At Portland Community College (Oregon) I took a class called 'Science and the Paranormal.' On the first day of class the teacher said 'if I'd called this class 'Critical Thinking' most of the seats would be empty. As it is, I have a waiting list each term.' It was all critical thinking / formal logic / scientific method / etc. that used student-suggested paranormal topics. No judgement before investigation, no claim of true / false only strong / weak evidence. He did discourage religious claims getting the same treatment in order to 'be sensitive' (avoid lawsuits). Otherwise, perfect stem to stern.
On the first day of class the teacher said 'if I'd called this class 'Critical Thinking' most of the seats would be empty
Makes sense that lesson one in the critical thinking course would be about short-circuiting students' normal thinking :P
This was posted a few hours ago. Basically, the reddit admins have decided to promote the so-called "University of Reddit", a subreddit where people can offer and teach any course they'd like, or just attend a course. This is official website for all courses. At the time of this posting the subreddit had ~38,400 subscribers, but I expect it will grow significantly.
Given the reddit demographics, a Rationality course has the potential to become extremely popular. The exposure can popularize CFAR and LessWrong, and can be used to recruit fresh minds for rationality-related causes. Also maybe run experiments with curricula or methods of teaching rationality?
What do you guys think?