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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

rshowalter - 02:14pm Oct 3, 2001 EST (#10058 of 10060)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD10053 possumdag 10/3/01 9:00am . . asks a crucial question:

" What frameworks for thinking might this board follow? "

I'd like to make a conservative answer - - (or it seems conservative to me, anyway.)

That is that most of the time, people cope with their problems fairly well, often beautifully. And quite often results of working sociotechnical systems are better than the understanding of them.

It seems to me that the missile defense program has been defective and dangerous in many ways -- but that there's a common source of problems. That is that not enough has been grounded on crosschecked facts, or crosschecking sufficient to produce coherent or consistent views.

I've felt that the missile defense programs, which I've judged too ineffectual to be directly dangerous, have been mostly important because of the amount of pathology they're connected to, and offer fine examples of a general point that concerns me a great deal -- which is that, when stakes matter, checking ought to be morally forcing.

I'd like to take some time, and go back and find things that have been said on this board, about checking, and focusing, and about how there are new opportunities for right answers, and complex cooperation, that come in the new internet world, with the addition of a few insights.

One insight I'd like to emphasize now. People have a lot that works very well, and we do not need to "change everything.

We need to change a few things. And change those things carefully.

And worry about making changes that produce systems that work well, at the exact set point where they were constructed - and that are understandable and stable.

To be stable, sociotechnical systems have to be understandable, because people have to be able to make reasonable decisions about them.

rshowalter - 02:21pm Oct 3, 2001 EST (#10059 of 10060)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

And for stability, a system that in some clear sense is working has to be modified into another system that works . . . step by step.

This has be be done, under circumstances as they are, with the people as they are.

Bright ideas may be very good - - if they are bright enough. For complex problems (most human problems) that requires a lot of checking with a statistical presumption that the new idea has a good chance of being wrong.

In social systems, like the "Buck Rogers" part of the military, where that presumption fades -- you can get amazing strings of total disaster. "Star Wars" is, I believe, a stunningly clear example where that is happening - and the whole program needs to be terminated.

rshowalter - 03:19pm Oct 3, 2001 EST (#10060 of 10060)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I'll wait a few hours before posting more. I'd welcome comments from others - - and especially comments from gisterme and kangdawai .

I've made proposals about checking missile defense issues, many very detailed, for a long time - and have been called "diffuse" (and much worse) on subject matter where I've tried to be very clear. Notably on the points connected to MD10036 rshowalter 10/1/01 11:16am .. and associated links. These points are crucial to the logic of this board, and which have involved much time on it.

And, I believe I've been subjected to a remarkable amount of evasion (and worse)by gesterme especially, in an area where the interest of the United States ought, for moral and practical reasons, to be identified with right answers.

As a proud, hopeful American, who'd like to be a prouder American, I'd like to say this from the heart:

We need to be worthy of the good things that people associate with this flag. Including competence and straight dealing. If we "hide behind the flag" as a cover for dishonest, incompetent, fraudulent bluffs, we degrade our country morally, and betray her practical interests as well.

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