Related:

There's a cheesy children's book called Death is Wrong

Also, in this thread several people recount precisely what events in their lives caused them to become rationalists. Influential books include:

• The Big Book of Knowledge

• What Makes It Go? What Makes It Work? What Makes It Fly? What Makes It Float?

It's not clear to me why many efforts to raise the sanity water line are focused on adults. It seems like it would be more effective to try to teach children to think more like programmers, engineers, and scientists. I intend to use this sort of thing whenever I owe obligatory Christmas/birthday gifts to satisfy cultural norms.