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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 - 05:37pm Jan 1, 2003 EST (# 7188 of 7191)
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.

Gisterme and I probably share essentially identical understandings about the definitions of 50,000 words, most with several different meanings in different contexts - contexts we'd agree on an overwhelming fraction of the time. Most of these definitions, and the contexts they apply to are not very closely connected to the stark physical reality that we both agree about. We can agree where we can measure, where we can compare - if we measure and compare in consistent ways. We can agree about physical reality as a concept. Inevitably, at the level of ideas, we will have some differences. In the overwhelming majority of cases, if we obey certain simple rules of discourse and logic - we don't have to fight about them. There are some times where consequences of the logic may matter enough to justify a "fight" that gets us consistent enough understandings to use in interaction. Often, we can achieve that consistency without changing the fact that in ways that matter to us, and to others, we disagree about a great deal. Lunarchick and I are working on the rules of discourse and logic useful in getting people's interactions consistent enough for practical and emotional comfort.

I think that lunarchick's

Adults need secrets, lies, and fictions
To live within their contradictions

is a beautiful, useful, powerful condensation of some key relations, and think that the world would be safer if many more people knew it, and remembered it. . The reason I think those lines are important as well as graceful is that I believe that whether of not God exists, we are animals, and only as bright as we are. I believe that, doing our best, our understanding, as an animal reality, is virtual - - though often correct.

Most people don't really believe this - or aren't comfortable with it, or haven't worked out the contradictions involved here. How can our understanding possibly be virtual, a construction of our own minds - and agree so often with that of others? How can the world possibly be as magical as it seems without a great deal of magic, all around? Can these ideas and understanding evolve - without magic. Is it possible to imagine that we are really animals - and have that seem right, and feel right?

There are logical problems here. They are very practical. People have been worried about them since Plato's time - for good reasons - and these logical problems are important to our ability to negotiate comfortable, stable, peaceful, just relations.

Order, symmetry, and harmony are basic criteria. Whether you happen to believe in design, evolution, or a mix in a particular case. But when specific cases are considered, there are problems with details.

To be orderly about something specifically defined, you have to be disorderly about some other things.

To be symmetrical in some defined ways, if things are complicated enough - you have to break some other symmetries.

To be harmonious in some defined ways, if things are complicated enough - you have to have conlict in some other senses.

These things are not contradictions - but they do require some care to keep sorted. We need to learn to exercise that care, if we're to avoid some avoidable fights.

I'm moving slowly, but it seems to me that some things are converging - and doing so with reasonable safety.

rshow55 - 05:43pm Jan 1, 2003 EST (# 7189 of 7191)
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.

There is room for us to agree on things that matter for reasonable co-operation and peaceuful relations - and on essentially all physical, measurable things - and a great deal else without asking us to all become part of a "common culture."

In Friedman's parlance, we can have enough agreement of "the Lexus" - without sacrificing what's essential about "the Olive Tree."

But it does take some care. And an agreement that sometimes - on things that matter enough - we can come to solid agreements on what the objective truth is - without asking each other to agree on how we feel about it.

Get that far, and the incidence of death and agony from war can be far lower than it has been - and we can be more prosperous and comfortable, as well.

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