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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 - 09:20am Dec 18, 2002 EST (# 6831 of 6842)
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.

C.P Snow speaks of

“ . . . the prime importance, in any crisis of action, of being positive, and being able to explain it. It is not so relevant whether you are right or wrong. That is a second-order effect. . . " Science and Government , Ch 11.

We can learn some things about induction that make the issue of right and wrong less of a second order effect. Both practically and morally. The moral and practical senses are linked. We need judgement - and we need procedures for making judgements - and judging how much we can trust them. rshow55 8/27/02 12:21pm

An absolutely key thing was beautifully expressed by Klinkenborg:

. every human activity, serious or playful, eventually ramifies into a world of its own, a self-contained cosmos of enormous complexity.

When should we trust what's in the "self-contained cosmos" of our minds? Most of the time - we're too busy to ask - and things go well enough that we don't have to. But when things go wrong - when it matters enough -- we have to ask.

How is it that people can do as well as they do - knowing how stupid they often are - and how little they know directly?

That's Plato's problem - something dealt with many times on this thread, and much connected to the questions raised in Iraq Makes a Philosophically Flawed Effort to Disprove a Negative By EMILY EAKIN http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/15/weekinreview/15EAKI.html

Here are links connected to Plato's problem from this thread:

6208 rshow55 11/23/02 9:38am ... 4822 rshow55 10/12/02 9:30am
4172 rshow55 9/4/02 10:23am ... 4164-66 rshow55 9/4/02 6:45am
4153 rshowalt 9/3/02 9:15am ... 4105 rshow55 9/1/02 5:16pm
4073 rshow55 8/31/02 10:32am ... 4051-54 rshow55 8/31/02 7:17am
4003-4 rshow55 8/29/02 6:01pm ... 3991-2 rshow55 8/26/02 6:44pm
3971-2 rshow55 8/24/02 5:46pm ... 3702-3 rshow55 8/13/02 3:58pm

2345-50 rshow55 5/22/02 1:16pm
2345-50 rshow55 5/22/02 1:16pm
2345-50 rshow55 5/22/02 1:16pm
2345-50 rshow55 5/22/02 1:16pm

2310 rshow55 5/19/02 1:51pm ... 790-93 crossmaster 12/18/02 9:06am

If I didn't believe that we were approaching much clearer, more usable solutions to Plato's problem, I'd be stripped of what Commondata calls my "relentless optimism" - - - but "playing the game" in my head as best I can, it seems to me that some new and hopeful things - simple things - may be coming into focus - in a form that many people can use.

A key point, and a central one for me - is this. How can we get patterns of discourse to converge - and converge on humanly satisfactory answers - where convergence has typically failed before?

A big

rshow55 - 09:23am Dec 18, 2002 EST (# 6832 of 6842)
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 big part of the answer, it seems to me is to "keep talking."

The long and the short of it, I think, is that you need both long and short. The long, the "enormous complexity" comes first. Very often, in human experience, good things converge.

The question - what does convergence take is a question that often has clear answers - and clear requirements. A central requirement now - on the BIG problems - is we need more staffing, more clarity, and more resources than are being brought to bear now.

The truth can be "somehow, too weak."

If truth - or workable patterns - takes logical effort and crossmatching - the effort can simply be insufficient. And consequences can be worse than they'd otherwise have to be.

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