"The Tale of Happiton" - significance

Subject  > Social Science Essays  > Society and community

The Tale of Happiton is a great story that demonstrates many qualities about individuals. Hofstadter created a situation where the townspeople of Happiton were faced with a very difficult situation brought on by a demon, and would have to write plenty of postcards in order to help slow down the bell that would possibly ring their doom. Even though, the chances were very low on a day-to-day basis that all five dice would land on 7, the probabilities would grow higher and higher as months, and years went by. In this tale, Hofstadter depicts humans to be very concerned, creative, hopeful individuals who later become lazy, careless, and free of responsibilities. In the beginning of the tale, when the news of ...

... to not be aware of a specific date, and to keep waiting, and questioning their own beliefs on the validity of the letter the demon wrote, it caused them to lose interest, and to think of better things to do with their time. The authour compares the tale's probabilities of the dice, to our world's probabilities of nuclear war. We are at a figure of a 2% chance of nuclear war, calculated by the geneticist George Wald, that may have climbed up to 5% right now, though there may also be possibilities of "random" events to consider. Our world may be faced with the same problem, knowing that nuclear war may occur, especially in our

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