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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 - 09:29am Apr 7, 2003 EST (# 11183 of 11187)
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.

I know that Almarst disagrees, and I'm afraid I may be wrong, but still, looking at things a lot of ways, it seems to me that some very basic things are going very, very well.

And it seems to me that if responsible people can just keep up the levels of honesty and responsibility that they've been showing - a lot is likely to develop fairly stably - and well.

There are some basic problems with order - and people are having to face up to a lot of tensions and "contradictions" - where some additional understanding could help. Plenty is ugly and painful. Mistakes are being made, and people are being stupid sometimes. There's agony. But a lot is going well.

Ideas aren't the only things that matter - but ideas do matter, and I was interested in How Books Have Shaped U.S. Policy by Michiko Kakutani http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/05/arts/05WARB.html

Forums have much lower status than a book. Less organization than a book. But I've hoped this forum has had some influence as well. Working together, Luchic and I've tried to show some basic things about how discourse works - how order happens - and teach some basic lessons - including key lessons about how order happens in the world - how we come to see it - how it condenses - how it connects.

Things about the world, and about the "world" inside our heads - and the "worlds" we make when we communicate.

Problems that have been "on people's mind" for 2500 years - or even as long as people have been people. Problems that can do with some clarification, sharpening, and simplification.

rshow55 - 09:41am Apr 7, 2003 EST (# 11184 of 11187)
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.

Order is a basic problem - a practical problem. I was interested in this:

Abuse and Fear Leave Scars on Children in Battered Iraqi Town By MARC SANTORA http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/07/international/worldspecial/07SOUT.html is a wonderful piece, and includes this:

"Sadek Ahmed, 36, who was visiting the clinic, seemed to capture the popular sentiment. "I'm not with the government and I am not with the Americans," he said. "I am on the line."

"While the half dozen men who gathered to join the conversation agreed with the sentiment, they all blamed the Americans and British for the collapse of any sense of structure in their life.

"They came promising freedom, and we are left without electricity, water and security," said Haidr Bushan, 27, an ambulance driver. He said that for two weeks he had been picking up civilians wounded by bullets and bombs from the fighting and had nowhere to take them. "It is not a life," he said. Every day, the people grow angrier, he said.

"Behind the men, on a wall in the clinic, was a saying attributed to Mr. Hussein that they said was appropriate. Written in Arabic, it said, "What you say is who you are, so do not give a promise that you cannot keep or a promise that no one will support."

Some problems. Some tensions - some involving contradictions. Some things that involve tensions, but no contradictions at all. Things to be fixed. Some old things to be rejected, but not everything.

I'm very hopeful.

I made some points worth making and some implicit promises in postings between

11100 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.CHUialHC6iL.882807@.f28e622/12651 and 1142

and haven't kept the most basic promise in those postings - to clarify some key things about order - and how we "connect the dots" in ways that work well.

Just as in chemistry - some crystallization procedures have to happen in stages. Some explainations have to happen in steps.

Maybe the point is "obvious" - but it needs to be sharper than it is in most people's minds. We live in physical space, and pass through time - and it is useful to know clearly that space can be set out in coordinates - and measured along with time. We also live in a "logical" or "classificatory" space - of much higher dimensionality - that is similar to physical space in some ways and very different in some other ways.

It seems to me that there are some things about classificatory patterns that a four year old ought to hear about - and a six year old ought to be able to understand that could do with some clarification.

One key thing is that we learn, and focus, and reason, by dealing with similarities AND differences - together - for collections of cases. Everybody knows that, right?

They'd know it better if they looked at more examples - and did some counting. And comparing of numbers or interrealted cases - often involveing big numbers.

Just now, that seems to me to be condensing.

Right now, it seems to me that a lot of things, politically, militarily, culturally, are set up so that human conditions can be a lot better if people just stay careful, and reasonably honest. And keep at it.

I don't feel there is much wasted effort on this thread - or that it is too ungainly or big or disorganized - for what it is developing.

Lchic and I have been developing, working on, focusing the notion of paradigm change for a long time. I think the effort is going to be worth it.

I deeply appreciate the chance that the New York Times has given me to post on this thread.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense