Some of the comments here are addressing the wrong problem. For example the idea of “what to do with the kids while the parents attend”.
it’s an important question, to be sure.… but it’s stage- 2: after you’ve already attracted the parents, how to keep the kids entertained so the parents can attend.
You still need stage 1: how to actually attract the parents in the first place.
I am a mid-30s female who is getting ready to have kids in the not-too-distant future. I also have lots of friends who already have kids. I am in just inside your target demographic, so let me tell you what I’d like to get out of LW WRT my age-group and family aspirations. FWIW
There’s a hell of a lot of stuff here on the site for me personally, ie how do I, personally change myself to become more rational.
The thing that’s missing for parents, is how to educate their kids into rationality.
The articles on this site are way too high level for young kids. I’d estimate you’d need a teenager—or extremely smart tween, to read any of them… and not every kid will match this profile.
Simply dumbing it down may be part of the answer… but there’s also the aspect of when kids are ready to learn certain “lessons” in rationality. Kids go through extremely irrational early-learning stages, eg its tough to get a three-four year old to even realise that other people don’t have access to the same knowledge that they have (remember that experiment where a kid is shown what’s in a box and is asked what the other kid thinks is in the box?).
What I’d like as a future parent… are some/any ideas for age-graded lessons I can teach my (potential) kids that will get them up to a higher rationality-level quicker than I did.
If we have these available—that will, hopefully, attract the kinds of parents that want their kids to have the best chance in life (ie most parents). Specifically you can probably attract the same kind of “parent-demographic’ that currently goes for “make your baby smart” accessories.
I’ve been trying to think about what I can contribute myself, in this area… but hitting the fact that I myself am still very much still learning this stuff myself. While I have been putting together some ideas on how to teach the basics of chemistry in the kitchen… I have yet to figure out ways to teach the basics of rationality.
I’m thinking we should gather this stuff together somewhere… maybe start a wiki page on resources for teaching kids as it relate to rationality. We can cross-link the books with LessWrong articles, like you’ve done above.
Challenging us to write a rationalist storybook for kids. I think I love that idea… we need more like this.
Somewhat related: I consider the movie How to Train your Dragon to be a good story about science. The main character creates a prosthetic dragon tail using a series of experiments (including a “wind tunnel” of sorts), which breaks the process down into steps that kids can follow and make predictions about, rather than “black box mad science” that is typically featured by “smart” protagonists.
Also, he figures out using observation that everything his society believes is wrong, although that’s a more common kid-flick trait.
I’d enjoy it if, in a similar movie, the protagonist figured out that everything his society believes is wrong—but then almost all of the errors turned out to be unexploitable, because they were adaptive in some way. You know, like in real life. If media like that became popular, it might avert some cynical teenage angst.
Yeah. One of the few things I disliked about the movie was that the cause of the centuries-old-conflict between humans and dragons turned out to be one big huge evil dragon, whom everyone rallied together and killed, and then everyone became friends.
The skill of looking at a task and tending to think of it in terms of its sub-tasks, which I think is a form of reductionism, is one I am working on.
A while back, I thought up a short children’s story I thought was good, but stumbled on translating the plot into words. Not everyone has to be able to complete every step for the task to be possible.
Some of the comments here are addressing the wrong problem. For example the idea of “what to do with the kids while the parents attend”.
it’s an important question, to be sure.… but it’s stage- 2: after you’ve already attracted the parents, how to keep the kids entertained so the parents can attend.
You still need stage 1: how to actually attract the parents in the first place.
I am a mid-30s female who is getting ready to have kids in the not-too-distant future. I also have lots of friends who already have kids. I am in just inside your target demographic, so let me tell you what I’d like to get out of LW WRT my age-group and family aspirations. FWIW
There’s a hell of a lot of stuff here on the site for me personally, ie how do I, personally change myself to become more rational.
The thing that’s missing for parents, is how to educate their kids into rationality.
The articles on this site are way too high level for young kids. I’d estimate you’d need a teenager—or extremely smart tween, to read any of them… and not every kid will match this profile.
Simply dumbing it down may be part of the answer… but there’s also the aspect of when kids are ready to learn certain “lessons” in rationality. Kids go through extremely irrational early-learning stages, eg its tough to get a three-four year old to even realise that other people don’t have access to the same knowledge that they have (remember that experiment where a kid is shown what’s in a box and is asked what the other kid thinks is in the box?).
What I’d like as a future parent… are some/any ideas for age-graded lessons I can teach my (potential) kids that will get them up to a higher rationality-level quicker than I did.
If we have these available—that will, hopefully, attract the kinds of parents that want their kids to have the best chance in life (ie most parents). Specifically you can probably attract the same kind of “parent-demographic’ that currently goes for “make your baby smart” accessories.
I’ve been trying to think about what I can contribute myself, in this area… but hitting the fact that I myself am still very much still learning this stuff myself. While I have been putting together some ideas on how to teach the basics of chemistry in the kitchen… I have yet to figure out ways to teach the basics of rationality.
One start was a challenge-article written a while back here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/3c/rationalist_storybooks_a_challenge/
Challenging us to write a rationalist storybook for kids. I think I love that idea… we need more like this.
But even if you can’t think up stories yourself, I’d love contributions to these two questions:
1) what are the most fundamental, necessary basics on which to build?
2) how can we write these in the simplest possible way (without adult language or assumed understanding)?
Have you seen Dale McGowan’s materials?
There is also the Teaching Children Philosophy project that looks for themes in already existing children’s books. I am introducing my 3-year-old to some topics covered here with this book.
Thanks, some great links.
I’m thinking we should gather this stuff together somewhere… maybe start a wiki page on resources for teaching kids as it relate to rationality. We can cross-link the books with LessWrong articles, like you’ve done above.
Somewhat related: I consider the movie How to Train your Dragon to be a good story about science. The main character creates a prosthetic dragon tail using a series of experiments (including a “wind tunnel” of sorts), which breaks the process down into steps that kids can follow and make predictions about, rather than “black box mad science” that is typically featured by “smart” protagonists.
Also, he figures out using observation that everything his society believes is wrong, although that’s a more common kid-flick trait.
I’d enjoy it if, in a similar movie, the protagonist figured out that everything his society believes is wrong—but then almost all of the errors turned out to be unexploitable, because they were adaptive in some way. You know, like in real life. If media like that became popular, it might avert some cynical teenage angst.
Yeah. One of the few things I disliked about the movie was that the cause of the centuries-old-conflict between humans and dragons turned out to be one big huge evil dragon, whom everyone rallied together and killed, and then everyone became friends.
The skill of looking at a task and tending to think of it in terms of its sub-tasks, which I think is a form of reductionism, is one I am working on.
A while back, I thought up a short children’s story I thought was good, but stumbled on translating the plot into words. Not everyone has to be able to complete every step for the task to be possible.
Here is a story for older children by Eliezer.
Yeah, I like that story. Didn’t realise he’d pitched it at older kids. Of course older kids can read adult stuff just fine anyways :)
I’m more interested in what we can pitch at younger kids.
I was thinking aesops-fable-wise, to at least provide a kind of environment of thinking/rationality/curiosity and all that good stuff…
I’ll keep thinking about it myself, but I’d love to hear from anybody else that actually has skill/experience.
EG I’m sure we have teachers and/or psychologists in the audience somewhere who can weigh in on this ?
Or even just people that have got through all the sequences (or wrote them… :) ) who can point out some the most fundamental points in a list… ?