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.

rshow55 - 08:31am Nov 13, 2003 EST (# 17482 of 17484)
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.

I was commandeered by Eisenhower in October 1967 - and at our first meeting General Eisenhower had me read from C.P. Snow's Science and Government - which includes a passage about two basic lessons P.M.S. Blackett taught military people and scientists during WWII and later - "one to each."

The lesson to the military was that you cannot fight wars on gusts of emotion.

The lesson to the scientists was that if are giving advice, you have to convince yourself that you yourself would act so, if you were responsible for action.

I found the experience of having Eisenhower point that out to me an overwhelming, formative experience. And an honor. I was nineteen years old. All the same, the advice, "perfect" in some ways - is perfectly awful in others.

War's must be fought on gusts of emotion. That's a first order fact. Blackett's point is vital - but secondary to the emotional facts that military deals with and manipulates. Everything people do, no matter the analytical involvement, is close enough to gusts of emotion for inescapable human reasons. Politicians and leaders in the news business know this, and must.

It is also true that advice sometimes has to be given at the level where it occurs - as a suggestion - at times when the advisor can have little idea of how to put himself or herself in the circumstances of the person being advised. The golden rule may be all very well - but it often takes knowledge that is unavailable - or far too incomplete for decision. Sometimes, just saying what you know, the best you can, has to be enough.

1623 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7b2bd/1792

1624 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7b2bd/1793 include this:

I've been arguing for the need for a paradigm shift that is both intellectual and moral - and simple enough to explain and use.

Including some simple exemplars that lchic and I have worked to focus - that might be usefully taught to four or five year olds. Kids and their parents might be better if they learned one of lchic's poems http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.7zt4b6qFXkz.5457@.f28e622/3745 . And in a little while, that poem might be learned with a small addition http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.7zt4b6qFXkz.5457@.f28e622/3784 . Other exemplars and clarifications might be usefully taught to human beings at more advanced ages, as well.

In a specific context - by specific criteria, perfection IS possible - but you don't know you have it until you've checked a lot of things - and "perfect" for one purpose essentially always means "bad" from another point of view. These are things that can be CONVERGENTLY clarified - and sometimes VERY good solutions - CONVERGE and are stable. Agreements about values, weights, are always involved.

For basic logical and mathematical reasons - with life as complcated and dangerous as it is - people face a challenging set of circumstances again and again - and there is not escape from these circumstances. Again and again, there are strong, largely valid arguments that say:

You can't afford to guess - you have to check everything. but

You can't afford NOT to guess. There isn't enough time or information to do anything else.

Both of the approaches are needed. Alternately at many nodes - and at different places in the logical structure people rely on, in their own heads, or in the sociotechnical systems they live in, at any one time.

To do anything really new, or really large, some exception handling has to happen. There is a limit to what can be conveyed in a sound bite - especially while things are being worked out.

But practical hope for human beings depends on working things out. There's been plenty hoped for in the past, and worked for, that has been realized. People working together, and working out problems, can accomplish fa

rshow55 - 08:33am Nov 13, 2003 EST (# 17483 of 17484)
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.

People working together, and working out problems, can accomplish far more than they they could accomplish alone. That's a consistent pattern. http://www.mrshowalter.net/Kline_ExtFactors.htm

There are good reasons to cooperate rather than fight. But fighting is the logically usual form - especially when people are quite different. For reasons that are not only instinctual ( and strongly so ) but also built into the logic of common circumstances. Cooperations are generally unstable. We need to know how to stabilize them better, more reliably, more systematically, than we have.

I am making statements that are both "general" and specific. Search keys, and logical organizations that work are both general and specific in a similar sense.

Newspapers, which are in the snapshot business - have standards of relevance that may be perfect for the jobs they do - and perfectly awful for some other jobs. An organization like the New York Times has to do a lot of switching. Now, what the NYT does is often quite a lot better than what it says it does. Practice is better than doctrine. That's pretty common. I think this thread shows the NYT at its very best quite often. And also shows it at its worst. There is no contradiction, but I think there is room for improvement. That improvement will have to be embodied in better patterns of exception handling.

(1 following message)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense