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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?

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rshow55 - 08:00am Mar 30, 2003 EST (# 10765 of 10766)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

On this thread, again and again, there have been technical arguments about missile defense - and with absolutely stunning, monotonous regularity - gisterme has set out arguments that make no technical sense at all - that are perversely wrong - and feels right about them.

His military judgement, or that of his maximum leader, seems to be no better.

We're dealing here with nonrandom, basic patterns of human behavior that get us into messes. We need to face them. If we did - we could do better.

We ought to think about the behavior set out in http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~epritch1/social98a.html and realize that if we're "wired to be nice" - that is - to be cooperative - we're also "wired to be self deceptive and stupid" whenever the immediate thought seems to go against our cooperative needs.

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/413

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/414

And people who keep thinking and keep talking to each other

10617 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.FolgaZBy6WO.2308557@.f28e622/12167

Delusions of Power By PAUL KRUGMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/28/opinion/28KRUG.html is a wonderful piece - and very important. Krugman cites a wonderful phrase

. "incestuous amplification" defined by Jane's Defense Weekly as "a condition in warfare where one only listens to those who are already in lock-step agreement, reinforcing set beliefs and creating a situation ripe for miscalculation."

"Incestuous amplification" can lead to ornate , internally consistent and convincing systems of ideas - virtual maps. Now more than ever.

Living Under the Virtual Volcano of Video Games This Holiday Season By VERLYN KLINKENBORG http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/16/opinion/16MON4.html contains a haunting, and very important, idea. .

" every human activity, serious or playful, eventually ramifies into a world of its own, a self-contained cosmos of enormous complexity."

But is that self-contained cosmos right? When one matches that complexity against checkable things - some things that are real may be mapped almost exactly - or even exactly. But even when the match is exact, the map remains virtual . I think that virtual mappings that are correct in every way that matter are precious - and think people are getting clearer on how they happen - by "connecting the dots" and keeping at it.

But virtual mappings that are correct are also hard-won - and almost always the result of tremendous effort, and many, many, many modifications and corrections.

How many ways are there to screw up a computer program (or a map)?

Anybody with real world experience ought to know that there are many more ways than there are to make ones that work, and are fit to purpose, when that purpose is complicated enough to be of real human concern.

In the Bush administration, we're seeing an astonishing amount of hubris. Delusions of Power By PAUL KRUGMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/28/opinion/28KRUG.html and much else by Krugman are worth careful attention as we look at military and diplomatic decision making by the United States under Bush.

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