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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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(4171 previous messages)
rshow55
- 11:12am Sep 4, 2002 EST (#
4172 of 4174)
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.
A Communication Model http://www.worldtrans.org/TP/TP1/TP1-17.HTML
is excellent and basic - - and I've added it to my list
of most favorite URL's, (click rshow55).
There's an excellent diagram showing
sender A , with sender's reality and intended meaning
sharing a space with a reciever B , who has
her own reality. The message(s) are both verbal and
nonverbal.
"There is always a sender and a receiver in communication.
. . .
"A and B have different personal realities. They each have
their own world formed by their experiences, their
perceptions, their ideas, etc. They will perceive, experience,
and interpret things differently. The same event will always
be perceived a little different by each of two people.
"For the consideration to communicate to appear at all
there must be some kind of shared space. The participants must
have some kind of concept of each other's location and of a
possible channel of communication existing between them. They
must agree sufficiently on these to agree that communication
is taking place.
"The sender will have some kind of meaning she wishes to
convey to the receiver. It might not be conscious knowledge,
it might be a sub-conscious wish for communication. What is
desired to be communicated would be some kind of idea,
perception, feeling, or datum. It will be a part of her
reality that she wishes to send to somebody else.
"Something will be transmitted across a distance in the
shared space. We can regard it as an object, a particle, or as
a wave, or flow. It might be sound vibrations, rays of light,
words, pieces of paper, cannon balls, body language,
telepathy, or whatever.
"Between humans there will be several layers of the message
being sent. There will often be a verbal portion, something
that is being expressed in language, spoken or written. And
there is also a non-verbal portion, covering everything else,
most notably body language. Sometimes the verbal and
non-verbal messages don't agree with each other, they are
incongruent. If they do agree we say that they are congruent.
"Based on what the receiver perceives, and based on her
interpretation of the verbal and non-verbal input, she will
form a concept in her reality of what the meaning of the
message is. It will mean something to her. It might or might
not be what was intended by the sender. In successful
communication the perceived message will approximate the
intended message to the sender's satisfaction. However, the
sender will only know that if she receives a message back that
is congruent with what she had in mind.
"One can never take for granted that the receiver has the
same reality as the sender. One can never take for granted
that the receiver will interpret the message the same way as
the sender intended it.
"Communication is not an absolute finite thing.
Particularly, communication with language is always vague and
misleading to some extent.
"If A says a word, like for example "trust", she has a
certain meaning attached to it in her reality. She has had
certain experiences with the subject matter, she has made
certain conclusions about it, and she has certain perceptual
filters concerning it. The meaning of the word is all the
stuff it is associated with in her reality. However, because
words also have nice, finite dictionary definitions it might
appear as if the word is something very precise.
"What travels across the communication channel is NOT all
the associations that A made about the word, and NOT the
intentions she had with using it. What crosses the distance is
symbols.
(more)
rshow55
- 11:14am Sep 4, 2002 EST (#
4173 of 4174)
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 B hears the word or sentence she will interpret it
based on her experiences, perceptions, and opinions. She might
supplement the verbal information with non-verbal information
such as body language. She might also hallucinate what it is
supposed to mean. In one way or another she arrives at the
meaning she assigns to it.
"There is wide agreement, at least within a particular
culture, on what common physical objects are. When you say
"car" or "refrigerator" most people will have an understanding
very close to yours. But if you say words for abstract
qualities, like "trust", "love", "right", "wrong", and so
forth, then there is wide variance on what people mean.
"To have effective communication one needs to take all the
factors into consideration. The different realities, the space
the communication takes place in, verbal as well as non-verbal
messages, the intended meaning versus the perceived meaning.
---------------------------------------------
Everyone - - even the best writers in the business -
could benefit from rereading this from time to time. And the
information is so basic that it could be
explained to a six year old -- who'd miss some of it, but get
some, too.
Even a 6 year old child, incapable of abstraction - would
get some of the key things Piaget says, too. Just like
learning to tie your shoes - - the kid doesn't have to "get
it" the first time. With time, skills come together, and ideas
jell. Prompting helps.
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Missile Defense
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