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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 - 05:26pm Sep 1, 2003 EST (# 13461 of 13465)
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 quote was on the last page of the American Heritage Picture History of World War II , by C.L. Sulzberger and the editors of American Heritage , published in 1966.

It is from an undelivered speech by Franklin D. Roosevelt, written shortly before his death.

" Today, we are faced with the pre-eminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships --- the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together in the same world, at peace. "

I've repeated that quote a number of times, including these early in 2002. Each also involves a post from gisterme .

http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md10000s/md10638.htm

http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md11000s/md11154.htm

We need to proceed practically - and that means with technical means that we really have, or can make, and inter-national relationships that we have, and can make.

We need better - understanding - of human relations. And some approaches - which may work well in a lot of situations, can be dangerous in others.

It is so easy to simplify the "logic" of a situation by saying

"He isn't a human being."

"She isn't a human being."

"They aren't human beings."

And in some ways it is a useful simplification. Not always.

Teams are important. Team values are important. People aren't as clear as they could be about how they are important, and how much they matter.

We couldn't live without the ties that bind us together - and the differences that distinguish us, either.

But dehumanization can produce problems - for reasons that need to be better understood than they are. We live as part of a lot of "teams." These "teams" interact. There are very practical reasons to sort some things out that we are not sorting out well now.

There are good reasons not to deal with people how "aren't on my team," who "don't fit in with my team."

. Biological reasons. Logical reasons. Technical reasons. Social reasons. Sociotechnical reasons.

People are pretty good at excluding people and groups. And have to be.

But life is now poorer, more dangerous, more confusing, and uglier because, when there are good reasons to deal effectively with people and groups from different teams we don't know how to do it effectively .

A big reason why we don't is that we aren't clear about some logical problems we have as human beings - and we aren't nearly clear enough about a notion Steve Kline pushed hard. We are sociotechnical animals - and to understand "what it means to be a human being" - we have to understand that better than we now do.

This thread represents a serious effort, with some important team involvements, to sort those issues out better.

rshow55 - 05:28pm Sep 1, 2003 EST (# 13462 of 13465)
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.

The NYT Missile Defense Forum, and coordinated Guardian Talk fora, form a large, coordinated corpus. http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.597abcaf/0 begins as follows.

"A sense of how very big the Missile Defense forum is comes from looking at a full list of links. . . . . And also two collections from especially important posters. Gisterme is the thread's "Bush administration stand-in" and Almarst - the thread's "Putin stand-in".

" Almarst has posted on the MD thread about 2,440 times. Gisterme has posted about 1,270 times. Those posts are listed here and are available for sampling via links..

"Sampling some of these links, one can get a sense of how big the NYT MD thread is, and how much the posters care about it.

"Also something about how much support and forebearance, over a long time, the New York Times and the Guardian Observer have devoted to the threads involved with this work. Support that I greatly appreciate. Support that I believe they have a right to be proud of.

The NYT Missile Defense Forum, and coordinated Guardian Talk fora, form a large, coordinated corpus is posted as a single ( 1.25 meg) html at http://www.mrshowalter.net/BigDirectory.htm . This is a list of links - which would take 259 pages to print.

Posts by Almarst are set out from #32-84 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.597abcaf/31 - and are posted separately at http://www.mrshowalter.net/PostsBy_Almarst.htm - a list of links which would take 130 pages to print.

Posts by Gisterme are set out from #85-92 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.597abcaf/84 - and are posted separately at http://www.mrshowalter.net/PostsBy_Gisterme.htm - which is a 32 page list of links.

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