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WillowOne's Positions

What If 2

Overview

Subtitled Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, the sequel to What If. New questions include what would happen if the solar system were filled with soup out to Jupiter, whether you could ride a fire pole from the Moon to the Earth, how long a T. rex would last in New York, how to build a lava lamp out of actual lava, and whether you could eat a cloud. There are also "short answers to weird questions" and a section of questions Munroe declined to answer, reproduced for their own sake. The method is unchanged: estimate, check, follow through, draw a stick figure having a very bad day.

Notes

Everything I said about the first book applies. If anything, this one is more careful, because the questions are odder and Munroe has to show his working to get anywhere. The soup chapter is a small masterpiece on orders of magnitude. The reason both books are on a list that is otherwise about epistemology and religion is that they are the most entertaining demonstration I know of how a sceptic ought to approach a claim: take it seriously, work out what it implies, and see whether the world agrees.

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