Adolf Hitler can certainly be an interesting answer to certain questions. He got me out of being on a jury once (although I wasn't trying to get out).

I was called to jury duty in Pasadena, California.

One of the panels I was on was for a drug case. The prosecutor was a 30-ish white woman. The defense attorney was a 40-50 or so white man who had a ponytail and beard, and gave off an ex-hippy vibe. The defendant was a black man probably in his early to mid 20's.

One of the questions the prosecutor asked the panel members was something like, "If aliens from space landed on Earth, and asked you to explain our drug problem to them, what would you tell them?".

A major component of my answer was something along the lines of most of the problem is self-inflicted due to stupid laws that make drugs like alcohol and tobacco legal, but make drugs like marijuana illegal even though it is at worst as bad as alcohol. Furthermore, I said I'd tell the aliens that because we outright lie to children about this, not really distinguishing between marijuana and other drugs that can be used safely and responsibly and drugs that actually are very very harmful and dangerous like heroin, when those children discover that we lied about marijuana they are naturally going to assume we lied about heroin too.

I pretty much accused her and people like her of being part of the problem (and remember, this is in open court). She tried to debate with me for a while and then moved on.

(I did say, when asked if I could vote to convict if the evidence proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant violated the law, that I could even if the law was as stupid as the one being charged here).

I was sure I'd be her #1 target for her first peremptory challenge.

Oh, I, like the defense attorney, had a long ponytail and a beard, and looked like an ex-hippy. Actually, not so ex...I was also wearing a rather loud tie dyed t-shirt. I basically looked like someone who was probably missing his afternoon joint by being stuck in court.

Then the defense attorney asked his questions. One of his was if you could have dinner that evening with anyone you wanted, from the present or past, living or now dead, who would you pick? (The purpose of a question like this, which does not seem to have anything to do with the case at hand, is to try to get to know more about the prospective juror. There are many possible arguments that a lawyer might raise at trail, but he does not have time for all of them. He's got to pick the ones that work best with the particular jury he has, and to do that he has to know something about their personalities).

The half dozen people he asked before me said things like their deceased mother, or Richard Feynman, or Magic Johnson, and other normal answers like that. Then he got to me.

"Adolf Hitler".

The potential jurors who were waiting in the spectator area to replace panel members who were dismissed, and had largely been nodding off in the hot Pasadena summer heat, snapped to attention. There were a few gasps.

The attorney asked why. I explained that almost everyone breaks the law now and then, on purpose. I myself, I said, had purposefully exceeded the speed limit that morning in order to get to court at the appointed time. We all have a couple lines we do not cross, though. One is where the punishment if we get caught is too big, and the other is where we think the crime is too evil for us to commit. I'll speed occasionally because I'm willing to accept a ticket every few years, and I don't feel I'm being evil. Some people are willing to accept bigger punishment or are sure they won't get caught, and some people have a higher bar for evil.

Hitlers lines were so far out they were off the map. He killed millions. And he apparently either did not fear punishment or was confident that he would not get caught. And he almost succeeded.

Even stranger, he convinced a hell of a lot of Germans who had seemed to be normal, decent people to go along with him! How? Did he have supernatural charisma? Did he have some kind of compelling logical argument that could convince people that what he was doing was sane and rational?

Someone so clearly evil, yet so massively persuasive, would certainly be a very very interesting dinner companion for an evening.

After the questioning was done, the lawyers got to make their peremptory challenges. To my surprise, the prosecutor was not throwing me off the panel. As they alternated, first the prosector then the defense attorney using their challenges, it got down to the final challenge, which belonged to the defense attorney.

He used it to get rid of me.

I suspect that the Hitler answer had something to do with it. (Although it could be that since I had a math degree from Caltech and was working as a software engineer, he might have thought that I would not be swayed by emotional arguments and would just relentlessly apply the law--even though I had said the law was stupid--to the facts and convict).