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The Pentagon's Ultimate Home Theater
Steve Silberman writes "I was the first reporter to see the inside of a new battle-simulation system designed by the Institute for Creative Technologies, a 'military-entertainment' think tank sponsored by the Defense Department. Starting in September, Marines, infantrymen, and Air Force pilots will train for war in Matrix-like rooms in Oklahoma simulating urban and desert environments, with surround sound and photorealistic rendering of bombing runs and other scenarios. It may or may not be the future of military training, but it's certainly the future of home gaming. My article, 'The War Room,' will appear in the September issue of Wired."
Spoiler alert!
The last paragraph of the article gives the main surprise away of one of the best science-fiction books on Earth: "Ender's Game"
I recommend Ender's Game, easy to read and great, and recommend against reading the last paragraph of the article if you haven't already.
- -- Truth addict for life.
FWIW, pretty much everybody on the battlefield understands that he's fighting for a specific objective, and more importantly, for his buddies. "The country" is what makes idealistic kids enlist, but in a war zone, it's very far away; the guy to your left, the guy to your right, and the hill you're supposed to take are right there.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.