Science Quote by Herman Kahn

Kahn is doing something sly here: he name-checks a grand, almost priestly-sounding theory ("the social utility paradox") and then shrugs it off as the less common culprit. The real enemy, he implies, is not the exotic puzzle that flatters intellectuals, but the ordinary sin of sloppy thinking. It reads like a corrective aimed at a certain kind of policy culture - the kind that would rather diagnose a failure as an inevitable paradox than admit someone didn't do the homework.

The intent is managerial as much as philosophical. Kahn, famous for bringing game theory and cold-eyed systems analysis into Cold War strategy, is warning that decision disasters often come from mundane cognitive and procedural failures: not defining the problem clearly, not stress-testing assumptions, not following second- and third-order effects. "Perspective" is the key word. It's not just that people choose badly; they frame the choice in a cramped, self-serving, or fashionable way.

The subtext is a rebuke to both technocrats and moralists. Technocrats can hide behind complexity - "the model made me do it" - while moralists can blame the perversity of incentives. Kahn grants those dynamics exist, but he refuses to let them become alibis. In the Cold War context, that refusal has teeth: when nuclear strategy, deterrence, and escalation management are on the table, a "simple mistake" isn't a footnote, it's catastrophe. The line presses for intellectual accountability: fewer elegant excuses, more disciplined thought.