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 - 10:35am Oct 12, 2002 EST (# 4826 of 4842)
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.

"To consider my model, from the viewpoint of education or psychology, one must say “standard conventions may possibly be wrong - we may consider them according to the same standards we’d apply to other ideas, and we can imagine that authorities on the subject who are attached to notational conventions, could be wrong if evidence or logic indicates that they are wrong.” The idea that there are basic difficulties in our patterns of mathematical modeling may give people pause on intellectual or status grounds, but the idea has long been expressed. George Johnson, the journalist, has expressed the idea several times. George Hart, a distinguished mathematatical engineer, has dealt with a central part of the difficulty incisively:

" “The standard methods of appying real and complex mathematics to science and engineering are flawed. Although scientists, engineers, and applied mathematicians are aware of dimensinality ( aware that physical represetatations are based on dimensional numbers ) no valid connection links a theorem or result that we can prove holds for real numbers to its applications where physical quantities are involved.

"I’m arguing that valid and complete mathematical description of coupled physical circumstances requires that crosseffects be algebraically simplified at unit (or point) scale. There’s enough logical room to talk about doing that. "

Logical room is there - but logic is something that is both hard and imperfect for human beings - - even the best of us.

For fundamental reasons of safety we need to become clearer about what it is to be a human being .

Bill Casey was haunted that the world would end - because people would never learn enough to get a stable world - - and he fought - and made decisions to kill and hurt that were carried out - - knowing he was stumped - and hoping for a better way. I've been trying to do what he asked me to do. So far as he knew - and I believed him - - I had, for all my limitations - - a good enought shot at making progress to justify the effort.

With reasonable care - and respect for facts, and our limitations - we could do a lot better now. MD4052 rshow55 8/31/02 8:17am

rshow55 - 10:51am Oct 12, 2002 EST (# 4827 of 4842)
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 are two pieces that I wrote with Professor Stephen J. Kline, of Stanford - in 1997 the year Steve died. Some things I'm proud of, and care about - on my relation with Steve are set out in http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/klinerec and http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/klineul - - but I'd like to point out these pieces especially now:

Current scientific simulation, as set out in REALITY BYTES, compared to other traditions
M. Robert Showalter and Stephen J. Kline http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/rbcrit/

and most especially:

http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/whytimes/ WHAT ARE THE NEW YORK TIMES SCIENCE FORUMS GOOD FOR?
Can newspapers really participate in science? . . .Can they really cover it? Should they?
M. R. Showalter . . . S. J. Kline

" Newspapers have a role to play in science, for essentially the same reasons that make them important elsewhere. Newspapers shape our common culture, and may even define what that common culture is. A high Washington bureaucrat once spoke to me (Showalter) as follows:

" "In this town, some think that they can do everything within specific, codified rules, and that behavior not in violation of specific rules is all right. It isn't so. There is one set of rules, one test, above the others in this town and elsewhere. Ask yourself, from your own point of view, and the point of view of people you are interacting with, the question

""HOW WOULD THIS LOOK, IF WRITTEN UP OBJECTIVELY, AND IN DETAIL, IN THE NEW YORK TIMES?"

"His point was much broader than the idea that any particular meeting or action might be reported. The point was that the "what would it look like in the TIMES?" standard always applied. Violations of that standard, for any reason, were always suspect, or worse than suspect. He went on to say that we lived in a common culture, and among those with a literate stake in power, the rules were surprisingly homogeneous. We knew what these rules were when WE read articles in newspapers. I was listening to this bureaucrat as part of a working group. In discussion, everyone in our group thought this was an extremely perceptive lesson about the way things work, and have to work, in the United States of America.

. . .

Often, though not often enough - things really do work that way - a reason that I'm proud to be an american - and a reason that I'm proud to take The New York Times.

(15 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense