Focusing, Internal Double Cruz and Belief reporting are powerful tools for aligning system I and system II. They aren’t very complex and have relatively few moving parts. It might be possible that you can teach those to children but I could also imagine that it’s hard to teach them. Dealing with groundlevel thinking is intimite and it needs buy-in from the child.
Zendo seems to be a game that can be fun for children and it teaches valuable lessons about building scientific hypothesis and testing them.
Credence calibration doesn’t seem very complex but might be too much for a 7⁄8 year old. I’m unsure at what age the necessary understading of numbers between 1 and 100 exists.
I could imagine a setting where you talk with children about what they are curious about and what might be tested by experiment. Then the children gather data collaboratively and you do the math for them in Numpy.
If you have a humidity, temperatur and a CO2 sensor you can for example have experiments about how much opening the window affect the air in the room. Does open the window fully for 5 minutes do more then have it half open for 10 minutes?
Opening the windows to get better air is a task that’s relevant to daily life and it’s not a question where you find the answer in normal textbooks.
When teaching it to a group of children I would likely not do it via an app but with physical items and drawings. It makes sense to switch the kind of items with which you play it between sessions to increase the generalizability of the learning.
I’m 2-3 times the age of the students involved and I love that game enough to recognize it from the name in the link. I highly recommend using this or even a version with beads to teach kids.
Explanation on the beads comment: I imagine a game where you allow kids to put beads on a string and each strand is finished with either a gold or silver bead depending on whether it passes or fails. Tie them off and let them arrange them however they need to see the patterns. I would play this bead game.
Further exploration: Try the bead game with Lego, which seems obvious in retrospect but might have flaws I don’t see.
Well, my first thought is that I need to spend some actual time on this site (I had to look up most everything you mentioned); Most of my education has simply come from Yudkowsky’s book/compilation.
Zendo definitely looks promising, and should definitely be an element of the course as well as something I play with my kids. As I envision the course, however, it would be an element such as a warm up or cash out, not the core curriculum.
My thoughts on Credence Calibration are similar to my thoughts on Zendo with the following modifications: each kid would be given ten poker chips, we would play the 2 statement variant (at least initially), scoring would be simplified to the liar keeping all poker chips bet on his lie, winner would be the one with the most poker chips at the end.
Focusing and Internal Double Crux seem like they would be pretty hard to teach to elementary age children. Focusing mostly because it seems like it would require one-on-one instruction, at least initially.
Unfortunately, I do not have much instrumentation. I could buy inexpensive things, so a thermometer and a humidity sensor would be doable, but it seems like a worthwhile a CO2 sensor might be a little more (based on my brief look on Amazon). I really do like the idea of the experiment though.
Some experimentation ideas I have received: investigate air pressure changes created by shower water spray as measured by a shower curtain (also blowing over pieces of paper, blow dryer, etc.) and electricity produced by a lemon battery, water drawn through celery including dyed water, spectrum differences in light sources as shown by a prism.
As I envision the course, however, it would be an element such as a warm up or cash out, not the core curriculum.
Yes, however it’s worth noting that you can play Zendo in different ways. The time I played it was with arrangement of Lego stones.
You could also play it with other domains like words or sentences. I’m uncertain about how much time a child can effectively learn something from Zendo.
At the same time it won’t fill the full curriculum.
Focusing mostly because it seems like it would require one-on-one instruction, at least initially.
You didn’t really speak about how many children you actually want to teach at one time.
When it comes to teaching rationality to adults there’s the CFAR handbook. If you are not aware of it, it might be worth looking through it and thinking about what you can teach children.
Yes, I suppose I could have been more specific about the number of kids. I will be teaching my own two at a minimum, but could have as many as seven others join.
Thanks for the note about the handbook, I’ll check it out.
Random thoughts:
Focusing, Internal Double Cruz and Belief reporting are powerful tools for aligning system I and system II. They aren’t very complex and have relatively few moving parts. It might be possible that you can teach those to children but I could also imagine that it’s hard to teach them. Dealing with groundlevel thinking is intimite and it needs buy-in from the child.
Zendo seems to be a game that can be fun for children and it teaches valuable lessons about building scientific hypothesis and testing them.
Credence calibration doesn’t seem very complex but might be too much for a 7⁄8 year old. I’m unsure at what age the necessary understading of numbers between 1 and 100 exists.
I could imagine a setting where you talk with children about what they are curious about and what might be tested by experiment. Then the children gather data collaboratively and you do the math for them in Numpy.
If you have a humidity, temperatur and a CO2 sensor you can for example have experiments about how much opening the window affect the air in the room. Does open the window fully for 5 minutes do more then have it half open for 10 minutes?
Opening the windows to get better air is a task that’s relevant to daily life and it’s not a question where you find the answer in normal textbooks.
Here’s an Android game that works like Zendo but has colorful caterpillars, might be great for kids: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.gromozeka1980.caterpillar_logic
When teaching it to a group of children I would likely not do it via an app but with physical items and drawings. It makes sense to switch the kind of items with which you play it between sessions to increase the generalizability of the learning.
I’m 2-3 times the age of the students involved and I love that game enough to recognize it from the name in the link. I highly recommend using this or even a version with beads to teach kids.
Explanation on the beads comment:
I imagine a game where you allow kids to put beads on a string and each strand is finished with either a gold or silver bead depending on whether it passes or fails. Tie them off and let them arrange them however they need to see the patterns.
I would play this bead game.
Further exploration: Try the bead game with Lego, which seems obvious in retrospect but might have flaws I don’t see.
Well, my first thought is that I need to spend some actual time on this site (I had to look up most everything you mentioned); Most of my education has simply come from Yudkowsky’s book/compilation.
Zendo definitely looks promising, and should definitely be an element of the course as well as something I play with my kids. As I envision the course, however, it would be an element such as a warm up or cash out, not the core curriculum.
My thoughts on Credence Calibration are similar to my thoughts on Zendo with the following modifications: each kid would be given ten poker chips, we would play the 2 statement variant (at least initially), scoring would be simplified to the liar keeping all poker chips bet on his lie, winner would be the one with the most poker chips at the end.
Focusing and Internal Double Crux seem like they would be pretty hard to teach to elementary age children. Focusing mostly because it seems like it would require one-on-one instruction, at least initially.
Unfortunately, I do not have much instrumentation. I could buy inexpensive things, so a thermometer and a humidity sensor would be doable, but it seems like a worthwhile a CO2 sensor might be a little more (based on my brief look on Amazon). I really do like the idea of the experiment though.
Some experimentation ideas I have received: investigate air pressure changes created by shower water spray as measured by a shower curtain (also blowing over pieces of paper, blow dryer, etc.) and electricity produced by a lemon battery, water drawn through celery including dyed water, spectrum differences in light sources as shown by a prism.
Yes, however it’s worth noting that you can play Zendo in different ways. The time I played it was with arrangement of Lego stones.
You could also play it with other domains like words or sentences. I’m uncertain about how much time a child can effectively learn something from Zendo.
At the same time it won’t fill the full curriculum.
You didn’t really speak about how many children you actually want to teach at one time.
When it comes to teaching rationality to adults there’s the CFAR handbook. If you are not aware of it, it might be worth looking through it and thinking about what you can teach children.
Yes, I suppose I could have been more specific about the number of kids. I will be teaching my own two at a minimum, but could have as many as seven others join.
Thanks for the note about the handbook, I’ll check it out.