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.
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...
If Miss Frizzle could do it, why couldn't we? Do we really have to be rational all the time in order to teach rationality?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 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 *fan*fiction 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?
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.
Ah, also, here is one example on how to do it wrong, from My Little Pony of all places:
Admittedly, I've seldom seen a Curiosity Stopper better than an Argumentum Ad Baculum where the proverbial Baculum is weilded by reality itself, but that's not addressed as Twilight's motive to stop worrying and love the Pie.