Interactive Thought
Experiments
A thought experiment is an imagined scenario that tests an idea when a real experiment would be impossible or unethical. Seven of them below, playable in your browser: each one puts you inside the scenario, records what you choose, and shows what it reveals about how you think.
Cognitive Bias Scanner
Discover which cognitive biases control your thinking. Get your Rationality Score.
The Paradox Game
Work through 12 mind-bending paradoxes. Each one teaches a mental model.
Decision Speed Analyzer
Fast-paced game testing your decision speed. Compete for the leaderboard.
The Sunk Cost Casino
The house wants you to keep playing. Can you quit before you lose everything?
The Veil of Ignorance
Design a society, then spin the wheel to see who you are born as. Will you survive your own rules?
The Bayesian Betting Hall
Bet on truth. Learn to assign probabilities and cure overconfidence.
The Trolley Problem
Pull the lever? Push the stranger? Six dilemmas reveal which moral rule you actually follow.
What is a thought experiment?
A thought experiment asks “what would happen if…?” and then reasons through the answer. Philosophers use them to test moral principles (would you divert a runaway trolley?), and physicists have used them to test theories they could not yet measure, like Einstein's chasing a beam of light.
Reading about one is different from making the choice yourself. These versions are interactive: you commit to an answer before you see the argument, which is where most people find out what they actually believe.
Using these in class
Every experiment is free, needs no login, and runs on school iPads and Chromebooks. The veil of ignorance has a full 45-minute lesson plan with discussion questions and a printable worksheet, and the trolley problem pairs with it for a second lesson on ethics.
Veil of ignorance lesson plan