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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 - 01:46pm Feb 23, 2003 EST (# 9235 of 9240)
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.

Repress Yourself By LAUREN SLATER http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/23/magazine/23REPRESSION.html deals with a big piece of the nexus of problems that remain. There's a lot of unconscious processing that goes on in human beings - some simply automatic - some semiconscious - that is logically, practically, and morally interesting. We're safer if we face that.

9040 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.y7Tpab3n36t.2107178@.f28e622/10566 reads:

There's a great deal to hope for - if people keep at the matching process - keep asking each other to look at evidence - and present information well enough - and completely collected enough.

For all their faults, deceptions, and self deceptions, people don't want to be monsters - and don't want to be stupid.

The physical and logical interactions of the world are complex enough that "reasonable" answers - patterns that really hang together when connected - are very sparse. For this reason, right answers very often converge. With enough effort - the odds of getting good answers are excellent.

People believe what feels right. But after enough evidence - enough care - quite often we almost always, almost all of us, feel right about the same things.

That's the "logic" behind human logic - and very often it works very,very well.

Especially when people use their aesthetic sense - the basic sense of proportion, of rightness -built into us. Poets can help with that. http://poetsagainstthewar.org/

People believe what feels right to them - and that is the way we reason - that is our "logic."

It is the only logic we have - and human beings need to understand that much more clearly than they have. We'd have more to be proud of, and less to fear, if we just faced up to how good we are, and aren't, as reasoning (or rationalizing) beings.

We won't agree on everything - or even very much. But if, when it matters - we keep looking, and remember the fallibility that we all have - we can do very well - much better than human beings have historically done.

There are procedures - not difficult with technical resources today - that can do very well at finding the kinds of truth - the patterns of fact - that matter for action. We need to find the will to use them.

rshow55 - 01:49pm Feb 23, 2003 EST (# 9236 of 9240)
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.

In addition to will - there are issues of understanding . How is it that people can see things so differently?

When right answers do not converge , why is that?

The better we understand these questions - the more legitimate our resorts to force can reasonably be - and the less the need for force will be.

It has been a month since lchic posted these references

7803 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@93.V8RuaYDr0Q4^895419@.f28e622/9328

7804 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@93.V8RuaYDr0Q4^895419@.f28e622/9329

And I posted 7805 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@93.V8RuaYDr0Q4^895419@.f28e622/9330 , which includes this:

People know a lot more than they admit they know - (or know that they know) - and a good thing, too. But when consequences are great enough - it is practically and morally important - every which way - for people to carefully, cautiously, but effectively face their fears - and face up to the things that they do - and know that they do.

I've been struggling, since, to explain some things that link decisively to the notions of unconscious processing and the related concept of repression - and I was very glad to see Repress Yourself http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/23/magazine/23REPRESSION.html .

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