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 [F] New York Times on the Web Forums  / Science  /

    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?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.


Earliest Messages Previous Messages Recent Messages Outline (13913 previous messages)

rshow55 - 12:43pm Sep 24, 2003 EST (# 13914 of 13917)
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.

Wasteful, Incoherent, Nonsensical for one purpose may be Economic, Coherent, and Sensible from another.

People have to do some switching.

. Ecclesiastes 3: 1-13 - condensed and set to music by the Byrds as Turn, Turn, Turn http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~harel/cgi/page/htmlit?Turn_Turn_Turn.html

A problem I'm having, guys, is that it is hard to summarize while fencing - and especially so while laughing . . .

I must admit that things are pretty muddled. And it is hard to respond to one objection - while you're being showered with others.

Yesterday, Jorian319 whacked me with a postings that I thought was absolutely wonderful - and I spent a lot of time thinking about it. Here it is:

.

jorian319 - 05:18pm Sep 23, 2003 EST (# 13891 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.Yh5gbFgdIFd.1528040@.f28e622/15594

"Did you ever notice that most other posters (including the deified lchic) are able to post meaningful thoughts in less than a page and without a single self-referential link???

"Did you ever ask yourself "Self, why is it that I'm the only poster who needs to fill pages with links to my other pages full of links to my other pages, while everyone else who makes any sense is able to do so without posting pages and pages of links to pages and pages of links?" ???

An excellent posting - that stopped me - set me to thinking - - and I go along, trying to organize a response - -

(One going beyond the obvious one, that cantabb surely knows, that this thread is an experiment showing how the internet - with work - can simulate some of the logic of the brain - and handle some things that haven't been possible before - especially if it is imagined as a prototype for what a staffed organization might do)

And so I go and think some things through - or try - and even have what seem to me to be coherent responses linked to science - and science directly linked to what's possible in missile defense - and I get clobbered from so many directions - that it is hard for me to see how I'm going to shake down a summary that could ever satisfy "the average reader of The New York Times."

I would point out that, like other posters I often do set out short strings of meaningful thought - coherent and even cogent considered in isolation - and then I violate an "unwritten rule" and supply context explicitly .

There are interesting logical consequences of doing that. Things can get clear enough to check if you check through enough interconnected context. Internal consistency can be clarified. Sharpened. Combed out.

rshow55 - 12:44pm Sep 24, 2003 EST (# 13915 of 13917)
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.

When people "think about things" - and "talk things over" that "boring" process goes on and on and on and on . . . and quite often it is useful.

But it is not the condensed form that people would want to read in a newspaper article - or a book - or an academic paper. Those are more condensed forms.

I've been repeating a line that I think is zippy, thought of in isolation -

" The long and the short of it is - you need both long and short. "

Mostly, I'm working on the long - which is less valuable than the short - but comes first in the focusing process. Details - sometimes voluminous details, carefully crosschecked - are important when cooperation that actually works is important. Cantabb thinks this following is insignificant and inappropriate here - but I think it is both significant and appropriate.

For stable end games - workable stable arrangements - people and groups have to be workably clear on these key questions. Especially if win-win outcomes are to be possible.

How do they disagree (agree) about logical structure ?

How do they disagree (agree) about facts ?

How do they disagree (agree) about questions of how much different things matter ?

How do they differ in their team identifications ?

I think Eisenhower would have called this new:

Odds are good that if the patterns of agreement (or disagreement) are STABLE and KNOWN they can be decently accomodated.

In terms of the values that I think have been exemplified by The New York Times in tolerating this thread - it seems to me that that statement is worthwhile.

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 [F] New York Times on the Web Forums  / Science  / Missile Defense