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.

rshowalt - 10:15am Sep 3, 2002 EST (# 4154 of 4171)

It seems to me that we're close to getting a LOT of things worked out more decently.

Seymour Papert wrote a piece on Piaget that starts like this:

Einstein used the words "so simple only a genius coud have thought of it" to describe the theory advanced by pioneering Swiss philosopher and psychologist Jean Piaget that children don't think like grown-ups.

We're due for new insights on how people think. Connected to Plato's problem(s) -- which has(ve) been of concern for 2500 years. The key answers are simple.

So was f = m a . . . and for fundamental statistical reasons -- the simple is hard to find.

Casey, and some other people, wanted me to work on this problem, and related sub-problems with respect to deal-making, stability, and peace -- because they thought I might be able to make a contribution. Plus some stuff about mathematical modeling, and differential equations. I've been trying to be productive, and with lchic's genius - - have been making progress.

If I've got answers that are workable - Casey was insistent about this -- they will be answers that work easily and comfortably in the minds of other people. Otherwise, I don't have the answer.

I believe that a number of things can be improved.

Casey's advice wasn't flawless -- he didn't forsee the problems I've had with George Johnson - and he didn't know some of the things Piaget knew, that might have helped.

Piaget made a mistake, in the sense of an overgeneralization, as well.

There are times when people have to be taught things they could never learn for themselves.

Reading instruction - in light of Piaget - and with reference to Johnson's strengths and weaknesses as examples on the record -- ought to be able to explain the things that seem key to me now.

It does seem to me that some simple, basic things can be understood, can be taught, and will permit people to solve some key problems they face better than today.

Could be wrong about that. But believing it does not, Johnson notwithstanding, make me any kind of defective or monster. After all, people make mistakes all the time.

They get right answers, too.

rshow55 - 07:25pm Sep 3, 2002 EST (# 4155 of 4171)
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.

Papert on Piaget http://www.papert.com/articles/Papertonpiaget.html by Seymour Papert, which appeared in Time magazine’s special issue on "The Century’s Greatest Minds," includes this:

" Piaget "began watching children play, scrupulously recording their words and actions as their minds raced to find reasons for why things are the way they are. In one of his most famous experiments, Piaget asked children, "What makes the wind?" What follows is a typical Piagetian dialogue:

Piaget: What makes the wind?

Julia (age 5): The trees.

Piaget: How do you know?

Julia: I saw them waving their arms.

Piaget: How does that make the wind?

Julia: Like this (waving her hand in front of Piaget's face). Only they are bigger. And there are lots of trees.

Piaget: What makes the wind on the ocean?

Julia: It blows there from the land. No, it's the waves.

"Piaget recognized that Julia's answers, while not correct by any adult criterion, are not "incorrect" either. They are entirely sensible and coherent within the framework of the child's way of knowing. Classifying them as "true or false" misses the point and shows a lack of respect for the child. What Piaget was after was a theory that could find in the wind dialogue coherence, ingenuity and the practice of a kind of explanatory principle (in this case, by referring to body actions, in other cases much harder to state) that stands young children in very good stead when they don't yet know enough or have enough skill to handle the kind of explanation grown-ups prefer.

"Piaget was not an educator and never enunciated rules about how to intervene in such situations. But his work strongly suggests that the automatic reaction of putting the child right may well be abusive. Practicing the art of making theories may be more valuable for children than achieving meteorological orthodoxy. And if their theories are always greeted by "nice try, but this is how it really is..." they might give up after a while on making theories. As Piaget put it: "Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves, and each time that we try to teach them something too quickly, we keep them from reinventing it themselves."

But what if the COST of that reinvention is prohibitive - or what if that reinvention, for some children, is impossible - for something that their whole future depends on?

Today, there are costs that are gruesome, wrenching, and heartbreaking, as Brent Staples points out in EDITORIAL OBSERVER Mayor Bloomberg's Test: Teaching the Teachers How to Teach Reading http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/23/opinion/23FRI4.html

3923-3947 rshow55 8/23/02 10:10am deal with reading instruction, from a partly statistical perspective, with a new numerical insight in mind. Especially 3935_3946 rshow55 8/23/02 6:10pm

3946 rshow55 8/23/02 6:59pm asks "is it possible to do much better than we've done?" - - and suggests that it is. Lchic and I feel we're onto something new and hopeful.

On this thread, the notion of "connecting the dots" has been much discussed - and maybe we've made advances. 3991_4001 rshow55 8/26/02 7:42pm

(16 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense