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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 - 08:59am Aug 17, 2003 EST (# 13316 of 13317)
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.

12263 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.cdihb8t6znm.3760001@.f28e622/13909 starts with "Friedman's piece is beautiful today" - which is true again - though Friedman's piece is not beautiful from every possible perspective. 12263 also includes this:

I'm reposting rshow55 - 06:44pm Jan 4, 2003 EST (# 7331 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.cdihb8t6znm.3760001@.f28e622/8854 with a few added words dealing with General Eisenhower's involvement.

Was Eisenhower "wrong" in what he did? The consequences have been terrible for my Mom and Dad - especially for my mother. Bad for me. But perhaps, on balance, necessary.

Eisenhower and others thought that it was either likely, or certain, that the world would end unless some problems got solved. The Rand corporation was stumped.

Sylvia Nasar of The New York Times quotes a very senior expert in A Beautiful Mind ( Chapter 14).

"Whenever we speak of deterrance, atomic blackmail, the balance of terror . . . we are evidently deep in game theory." Thomas Schelling wrote in 1960, "yet formal game theory has contributed little to the clarification of those ideas."

Eisenhower and people around them knew they were stumped. They were desperate. They thought their only hope was to "find a smart kid" - work him hard, give him the best information and training they could put together, and hope. Perhaps it was very bad judgement that I got fingered. But I did.

My mom has been going over and over in her mind for thirty years how badly I've turned out - I was a smart kid, a good kid, a little agressive in a few spots, but doing well - and then I went to the Cornell 6 Year Ph.D. program and "everything went wrong."

rshow55 - 09:02am Aug 17, 2003 EST (# 13317 of 13317)
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 thread is a "game" in the game theory sense. I'm doing the best I can to reduce the risks of the world blowing up. Some games are more serious than others.

The game has "sub-games", in my own mind, at least.

rshow55 - 08:20am Jan 1, 2003 EST (# 7177 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.cdihb8t6znm.3760001@.f28e622/8700 starts:

" I think this is a year where some lessons are going to have to be learned about stability and function of international systems, in terms of basic requirements of order , symmetry , and harmony - at the levels that make sense - and learned clearly and explicitly enough to produce systems that have these properties by design, not by chance."

That still doesn't seem a bad guess. There are ways it could happen - and I think some insights have been communicated.

Today is Sunday, Aug. 17, the 229th day of 2003. There are 136 days left in the year. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-History.html

There's another "game" - about solving the world's energy problems -and key problems of national security. Also solving global warming. I'm hoping to move fast on that "game" too. It is easy to "compose stories" where that should be possible. A lot of those stories seem like they could "easily" come true. They are all "impossible" on status grounds. Status is "funny" - on this thread, I have some status - but in some other important ways - no status at all. Very little would have to switch for a lot to change.

There's a quote from Benjamin Franklin:

" Experience keeps a dear school. A fool will learn in no other." 9386 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.cdihb8t6znm.3760001@.f28e622/10922

I hope that people who experienced the blackout have been jolted a little - hopefully enough to make sure that the world doesn't blow up because of stupid errors - that I've been begging for people to correct - "going through channels" - for a decade now -and on this thread for almost three years now. In the middle of a "story" - you don't know how it turns out. I'm hoping for happy endings - and worried about the end of the world.

- - -

If that's crazy, well, Eisenhower and a lot of other people have been "crazy", too. I'd like to be debriefed, face to face. And given enough freedom so that I can actually work.

From where I am, knowing what I know, thinking what I think, and with the fears I have, and believe are rational - I'm doing the best I can to sort things out carefully, stably - without moving too fast.

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