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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 - 07:49pm Aug 26, 2002 EST (# 3993 of 3994)
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.

Here's a quote I like a lot:

"Unlike deduction, which, assuming its premises are sound, is certain, absolute, and airtight, induction is about mere probabilities; its success depends on how accurately you observe and over how many cases. . . . An Incomplete Education by Judy Jones and William Wilson Ballantine Books, NY --1987 p. 329

"MERE PROBABILITIES" - - - well, what are the odds? If the odds in favor of a proposition are a million to one in favor - for each of a number of steps -- and there are a lot of steps with those odds in favor - -end to end -- odds that multiply that's pretty good.

"Pretty good" is less than philosophical certainty -but enough to work with.

What are the odds that we can teach practically all students to read, and read comfortably - at much less cost than now, and much more effectively? That matters. Those odds look very good to me. (Remember, these "slow" kids watch television for recreation - and that takes fancy processing.)

The odds of that look better to me after the work of yesterday and today. Mayor Bloomberg's Test: Teaching the Teachers How to Teach Reading by BRENT STAPLES http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/23/opinion/23FRI4.html

I'm trying to make emotional sense, not just logical sense. That's taking some thought - - and I'm reading some Charles Dickens, and some George Orwell, for inspiration. Plus a little Keynes. . . .

rshow55 - 07:51pm Aug 26, 2002 EST (# 3994 of 3994)
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.

Here's Jones and Wilson again:

"For at least 200 years philosophers have been looking for a logical proof for why induction works as well as it does or, failing that, even just an orderly way of thinking about it. No soap. About the closest anybody's come to actually legitimizing it as a philosophical entit, as opposed to a useful day-to-day skill, is John Stuart Mill, who cited the "uniformity of nature" as one reason why induction has such a good track record. Of course, that nature is uniform is itself an induction, but Mill was willing to give himself that much of a break."

Most other people would, too. The connection of the statistical and the symbolic is a key problem in psychology - perhaps THE key problem. MD3946 rshow55 8/23/02 6:59pm

When we ask, in a defined case, what truth is, what are our chances of finding it? That depends on a lot, for any particular case. But chance plays a part, and often a big part.

Here's a simpler question, basic to evaluations of the hard question bolded just above.

When we're "looking for a needle in a haystack" "How big is that haystack?" If you're looking at random combinations, and only one possibility is right, how big is the search? How much does it help to eliminate possibilities, in this random case?

Let's compare N! , . . N!/(N/2)! , and . . . N!/(N/5!) Here they are for three values of N . . . 10, 20, and 40

10! = 3,628,800 . . . . . . . 5! = 120 . . . . . . . . . . . .2! = 2 20! = 2.433 x 10e18 . . . 10! = 3,628,800 . . . . . . . 4! = 24 40!= 8.16 x 10e47 . . . . 20! = 2.433 x 10e18 .....12! = 4.79 x 10e8

For N= 10 . . N!/(N/2)! =3.024 x 10e4 . . . N!/(N/5)! = 1.814 x 10e6 For N= 20 . . N!/(N/2)! = 6.704 x 10e11 . . N!/(N/5)! = 2.027 x 10e16 For N= 40 . . N!/(N/2)! = 3.358 x 10e29 . . N!/(N/5)! = 1.703 x 10e39

These are huge numbers. Too big to think about? Well, it is MASSIVELY helpful, in relative terms to narror down the number of cases. The larger the number of alternatives, the more imporant it is.

Narrowing down the number of possibilities makes a HUGE difference - even when we're just talking about random searches - and when there is order in the system, narrowing down the possibilities is usually even MORE important.

The differences that come with simplification are so great that they make differences of life and death -- and the difference between learning and not learning.

Suppose one child is trying to read a text, and knows 80% of the words? Suppose another child approaches the same text, and knows 20% of the words? Who has a chance?

How much can it change the odds, when basic relationships get mastered, in a situation which really does have basic order? Very much.

Back tomorrow.

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