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! :)
Sounds like something I occasionally do, or try to do (mostly because my kid asks for stories with dinosaurs); do you have a handy list of abstract stripped-down stories by any chance ? (or do you use an existing one like the Seven Basic Plots?) Do you have a usable list of life lessons?
(I'm slowly collecting and organizing material like this, it's something I find pretty interesting, not only for telling stories to my kid ...)
Nope, I generally just plagiarize the last film or piece of fiction I've read. Sooner or later I'll probably end up traumatizing a niece because the last film I saw was by Lars Von Trier. As for life lessons, the typical stuff you teach children of that age group - younger kids need to learn empathy, self control etc. Older ones can be introduced to basic social commentary - sometimes people have to be mean to be nice, sometimes people get sick and go away, but this is nobodies fault, sometimes your imagination is unreliable etc.