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Show HN: Philosophy for Kids (philosophy.ocaho.com)

15 points by rahimnathwani ↗ HN
Sometimes my son asks me 'why' questions that could be answered well by a kid-friendly philosophy article. But I don't know where to find those, so I ask Claude or ChatGPT, and have a specific workflow for getting the type of output I want.

I figured other people might find those AI-generated articles helpful, so I put them here: https://philosophy.ocaho.com/

There's a search box at the top.

10 comments

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Xotic007
good idea however AI can be confidently wrong sometimes so how do you catch that?
jamwise
Really great idea. And not going to ding it for kicking off with an LLM. But it might be worth thinking about how you could build a community of human contributors in a future stage. I personally don't feel comfortable with handing AI-generated stuff over to the kids in my life, and I imagine that would be a big barrier for your project as many others share this sentiment. That's a shame because encouraging kids to think deeply from a young age is something I would deeply support.

There are tons of knowledgeable teachers out there, and they are very often motivated to help the next generations thrive and grow beyond their day job. I'm sure you could find people to help with editorial work on this version to give it a human stamp of approval, and involve the many talented and inspiring educators and communicators that are out there to help grow this into a true value for the next generation.

Either way. Good luck!

nryoo
Good idea. Worth considering though, philosophy isn't really about right answers, it's about learning to question. Bit worried about an LLM tends to hand kids a tidy conclusion, which is kind of the opposite of what you want.
denn-gubsky
Thanks for your work preparing these materials. Sending the link to my son. Philosophy is not included in his curriculum at all.
rahimnathwani
If your son is 7 to 12 years old and you want to get him started thinking about philosophy, I'd highly recommend he read these three books:

Harry Stottlemeier's Discovery (free PDF at the top right of this page: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED103298)

Sophie's World: https://www.amazon.com/Sophies-World-History-Philosophy-Clas...

The Fallacy Detective: https://www.amazon.com/Fallacy-Detective-Thirty-Eight-Recogn...

These books would provide a better introduction to philosophy in general, than reading about random topics in philosophy.

qsera
Sorry, I find the articles pretty shallow. Of course I don't expect better from an LLM, but you should know it.

I would suggest not answering you childs questions using stuff directly from LLM. You should think about it, make up your mind and then answer your child.

If you can't be bothered, then I think it is ok to say "I am not sure" and let the kid figure it out in due course...

jordiburgos
Not for kids. Too much text and written for adults.
twosky
I think it is a good approach. However, I suggest considering it a little more from a child's perspective. Children like simple text accompanied by various interesting illustrations. I support you.
agcat
One of the best applications of vibe coding.