Teaching rationality in a lyceum
There is one lyceum in Irkutsk(Siberia) that is allowed to form its own study curriculum (it is quite rare in Russia). For example, there was a subject where we were watching the lectures of a famous speaking coach. In retrospect, this course turned out to be quite useful.
In light of this opportunity to create new subjects, I thought “What if I introduce them to the idea of teaching Rationality?”
Tomorrow (8th Dec) I meet with a principal and we discuss the idea of teaching critical thinking, cognitive biases and the like.
There are several questions I want to ask:
1. This idea definitely was considered before. Were there any cases of it being implemented? If so, is there any statistics about its efficiency?
2. Are there any shareable materials regarding this issue? For example, course structures of similar projects.
3. The principal will likely be curious about what authorities back this idea. If you approve it and are someone recognizable, I would be glad if you told me about it.
http://callingbullshit.org/syllabus.html
(This is not “Yudkowskian Rationality” though.)
Thank you!
Oliver Habryka (who works on programming LW2 at the moment) taught rationality to other students at his school a while back based on CFAR style ideas which at the time meant a lot of calibration and Fermi estimates.
The same would also make sense with the more recent CFAR material for anyone who took the CFAR course.
I was wondering about the same at my University in Belarus. But somehow it feels like it wont work :D CIS Educational system is not even trying to study smart and well-developed graduates.
P.S. - Let me know if you get good answer snorky_arc@mail.ru
This site isn’t too active—maybe email someone from CFAR directly?
I’ve mailed CFAR (contact@rationality.org) or should I have mailed people directly?