first was How to Raise a Rationalist Kid, and the second is Wisdom from Our Mother, which might be a bit more relevant to you because, in that video, her brother Jesse specifically discusses what his mother did in situations where he wasn’t enthusiastic about learning something. I should say that it has more to do with when your kids think that they’re bad at things than with when they reject something out of hand. To that I would say, and I think many others would say: Kids are smart and curious, rationalism makes sense, and if they don’t reject everything else kids have learned throughout history out of hand, then they probably won’t reject rationalism out of hand.
I also am the father of 3yo and 1yo daughters. One of the things I try to do is let their critical thinking or rationality actually have a payoff in the real world. I think a lot of times critical thinking skills can be squashed by overly strict authority figures who do not take the child’s reasoning into account when they make decisions. I try to give my daughters a chance to reason with me when we disagree on something, and will change my mind if they make a good point.
Another thing I try to do, is intentionally inject errors into what I say sometime, to make sure they are listening and paying attention. (e.g. This apple is purple, right? ) I think this helps to avoid them just automatically agreeing with parents/teachers and critically thinking through on their own what makes sense. Now my oldest is quick to call me out on any errors I may make when reading her stories, or talking in general, even when I didn’t intentionally inject them.
Lastly, to help them learn in general, make their learning applicable to the real world. As an example, both of my daughters, when learning to count, got stuck at around 4. To help get them over that hurdle, I started asking them questions like, “How many fruit snacks do you want?” and then giving them that number. That quickly inspired them to learn bigger numbers.
This sounds like solid parenting; my only concern is that you might not be taking the psychology of children into account. Children sometimes really do need an authority figure to tell them what’s true and what isn’t; the reason for truth is far less important at that stage (and can be given later, maybe even years later).
One issue that could arise is that if you don’t show authority then your child may instead gravitate to other authority figures and believe them instead. A child may paradoxically put more faith in the opinions of someone who insists on them irrationally than someone who is willing to change their beliefs according to reason or evidence (actually, this applies to many adults too). It’s possible that “demeanor and tone of voice” trumps “this person was wrong in the past.”
The point is that children’s reasoning is far far less developed than adults and you have to take their irrationalities into account when teaching them.
The best thing about my Catholic high school was that it was run by the Salesian Order, which prefers a preventive method based on always giving good reasons for the rules.
[This isn’t a direct response to Mark, but a reply to encourage more responses]
To add another helpful framing, if you don’t have children, but think as an adult part of your attraction to LessWrong was based on how your parents raised you with an appreciation with rationality, how did that go? Obvious caveats about how memories of childhood are unreliable and fuzzy, and personal perspectives on how your parents raised you will be biased.
I was raised by secular parents, who didn’t in particular put a special emphasis on rationality when raising me, compared to other parents. However, for example, Julia and Jesse Galef have written on their blog of how their father raised them with rationality in mind.
Thanks for the call to action. In my own case I became a rationalist in spite of my upbringing. So people like me who don’t have that background could really use advice from those who do :)
They left Scientific American lying around a lot. The column that had the fewest prerequisites was Michael Shermer’s skepticism column. Also, people around me kept trying to fix my brain, and when I ran into cognitive bias and other rationality topics, they were about fixing your own brain, so then I assumed that I needed to fix it.
In terms of religion stuff: My parents raised me with something between Conservative and Reform Judaism, but they talked about other religions in a way that implied Judaism was not particularly special, and mentioned internal religious differences, and I got just bored enough in religious services to read other parts of the book, which had some of the less appealing if more interesting content. (It wasn’t the greatest comparative religious education: I thought that the way Islam worked was that they had the Torah, the New Testament, and the Qur’an as a third book, sort of the way the Christians had our religious text as well as the New Testament as a second book.)
Thank for putting up this branch Evan, I don’t have children. I think my raising helped my rationality, but the lens of time is known to distort, so take it with a grain of salt.
Most of my rationality influence was a lead by example case. Accountability and agency were encouraged too, they may have made fertile soil for rational thought.
Ethics conversations were had and taken seriously (paraphrase: ‘Why does everyone like you?’ ‘Cause I always cooperate’ ‘Don’t people defect against you?’ ‘Yes, but defectors are rare and I more than cover my losses when dealing with other cooperators’).
Thinking outside the box was encouraged (paraphrase: ‘interfering the receiver is a 10 yard penalty, I can’t do that.’ ‘What’s worse, 10 yards or a touchdown?’ ‘But it is against the rules.’ ‘Why do you think the rule is for only 10 yards, and not kicked from the game? Do you think the rule, and penalty, are part of the game mechanics?’).
Goal based action was encouraged, acting on impulse was treated as being stupid (paraphrase: ‘Why did you get in a fight’ ‘I was being bullied’ ‘Did fighting stop the bullying?’ ‘No’ ‘Ok, what are you going to try next?’).
I am also father of four boys now 3, 6, 8 and 11. You can find some parenting resources linked on my user page.
I know of families who have used the “tooth fairy” as an opportunity to do critical thinking. I think it has gotten mentioned here before. Apparently sometimes children do this on their own. This post is relevant.
Apparently you don’t want grandchildren, in other words. Religiosity in women correlates strongly with fecundity.
What part of his statement makes you reach such a conclusion about his intentions?