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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 - 05:26am Oct 7, 2001 EST (#10177 of 10185)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I'm slogging through a set of "false solutions." (5 now, but it will soon be a monotonous job making more - many more than I could execute, even if they weren't defective.) They'd each be nice, and hopeful, except for an absolutely fatal flaw. Or maybe they'd just fail in other ways.

For the "fantasies" involved, all of them, just now, having to do with land mines, and getting nukes down, and some issues of identical structure, I'd have to meet with some specific people, for enough time, face to face.

And the people I'd want to talk to wouldn't even talk to me, using their own names, on the telephone. Not even for a few minutes.

Much less meet me face to face.

And even if they would, there's an essentially zero chance that they'd do what complex cooperation between us might really take - - in a lot of cases I can think of, a few days searching at the Patent Office, so that, for a specific job, we'd be oriented, and have common ground.

Or something similar, that they'd thought of, that would work for common ground relevant to jobs to be done.

There are times when mercy is indispensible, for reasons of logical structure - and many times where people have to act out of some kind of mutual good will -- without having every interchange a transaction. Those times, these days, hope is too often classified out of existence.

It is fun to play with things, to go through sequences, to have a little hope for a little while, imagining that some key constraints weren't really there.

But it is monotonous, and feels sad, to be as badly stumped as I am, on these sorts of things.

My phone number is in the Madison phone book.

rshowalter - 05:41am Oct 7, 2001 EST (#10178 of 10185)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

ledzeppelin 10/7/01 4:39am . . the number of things you can say, that are true, that argue against religion, is more than anyone would care to count.

Even so, people need religion -- and the minute you take one away, people come up with another.

I think religion is important - but think it is terrible when religious leaders give ORDERS , rather than advice, on religious grounds, or when people in power give ORDERS, rather than advice, for reasons that can only be justified by religion.

I'm a doubter, though not a scoffer, a lot of the time - - but I'm absolutely sure that the clergy are important people, and that the needs religion serves are needs that will go on as long as mankind.

If you look at Maslow's heirarchy of needs, near the top are issues that can be fairly called "very involved with religion." For practical reasons and many emotional reasons, too, these "higher" parts of the ladder are essential for human function.

Maslow's heirarchy of needs.

rshowalter - 05:48am Oct 7, 2001 EST (#10179 of 10185)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Here's the "ladder"

1) Physiological: hunger, thirst, bodily comforts, etc.;

2) Safety/security: out of danger;

3) Belonginess and Love: affiliate with others, be accepted; and

4) Esteem: to achieve, be competent, gain approval and recognition.

According to Maslow, an individual is ready to act upon the growth needs if and only if the deficiency needs are met. Maslow's initial conceptualization included only one growth need--self-actualization. Self-actualized people are characterized by: 1) being problem-focused; 2) incorporating an ongoing freshness of appreciation of life; 3) a concern about personal growth; and 4) the ability to have peak experiences. Maslow later differentiated the growth need of self-actualization, specifically naming two lower-level growth needs prior to general level of self-actualization (Maslow & Lowery, 1998) and one beyond that level (Maslow, 1971). They are:

5) Cognitive: to know, to understand, and explore;

6) Aesthetic: symmetry, order, and beauty;

7) Self-actualization: to find self-fulfillment and realize one's potential; and

8) Transcendence: to help others find self-fulfillment and realize their potential.

Every full human being operates, to at least some extent, at every level.

Note that the area where Dawn Riley specializes, -- aesthetics -- is above the cognitive level where I mostly work.

And the higher level is essential to get cognitive stuff straight, a lot of the time.

Levels 7 and 8 are essential, too. But they are not well placed, structurally, to give direct orders to other levels in the heirarchy, except for ones they touch, either one step up, or one step down.

Note - whether you believe in God or not -- in the logic of Maslow's ladder, there is a "logical need" for "God" above level 8.

rshowalter - 05:54am Oct 7, 2001 EST (#10180 of 10185)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

For humanly and logically workable patterns, every level has a role to play, and every level imposes standards on, and must be evaluated in terms of, the standards of every other level. And a time comes, when arrangements become complicated (and for human beings, they practically always are) when "how much?" questions become indispensible, and answers that are wrong because out of balance become ugly and destructive.

Me, I don't like asymptotic solutions based on feeble minded models that don't fit.

Look at the current nuclear terror.

Look at what happens when the Talaban follows through with a logic that says

" no matter what my wife can't be allowed to f*ck anybody else."

The answers are ugly and dangerous, and wrenchingly expensive, because they are so disproportionate to the things that reasonably have to be involved.

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