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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 - 12:33pm Apr 7, 2003 EST (# 11188 of 11192)
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.

If we figured out just a little bit more than we know, and if we were just a little bit more honest -- we could survive - and the world would be much better.

If the following simple rhyme became a "nursery rhyme" - learned by 4 year olds and their parents -- the world would become a lot better. The rhyme has a lot to do with "connecting the dots" - and the fact that people, good as they are, aren't perfect.

Adults need secrets, lies and fictions

To live within their contradictions.

. . . . But when things go wrong

. . . . And knock about

. . . . Folks get together

. . . . And work it out.

We can work things out because there are many repeating patterns. Some of the most basic of these are illustrated by the mathematical notion of fractals. I believe that there are some basic - and precisely self-similar patterns of connection in brains, and believe I know something about some basic ones.

Wheter or not that's true, there are patterns of order that have some analogies to fractals.

Some similarities are exact in defined ways. The patterns of order are useful - and operationally real.

The organization of human logic and language is "fractal like" in some ways and not in others.

http://math.rice.edu/~lanius/frac

http://math.rice.edu/~lanius/fractals

The correspondences are operationally real and useful. The distinctions and differences are operationally real and useful, too.

Patterns of seeing organize themselves into systems of patterns - and some of these patterns are sometimes called "paradigms" . The notion is general, and somewhat diffuse - but it is useful - and it would be useful if the idea was sharper than it has been. Lchic and I have been working on that sharpening.

#116 - http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.wH81aKL76oC.897263@.f28e622/137 gives key reference to the Riley-Showalter paradigm thread, Paradigm Shift .... whose getting there? ...

Dawn Riley (Lchic) and I have been at the notion of "paradigm" a long time. That hasn't been accidental. Though there have been some serendipitious things about the work.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense