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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 - 12:28pm Dec 21, 2002 EST (# 6901 of 6909)
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.

I'm glad that a link of mine that had been removed from my web site, http://www.mrshowalter.net/bhmath , is now back up. 6863 rshow55 12/20/02 7:14pm ... 6865-6 rshow55 12/20/02 7:42pm

Gisterme's made a number of interesting postings lately - I'm sure that almarst is interested in them, too.

Based on assumptions (s)he stated clearly, 6864 gisterme 12/20/02 7:25pm gisterme gave a reasonable argument for the MD deployment that's just been announced - and I agreed that on gisterme's judgement of odds, the decision would be reasonable. 6865

6869 gisterme 12/20/02 9:48pm is a most interesting posting - and invokes the notion of grace in an interesting way. We agree that "where the truth is known and recognized, grace can abound." I also agree strongly, in a certain way, with gisterme when (s)he says that

Words need to vanish until the notions communicated by those remaining coincide with objective reality. The truth needs to be known... and recognized.

To get to that truth - a lot of "connecting the dots" has to happen. First, logical structures (right and wrong) have to come into focus. 6829-31 rshow55 12/18/02 9:12am Usually, that's a longwinded process that does some "going around in circles." Ideas condense and focus that way. Crosschecking proceeds that way. Both mistaken ideas and good ones form that way. A lot of words or involved - the word count in human discourse is enormos - and not wasted. People need the words.

" There's a problem with long and complex. And another problem with short. . . . . The long and the short of it, I think, is that you need both long and short."

The long comes before the short. And the short is only safe after a lot of checking, from many points of view. Then - when people work hard and are lucky, sometimes they come up with clear, new, useful, concise things.

This thread is "long-winded." But there is a lot of good stuff in it - that needs condensation and editing - and the good stuff could only have happened with a lot of word count. ( gisterme's postings must be pushing 900 by now. )

6871 gisterme 12/20/02 10:21pm ends with an interesting point - a point of hope - a point worth pursuing.

"Perhaps having a defense against particular classes of WMD such as ballistic missiles would make it possible to get rid of all of our own without having to be absolutely sure that no others exist in the world.

"If we had no ICBMs ourselves but a shield that could defend against small numbers of ICBMs other folks might shoot at us how would that make us the bad guys?

That is an interesting way of looking at things. It would be especially interesting if you could interest Putin in that idea.

Gisterme said some other things that I admire, and some where my admiration is more limited. And I'll be spending the day trying to respond.

I'm glad http://www.mrshowalter.net/bhmath is back up . . I'm proud of it, and would like people to read it, and consider it in the context in which it was written. I also think the fact that http://www.mrshowalter.net/bhmath , which has been up as http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/bhmath since 1998, was taken dow

rshow55 - 12:30pm Dec 21, 2002 EST (# 6902 of 6909)
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.

I'm glad http://www.mrshowalter.net/bhmath is back up . . I'm proud of it, and would like people to read it, and consider it in the context in which it was written. I also think the fact that http://www.mrshowalter.net/bhmath , which has been up as http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/bhmath since 1998, was taken down within hours of my posting http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee81376/815 is interesting . I think the fact that it did come down so fast says a good deal.

Including a good deal about reasons to believe that the work is right - but has happened under awkward circumstances.

Circumstances that go some way towards explaining US unpopularity in the world, and that go some way towards explaining some of almarst's criticisms.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense