The Princess Bride (5/12) Movie CLIP - The Battle of Wits (1987) HD
Why Hacker News recommends it
Mostly used as a joke or parody reference, and occasionally as the canonical illustration of leveled, second-order thinking.
What it is
The poison goblet scene from The Princess Bride, in which Westley tricks Vizzini in a battle of wits. It is a famous example of nested reasoning.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2022 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Cites morley · 2022-08 · on “Second-Order Thinking”
Leveled thinking is common in competitive games, for obvious reasons. There's no better illustration of what you're talking about than the poison scene in Princess Bride: [this video] The way I've heard most competitive gamers talk about the line between leveling and tail-chasing is to play at level 2: Level 1: The obvious strategy Level 2: Strategy that beats the obvious strategy <-- Default to this level Level 3: Strategy that beats level 1 The problem is, if you're playing in a competitive environment, everyone knows about leveling, so you may actually gain more edge by picking a strategy randomly. I've heard competitive Magic player Huey Jensen would make random plays when he was behind on th