Agreed that the article is kind of vague, it seemed to have a case of “this would be nice, someone else should raise the money for it”.
Two weak points—there’s no talk about the need to test rationality lessons, and no talk about the risk of pushback from adults who don’t want to be questioned by children.
Two weak points—there’s no talk about the need to test rationality lessons, and no talk about the risk of pushback from adults who don’t want to be questioned by children.
Also, there is no consideration of the opportunity cost of increasing rationality training on the margin. Is teaching basic rationality the most valuable thing we could teach children in poor countries? What about diet/nutrition, hygiene, job skills, etc...
I hope that rationality training would make learning the other things easier, but this would have to be tested, of course.
This is something both the author and most Less Wrongers (including myself) assume, but we really don’t have all the much (scientific) evidence for this belief (that I know of).
I am sceptical that you can teach rationality on its own in school as just one more subject in the curriculum. It needs to be folded in to every other subject, and then maybe some classes focussing on rationality itself will be useful.
Agreed that the article is kind of vague, it seemed to have a case of “this would be nice, someone else should raise the money for it”.
Two weak points—there’s no talk about the need to test rationality lessons, and no talk about the risk of pushback from adults who don’t want to be questioned by children.
Also, there is no consideration of the opportunity cost of increasing rationality training on the margin. Is teaching basic rationality the most valuable thing we could teach children in poor countries? What about diet/nutrition, hygiene, job skills, etc...
I hope that rationality training would make learning the other things easier, but this would have to be tested, of course.
This is something both the author and most Less Wrongers (including myself) assume, but we really don’t have all the much (scientific) evidence for this belief (that I know of).
I am sceptical that you can teach rationality on its own in school as just one more subject in the curriculum. It needs to be folded in to every other subject, and then maybe some classes focussing on rationality itself will be useful.