[T]hey believed preventive war was foremost a matter of logic, the only
rational solution to the deadly dilemma of nuclear proliferation. As
[Bertrand] Rusell put it in an article advocating preventive war in the
January 1948 issue of
New Commonwealth: "The argument that I
have been developing is as simple and as unescapable as a mathematical
demonstration." But logic itself can go awry. Nothing captures the
whole bizarre episode of preventive war better than the unintentionally
Orwellian words of U.S. Secretary of Navy Francis P. Matthews, who in
1950 urged the nation to become "aggressors for peace."
-- William Poundstone. Prisoner's Dilemma, p. 4-5
True hypermnesiacs (persons gifted with 'photographic'
memory) are rare. By no means all are better off for their
ability. The memory of the famous patient 'S.' of Russian
psychologist A. R. Luria led to mythic tragedy. S. grew
unable to distinguish present experiences from his
too-vivid recollections of the past, and spent his last
years in an insane asylum.
-- William Poundstone. Prisoner's Dilemma, p. 32.