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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 - 01:24pm Aug 21, 2003 EST (# 13344 of 13345)
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.

“ . . gone wrong before. That awareness of anomaly opens up a period in which conceptual categories are adjusted until the initially anomalous has become the anticipated. At this point the discovery has been completed. . . . . “ (End of quote from Kuhn, Ch. 6)

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rshowalter - 07:31pm Dec 25, 2000 BST (#315 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/369 from Paradigm Shift . . . whose getting there? asks this:

Now, how will things play out, if this sort of perceptual impasse is deeply embedded, and discourse, at the level of peer review, or within a university setting, is subject to the imperative of “consensus building” in Kay’s sense of evasion of controversy? Problems that may look easy from a distance may be insoluble according to ordinary usages.

In difficult cases, it may be very much worse, because the anomaly may couple strongly with power relations in the invisible college responsible for decision. rshowalter Sat 19/08/2000 16:21 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/95

Here I quote from #74, this thread, citing Adolf Berle's POWER . Among Berle’s "Five Natural Laws of Power," there is rule three:

Power is invariably based on a system of ideas or philosophy. Absent such a system or philosophy, the institutions essential to power cease to be reliable, power ceases to be effective, and the power holder is eventually displaced.

If an anomaly undermines a system of ideas or philosophy, there may be emotional reasons, coupled with and reinforcing the conceptual reasons Kuhn cites, to not see, or refuse to see, a basic point.

In the sciences, knowledge is property, and connections between ideas, status, and power are close. This is true for both individual scientists and scientific groups. . . . .

. That's true in business, politics and everywhere else humans interact, too. Connections between ideas, status, and power are close.

rshow55 - 01:28pm Aug 21, 2003 EST (# 13345 of 13345)
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.

from THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS 2nd Ed. by Thomas S. Kuhn end of Ch 7:

" Philosophers of science have repeatedly demonstrated that more than one theoretical construction can always be placed on a given collection of data. History of science indicates that, particularly in the early developmental stages of a new paradigm, it is not even very difficult to invent such alternatives. But that invention of alternatives is just what scientists seldom undertake except during the pre-paradigm stage of their science's development or at very special occasions during its subsequent evolution. So long as the tools a paradigm supplies continue to prove capable of solving the problems it defines, science moves fastest and penetrates most deeply through confident employment of those tools. The reason is clear. As in manufacture so in science - retooling is and extravagance to be reserved for the occasion that demands it. The significance of crisis is the indications they provide that the occasion for retooling has arrived.

from the beginning of Chapter 8:

" Let us assume that crises are a necessary precondition for the emergence of novel theories and ask next how scientists respond to their existence. Part of the answer, as obvious as it is important, can be noted by what scientists never do when confronted by even severe and prolonged anamolies. . . . . No process yet disclosed by the historical study of scientific development at all resembles the methodological stereotype of falsification by direct comparison with nature. . . . . The decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the decision to accept another, and the judgement leading to that decision involves the comparison of both paradigms with nature and with each other.

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" retooling is and extravagance to be reserved for the occasion that demands it."

Eisenhower and others felt sure that the world occasion demanded it,

I was given problems that people felt confident were involved with a crisis - where national survival, and world survival, might depend on getting solutions that people weren't finding - for reasons that were both intellectual, and matters of status and position.

I was, in an important sense, an "experimental animal" - and in another sense - an intellectual "soldier" sent on an impossible, suicidal mission. Eisenhower knew it. People working with him knew it. I knew it. We did the best we could.

We've made some progress since Kuhn wrote, and RAND worked on game theory in the 1960s, and can make more.

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.

A fairly concise statement of a paradigm shift that lchic and I have been presenting is set out in this passage.

rshowalter Mon 11/08/2003 22:00 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7b2bd/1792

rshowalter Mon 11/08/2003 22:04 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7b2bd/1793

The points apply to practical issues of war and peace that we are facing now. I'm not sure that I could explain them to Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves, if Groves came back to life as he was in 1945. But, with facts behind me - and some staff work - I think I could. I feel sure I could have explained these things to either Eisenhower.

The biggest point is obvious - but ever-so-hard for leaders to really understand. Just because they feel sure, and the people around them are sure - that doesn't mean they are right. We have to be careful.

And sometimes, when the pressure to hurry is greatest - we need to ask how much we're really in a hurry. And get an answer that fits the case - at the levels that matter. Often several levels.

We have to be careful.

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