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Raw_Power comments on Discussion: Counterintuitive ways of teaching knowledge - Less Wrong
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Well, breaking the rules of reality and then forcing you to use the Scientific Method to figure them out from Square One is a useful example. I think Methods of Rationality does this job pretty well, but it'd be nice if there were more fiction in this style, and not just fanfiction at that. Alicorn's Luminosity also goes through an itneresting route: it applies rationality to interpersonal relationships, character exploration, group dynamics, and applied powers, and a lot of this it does better than Methods (which relies quite a lot on archetypes, to the detriment of realism but also for great benefit of glorious awesomeness, and it's kind of a holdover from the source material). But Luminosity falls rather short of exploring the deeper theoretical implications of such a world.
Note how none of these books are for kids. Child psychology is noticeably different from that of a late teen or an adult. There are some concepts they can't even grasp. A series of works that would teach them the key rationalist virtues and some rational ways of looking at their environment and improving their lives would be great. I'm not talking about writing books intended towards geeky kids (awesome though such a thing may be), but about teaching rationality in a way that'd be appealing to all kids.
In that sense, The Magic Bus taught us a lot about valuing curiosity, not taking the first possible explanation, and generally having fun discovering the laws of reality... in incredibly unrealistic and science-breaking ways (which were dutifully pointed out in a special section after each episode, in which they generally managed to both make us understand that there was more to the stuff we saw than what they showed us, but that sometimes it was okay to take an Artistic License to get the point across... something people like Sheldon Cooper seem chronically unable to grasp, and I'm told there are people who share those opinions in Real Life...). My Little Pony: Friendship, on the .other hand, taught a lot on being rational in facing daily troubles, especially regarding friendship... but, well, here again, the situation is rather mutated by the fact that those are ponies living in a pony world with strange pony rules...
This might actually help carry the point across better. By making the stories take place in fantastic setting, we avoid the kids superimposing their prejudices, preconceptions and heuristics to the material presented: instead, their minds become more open to new possibilities, and this is a wonderful opening to plant some wonderful Aesops...
... Wait, is this an instance of using the Dark Arts to teach the Art then?
If I could actually break the rules of reality, and I just used that power to teach people how reality normally works, I would regard that as being not just a dismally suboptimal use of those powers, but downright willfully perverse.
Creating works of fantastical fiction that teach people about the use of rationality is a very different matter, and it's certainly not clear how it counts as relaxing one's adherence to rationality. Arguably it might be a bad idea for someone like Eliezer, who acts as something of a representative for the SIAI, to be associated with something as low status as fanfiction (although I for one can't find it in me to complain,) but for Alicorn, or for you or me, I don't see what about it would be irrational. You know the problems with applying the straw Vulcan trope to real life.
If you want to stimulate some productive discussion on teaching rationality in counterintuitive or nontraditional ways, why not suggest some examples of what you actually mean? You could integrate some of the stuff from your comment above into the post itself, but I'd suggest also explaining why you think such an approach would be particularly useful, and what sort of ideas you think would be good for maximizing that usefulness.
... Do you want to be my chavruta?
That said, I think you misunderstand me: I meant breaking the rules of reality within the realm of a work of fiction and making the protagonists (or the audience if it's a videogame) figure the new rules out for themselves... Actually now that I think of it videogamers are very used to adapting themselves to entirely new sets of physics on a weekly basis... but no-one has ever made them stop and think about it for a while, AFAIK.
I'm not suggesting we be emotionally or creatively repressed, that has nothing to do with being rational. I just wonder how exactly one can allow themselves artistic license in a way that allows people to have fun learning stuff without having the fun bits detracting from the general message.
Err, am I missing something here? Haven't I done that in the very post you're responding to...? Or am I misunderstanding you?
Maybe. For studying what in particular?
I meant you should add them to the original post, not just the comments.
Decision theory? Information theory? I'm an engineer, which means most of the stuff I know is useless for AI design or programming.
Gotcha