New York Times on the Web Forums
Science
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
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(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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