Something I’ve had to do is tell my son that lots of other people don’t care about being rational and so he shouldn’t always expect to be able to convince his classmates that he’s right because he’s provided a good argument. I did this after hearing my son getting in an argument with another child over the value of a pawn, with the other kid insisting that the pawn had zero value. My son was upset that the other kid wasn’t responding to his arguments.
You don’t want to teach your kids rationality skills, have them apply these skills when interacting with classmates and then realize that their classmates don’t respond well to them. It’s best, I think, to let your kids know that they should always be rational with you, that they are more likely to convince you to do something if they make rational arguments, that being rational gives them special powers in understanding the world, and that later in life there will be huge payoffs from them being rational.
I did this after hearing my son getting in an argument with another child over the value of a pawn, with the other kid insisting that the pawn had zero value.
Here’s a rationality lesson: settle it experimentally. Have one side play without pawns, and the other side play without a single knight.
Strive to be like Richard Feynman, who demonstrated one of the causes of the Challenger disaster on TV with a glass of ice water.
It depends on what your goal is. If your goal is to make people understand that you’re right, “settling it experimentally” may work. If your goal is to get along with your classmates, shrugging it off may be the more useful reaction. If rationality makes the boy lose friends, it may not actually be rationality.
Something I’ve had to do is tell my son that lots of other people don’t care about being rational and so he shouldn’t always expect to be able to convince his classmates that he’s right because he’s provided a good argument. I did this after hearing my son getting in an argument with another child over the value of a pawn, with the other kid insisting that the pawn had zero value. My son was upset that the other kid wasn’t responding to his arguments.
You don’t want to teach your kids rationality skills, have them apply these skills when interacting with classmates and then realize that their classmates don’t respond well to them. It’s best, I think, to let your kids know that they should always be rational with you, that they are more likely to convince you to do something if they make rational arguments, that being rational gives them special powers in understanding the world, and that later in life there will be huge payoffs from them being rational.
Here’s a rationality lesson: settle it experimentally. Have one side play without pawns, and the other side play without a single knight.
Strive to be like Richard Feynman, who demonstrated one of the causes of the Challenger disaster on TV with a glass of ice water.
It depends on what your goal is. If your goal is to make people understand that you’re right, “settling it experimentally” may work. If your goal is to get along with your classmates, shrugging it off may be the more useful reaction. If rationality makes the boy lose friends, it may not actually be rationality.
Being rational doesn’t mean acting as if others were.