= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
ewang comments on Rationality Quotes: May 2011 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (122)
-Michael Pemulis, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
This scene is hilarious.
In case you haven't read the book,
The kids at a tennis academy are playing a nuclear war simulation by having countries, silos, cities, armies and whatnot represented by particular articles of clothing on specific places on a tennis court. You attack a target with a thermonuclear missile by lobbing a tennis ball at it, and then intense calculations are done in order to determine damage caused and scoring.
The particular game in the book goes horribly horribly wrong when one player lobs a tennis ball at another player, and then tries to argue that that player is vaporized, and that that entire country can no longer use nukes. It also starts snowing.
Actually, I believe that the snowing on the map, which is claimed to affect the blast radius of a nuclear strike on the territory, occurs before the Global Crisis as the beginning a sort of slippery slope into the complete confusion of map and territory and the resultant chaos.