Excellent idea. It is now posted there as well to catch the crowd that is into HPMOR but hasn’t yet become involved here at LessWrong.
Weisguy
Karma: 25
Using Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality to teach the scientific method to Psychology undergraduates
The hyperlinks were created by a malicious chrome addon that was present on the computer I posted from. They didn’t show up on my end until after I posted it. Hopefully they have been removed.
Hi everyone,
I’m currently caught up on HPMOR, and I’ve read many of the sequences, so I figured it was time to introduce myself here.
I’m a 24 year old Cognitive Psychology graduate student. I was raised as a fairly conservative Christian who attempted to avoid any arguments that would seriously challenge my belief structure. When I was in undergrad, I took an intro to philosophy course which helped me realize that I needed to fully examine all of my beliefs. This helped me to move toward becoming a theistic evolutionist and finally an atheist. Now I strive to use the methods of rationality to continue to question all of my beliefs and improve my life.
As a psychology graduate student I have the opportunity to teach an introductory psychology course. I’m hoping to take what I have learned here and start helping my students improve their rationality. Specifically, I’m planning to have the students read excerpts from Ch 22 & 23 of HPMOR as a fun and interesting way to start learning to think like a scientist. I’m hoping the community can assist me with possibly narrowing down the sections I’m going to have them read and consider possible methods of assessment. As of now, I know that I want to have the students analyze the methodology used by Harry in his two experiments from those chapters, and I probably want to have students come up with their own hypotheses and methods to test them. Any help the community wants to provide is most appreciated.