So I have a three-year old kid, and will usually read or tell him a bedtime story.
That is a nice opportunity to introduce new concepts, but my capacity for improvisation is limited, especially towards the end of the day. So I'm asking the good people on LessWrong for ideas. How would you wrap various lesswrongish ideas in a short story a little kid would pay attention to?
I'm mostly interested in the aspects of "practical rationality" that aren't going to be taught at school or in children's books or children's TV shows - so things like Sunk Costs, taking the outside view, wondering which side is true instead of arguing for a side, etc.
Pointers to outside sources of such stories are welcome too!
Edit: actually, if you want to share ideas of games or activities of the same kind, go ahead! :)
Sunk Costs - should be easy. Someone does something reasonable, then the situation changes, but the person refuses to change their path, explicitly speaking about the sunk costs. Because it's a bedtime story, the stupidity of the person could be astronomical. For example: there way a boy who wanted to ski in the winter, so he saved money and bought skis... but at the time the snow melted and the winter was over. But the boy insisted on his emotional and financial investment, so he kept wearing the skis during the whole year. Insert various unrealistic situations, resulting problems, and lost opportunities. The other kids were swimming in the lake, this one kid tried, but... wearing the skis... he almost drowned, and after he was saved he just kept sitting at the beach, envying the other kids. But he still refused to take the skis off, explaining how long he worked to get them.
Wondering which side is true instead of arguing for a side - make it so that no side is completely true; each of them is right about some aspect, but wrong about other. Two teams of children saw a mysterious animal; one team reported it as a pink elephant, other team as a brown bear; the Curious Kid refused to take sides and investigated, and it was actually a brown elephant.
I like your story ideas, but I wonder (seriously) about the need to crank everything up to the "astronomical" or obviously ridiculous. One of the things we are trying to do with our 2.5 year old daughter is keep our stories fairly realistic and avoid superstimuli. I'm amazed how hard it is to find books that don't involve talking animals with oversized eyes doing ridiculous things. Fortunately her favourites are the Charle and Lola books which involve two fairly normal kids doing everyday things in a fun way and using their imaginations. Not a ... (read more)