I have edited your title to “Raising numerate children” since numeracy, rather than general rationality, is the subject of your post. You are welcome to edit the title again, but more specific titles are usually better.
Yes. I agree. I initially wrote a much longer post that included more (unfinished) aspects which are more clearly associated with rationality. When shortening I kept focus on ‘numbers’ because that gave a uniform picture and a kind of story arc. I just hinted at these aspects with the lookout at the end.
But I see this as part of a larger picture where numeracy is one part of rationality. You can’t have rationality without numeracy or can you?
And for me numeracy was the first step toward rationality. For me it really was an important part with an aha insight about continuous functions.
I already started to move my sons from numbers to functions. Functions representing states in the world (e.g. a smart five year old can use numbers to quantify how happy he is).
I want to write further posts that will follow up on this. I wonder if there is some way to bind these posts together under the heading “How do you raise a child as a rationalist?”
I have edited your title to “Raising numerate children” since numeracy, rather than general rationality, is the subject of your post. You are welcome to edit the title again, but more specific titles are usually better.
Yes. I agree. I initially wrote a much longer post that included more (unfinished) aspects which are more clearly associated with rationality. When shortening I kept focus on ‘numbers’ because that gave a uniform picture and a kind of story arc. I just hinted at these aspects with the lookout at the end. But I see this as part of a larger picture where numeracy is one part of rationality. You can’t have rationality without numeracy or can you? And for me numeracy was the first step toward rationality. For me it really was an important part with an aha insight about continuous functions. I already started to move my sons from numbers to functions. Functions representing states in the world (e.g. a smart five year old can use numbers to quantify how happy he is). I want to write further posts that will follow up on this. I wonder if there is some way to bind these posts together under the heading “How do you raise a child as a rationalist?”
I was wondering about that—avoiding “because I said so” is probably as important as math skills.