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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 - 10:23am Feb 28, 2003 EST (# 9354 of 9359)
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.

NASA Pressed on When Officials Learned of E-Mail About Shuttle By KENNETH CHANG and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/28/national/nationalspecial/28INQU.html

The details that were obvious to me were, it seems, obvious to many NASA people, too.

What did they do?

A sermon posted on this thread many times deals with a case where a Russian colonel did not do "what was expected" - and saved the world from horror. The NASA engineers were ordinary people - reacting in ordinary ways - but they were not heroes. http://www.mrshowalter.net/sermon.html

9314 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.dy0raqGK4Rg.474104@.f28e622/10848

9205 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.dy0raqGK4Rg.474104@.f28e622/10731

9241 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.dy0raqGK4Rg.474104@.f28e622/10767

9242 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.dy0raqGK4Rg.474104@.f28e622/10768

We need logical tools, and human insights, that make closure possible, and agreements resiliant, to a degree that they haven't been before.

9040 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.dy0raqGK4Rg.474104@.f28e622/10566 reads:

But our "logic" - is mostly a choosing between many alteratives going on or being fashioned in our heads - and in the course of that choosing - people believe what "feels right."

But what "feels right," most often, is what, in our minds "cooperates with the interests of authority - with our group." Look at Pritchard's notes on Milgram's experiment - and on Jonestown - to get a sense of how wrong it feels, for most people, to go against authority. http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~epritch1/social98a.html

We need to face the fact that there is more need to check - especially when "the ties that bind" are involved - than people feel comfortable with.

On this thread, again and again, there have been technical arguments - and with absolutely stunning, monotonous regularity - gisterme presents arguments that make no technical sense at all - that are perversely wrong - and feels right about them.

(I believe, having read gisterme's response to this - that I' exactly correct - and that gisterme is dangerously wrong - I'd even be inclined, just here, to use the word evil -- though he's making some openminded statements. But would block what would actually need to be done for checking to closure. )

. . .

We're dealing here with nonrandom, basic patterns of human behavior that get us into messes. We need to face them. If we did - we could do better.

We ought to think about the behavior set out in http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~epritch1/social98a.html and realize that if we're "wired to be nice" - that is - to be cooperative - we're also "wired to be self deceptive and stupid" whenever the immediate thought seems to go against our cooperative needs.

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/413

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/414

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