I have found the game Settlers Of Catan to be useful for illustrating basic economic principles like gains from trade, pareto efficiency, and price forming mechanisms. It is also pretty good for helping people to build a self image as someone who can connect calculatingly rational strategic plans (counting dots given various build plans) to specific short term plans (knowing what can be safely offered and what to trade for) which are accomplished through structured conversations that function as both resource negotiations and playfully friendly conversation. Being good at the game involves a sort of "end to end metabolic pathway" where any hiccups at any stage can sabotage the total performance, so it tests and exercises a lot of elements in a person's character and thinking in a pleasantly comprehensive way.
As one example, I've noticed that some women do poorly at the game at first because they seem to have a self image around being "nice" where niceness includes something like "never being at all demanding about getting their fair share out of mutually beneficial voluntary associations". But if they play a reasonable number of games in a supportive environment then they learn to be somewhat demanding (enough to win sometimes) in ways that are compatible with the rest of their self image.
Other times there will be people whose early big lesson is stopping to consider multiple build plans to see which will lead to accumulating the most resources fastest based on statistical dice expectations. Initially, they'll build a road half way to one build site and then change their mind and build a road and settlement to a different place, not because something surprising happened that motivated the change in plans, but just because they didn't stop to think about what they really wanted and were acting on a series of vague opportunity-based impulses. As they learn, their play becomes much more directed.
The thing I'm not certain of is whether such lessons translate into real life performance improvements, but it seems to me that they probably do.
I have found the game Settlers Of Catan to be useful for illustrating basic economic principles like gains from trade,
I agree with the rest of your post, but not this part. Catan is zero-sum (someone wins); real economies are not. When you trade with someone in Catan, you're not making a traditional Pareto improvement; rather, it's basically a test of who is more accurately gaging the "consumer surplus" of the other party. Except for the cases where you have to team up against a near-victory player (and then, only temporarily), you're basi...
It's traditional in many parts of the world to buy (or make) presents for at least the closest members one's family around this time of the year. I would like to know if anyone here has ideas for presents to give to people from college age to middle age who are not rationalists, but not completely closed off to the idea.
So far I've considered mostly things that would help rid them of various superstitions, particularly astrology and the 2012 apocalypse myth. For this purpose I've looked at books and videos on
Has anyone else on LW faced this sort of situation before? Or does anyone here have general advice on this topic?