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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 - 11:39am Jul 15, 2003 EST (# 13029 of 13030)
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.

This week's Time Magazine http://www.time.com/time/magazine/current/ has some fine stuff, including the cover story:

A QUESTION OF TRUST: http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030721/story.html by Michael Duffy and James Carney

The CIA's Tenet takes the fall for a flawed claim in the State of the Union, but has Bush's credibility taken an even greater hit?

But in addition to significant questions about the credibility of George W. Bush the man ( who I think has all the conspicuous flaws of gisterme ) - there ought to be significant questions asked about the logic, the systems, and the conventions that are involved in the mistakes. Agreement is one thing. An important thing for group action ( whether that group action is right or wrong.) Judgement about whether the action is right or wrong is a vital issue as well.

Sometimes, it seems as if Bush and his staff don't understand that these uses of language and "logic" are different.

The debacle at NASA - and similar malfunctions at CIA - ought to drive the difference home - to them, to responsible Americans, and to people all over the world who have to judge and deal with the United States.

We're "a little lower than the angels" and Nicholas Wade's Early Voices: The Leap to Language http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/15/science/15LANG.html is a superb article, with a wonderful interactive feature, Putting Words Into Mouths attached.

Bertrand Russell On Agreement:

762 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.Pe5db5qFqKA.1375281@.f28e622/955

9360-3 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.Pe5db5qFqKA.1375281@.f28e622/10899

Agreement isn't logic. It isn't necessarily rightness, compared to facts - or fit to purpose, reasonably understood - even from the narrow perspective of the group - fully considered.

We "collect the dots" in ways that we happen to. We have more "dots" - and better ways of collecting them, than ever before. . . . And we are stunningly good at forming patterns - and usually astonishingly good at sorting out correct patterns. But not always.

Especially, of course, when issues of good faith can be fairly raised.

Our "logic" - is mostly a choosing between many alteratives going on or being fashioned in our heads - and in the course of that choosing - people believe what "feels right."

But what "feels right," most often, is what, in our minds "cooperates with the interests of authority - with our group." We want to be agreeable.

Usually it works very well. By animal standards, human beings are superb - God-like by comparision with other animals - whether you believe in God or not. The standard urge - drive - compulsion - internal order that says "be agreeable" is a very good rule - but no rule is perfect, and we need, when things go monotonously wrong, to consider the need for expeption handling - not to invalidate the basic rule - but to serve the purposes the basic rule works for.

If people "connect the dots" - check for both logic and consistency with known facts - and keep at it - we can get right answers, in all the ways that matter, a lot more frequently than we're getting them now.

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