> 4. “Who in history would you want to go to dinner with and why?”—Flight Attendant, PSA Airlines

I was asked a similar question, but in a quite different context. I was on jury duty in the Los Angeles area in July, 1987. Our panel was sent to a courtroom that needed a jury for some drug charge. The procedure was that 14 from the panel would sit in the jury box (12 jurors plus 2 alternates), where we'd be questioned by the judge and lawyers, and if any of us were rejected for that jury, someone else from the panel would take their place and be question. Repeat until there are 12 acceptable jurors.

One of the questions the defense attorney asked us was if we could have dinner that night with anyone in the world, living or past, who would we choose? I was in the fifth seat in the front row, so had some time to think before he got to me. The answers ahead of me were the candidate's deceased mother, Richard Feynman, Pope John Paul II [1], and I forget the other.

Then he asked me.

I said "Adolph Hitler".

A lot of the panel that was not in the box (maybe 30 people) had been kind of nodding off, as this was boring, and the courtroom was hot (it was the middle of summer, and the courtroom was not air conditioned). My answer woke them all up.

The attorney asked why and I explained that Hitler did terrible things to other people, and was clearly insane. That makes him at least interesting, but not unique. What sets Hitler apart, and makes him a good candidate for dinner, is that he somehow got a lot of apparently sane, rational, educated, well-off people to willingly help him commit his atrocities. He must have had tremendous charisma or something in order to get those results, and so a dinner with him should be very interesting.

The prosecutor also asked us a far out question. She asked us what we would say if aliens (the space kind, not the human from another country kind...) contacted us and said they had been monitoring our news and were confused about the "drug problem", and asked us to explain it.

I told her that I would tell them that we have arbitrarily classified some drugs as illegal and some as legal, without much regard to the actual harm of each, and so we have some drugs legal (alcohol, tobacco...yes, I know these might not scientifically be drugs, but for purposes of drug law policy they are effectively drugs), and some illegal (marijuana, LSD, cocaine, heroin, for instance), even though some of the latter group (such as marijuana) do the same or less harm than some in the former group. Then on top of that we don't admit that this is arbitrary and irrational, and so our schools, police, and government lie to kids telling them that drugs like marijuana are as bad as heroin. Of course, the kids end up trying marijuana, find out that they were lied to, and then do not trust the advice they've received on other drugs, and so likely end up trying drugs that really ARE bad. And then we waste a lot of money trying to enforce these stupid laws on things like marijuana when we could be putting that money and time toward real problems. She tried to defend the drug laws and policy, and we argued for a bit before she moved on.

So...basically...I told the prosecutor that this case was stupid and irrational, and she is working for a system that purposefully lies and makes the problems worse. Oh, and I had long hair and a beard and was wearing a tie-dye shirt that made me look like a hippy who had just come from a Grateful Dead concert and was probably on drugs right now.

I was pretty sure at this point that I was not going to make it onto that jury. The only question was whether it would be the defense or the prosecution that used one of their three peremptory challenges to kick me off.

I was guessing it would be the prosecutor, because I had basically told her I considered this whole thing stupid and harmful. On the other hand, I did say when asked that I would vote according to what the law says, regardless of how stupid I thought that law or its application was, and they knew I was a software engineer with a math degree from Caltech and so might have felt that this made it believable that I would be able to let logic rule instead of emotion.

It was actually the defense that did it. The prosecutor used all 3 of hers on other people, and the defense used his first 2 on others, then took me out with his final one. I think they were both holding off because they each thought the other might take me out.

[1] This was in July, 1987, so John Paul II was the current Pope, and Feynman was still alive.