"In college, Herman was determined to show his professors how much brighter he was in their field of expertise, which he was, and which he did to their great annoyance. In the Army, during World War II, he was equally determined to show his brilliance, from the very start at the induction center where the two of us (we were inducted at the same place on the same day) took the Army’s equivalent of an IQ test. Wanting to prove himself, Herman had boned up on every IQ test he could get his hands on. Brimming with confidence he sat next to me, certain he would score 100%, which had never happened before.“Men”, the lieutenant told us, “nobody ever has finished this test, so don’t feel under any pressure to do so. If you give the wrong answers to any of the questions it will count doubly against you, so don’t try and guess. You’ve got 45 minutes to do the best you can. Good luck. Start!” After 20 minutes or so Herman had finished. He rested for a few minutes, checked his answers, and with a few minutes left got up, turned in his paper, and left. A couple of minutes go by and Herman comes rushing back into the room demanding his paper back. “Why do you want it back?”, asked the sergeant. “Because I made an arithmetic mistake on question seventy-four (or whatever number it was) and want to correct it”, said Herman. “Get the hell out of here!”, yelled the sergeant. Herman left. Sure enough he made only one mistake, but that was enough to make him number one in the Army."
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Atheists from the United StatesJews from the United StatesPeople from New JerseyPhysicists from the United StatesGame theorists
Original Language: English
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Sources
Samuel T. Cohen, F*** You! Mr. President: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb (2006)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herman_Kahn
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Herman Kahn
Herman Kahn (February 15, 1922 – July 7, 1983) was an American futurist and nuclear theorist. He was one of the founders of the Hudson Institute and an employee of the RAND corporation. He is most known for his work On Thermonuclear War.
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