Qiaochu_Yuan comments on How to teach to magical thinkers? - Less Wrong

14 Post author: polymathwannabe 24 February 2014 01:43PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (79)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 25 February 2014 09:26:51PM *  7 points [-]

I'm generally skeptical of lecturing as a method for teaching anything. Find or invent a game where victory hinges on understanding some basic principle you want to teach, and have the club play it.

Comment author: blacktrance 26 February 2014 05:44:57PM *  2 points [-]

The problem with this approach is that compartmentalization may interfere, making people think of the game as "that weird thing where we do X", where X is something you're trying to teach people to apply to life in general.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 27 February 2014 10:38:45PM 1 point [-]

Compartmentalization is a problem with everything. I expect it to be smaller with games than with lecturing.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 27 February 2014 07:44:52PM 0 points [-]

Yeah, somehow you also need to train them to not do that, and I have no ideas along those lines.

Comment author: polymathwannabe 26 February 2014 05:41:28PM -1 points [-]

Great idea. Will use.