Manfred comments on Theory of Knowledge (rationality outreach) - Less Wrong

60 Post author: KPier 09 August 2011 09:36PM

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Comment author: jimrandomh 08 August 2011 08:00:23PM 9 points [-]

At my school, we regularly have speakers come in and discuss various topics during ToK, mostly because the regular instructor doesn't have any idea what to say.

This sounds really easy to fix. Most instructors are used to having a curriculum handed to them in textbook form. A list of good articles (whether from Less Wrong or elsewhere) would fill that role. Read a post as homework, discuss in class, repeat. Throw in an occasional writing assignment for writing practice and grading. This would be dramatically more valuable than most high school classes, and easy to run.

Comment author: Manfred 08 August 2011 09:06:02PM 5 points [-]

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. You'd need in-class readings and lots of exercises to supplement discussion. You'd need to plan out what material the students should know by the end of each section and prepare section summaries for the teacher, maybe to lecture with. And so on and so forth.

Comment author: Nisan 08 August 2011 10:22:57PM 10 points [-]

Indeed, Kahneman himself tried to write a rationality textbook for high school. He failed because of the planning fallacy. The story is at the beginning of this course. Search for "planning fallacy".