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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 - 08:48am Mar 7, 2003 EST (# 9570 of 9572)
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.

From gisterme 9569

"The French government simply doesn't give a sh!t about anybody but themselves."

It isn't even close to being that simple - and with responsible people in the United States government thinking so - we have a mess.

We're facing some intellectual-practical-moral problems here - and they are crucial - matters of life and death.

We're in a mess. It isn't an unprecedented mess - we're seeing the kinds of muddle and conflict that occur at times preceeding a major paradigm shift - a major resorting - a major change in the way large groups of coordinated people look at things. This time, the stakes are very high indeed.

At the level of technique - - the sorts of procedures discussed in MD1075-76 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.cbaFaYLT4lF.498026@.f28e622/1369 with respect to missile defense might be useful. i These discussions describe a pattern of fighting to a finish - a pattern for settling things. Such a pattern, to work, requires steps to make it legitimate - some funding - and some reasonable patterns of umpiring. But there are essential advantages: nobody has to be killed or, with honorable conduct, even much embarrassed.

When situations are desperate enough, perhaps we could think more carefully. I'm haunted by Michael Shermer's lines:

" Rarely do any of us sit down before a table of facts, weigh them pro and con, and choose the most logical and rational explanation, regardless of what we previously believed. Most of us, most of the time, come to our beliefs for a variety of reasons having little to do with empirical evidence and logical reasoning. . . . . . . . . We ...sort through the body of data and select those that most confirm what we already believe, and ignore or rationalize away those that do not. " . . . . Smart People Believe Weird Things http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0002F4E6-8CF7-1D49-90FB809EC5880000&catID=2

On matter on which human welfare depends, we need to find the will and the means to do better. We'd handle our problems better if we weren't so often muddled. Perhaps I'm naive, but it seems to me that we might be able to make practical progress on this - from where we are - - without disproportionate pain, trouble, or expense.

For right now - we need to recognize how lethal and, from a certain point of detachment, absurd some of the stances human beings are prepared to spend lives and resources are actually are.

9510 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?18@@.f28e622/11049

We need reframings NOW.

Contradictions aren't necessarily fatal in human affairs - because different solutions can apply in different places -

Introducing the China Ruling Party By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/11/opinion/11FRIE.html

BEIJING -- The world has grown so used to all the contradictions in China these days that "the mother of all Chinese contradictions" — the July 1 decision by President Jiang Zemin to allow capitalists to join the Chinese Communist Party — barely got a shrug.

But contradictions are as messy and expensive as they happen to be, and now, we need some REFRAMING - and need to face some facts - and reduce some tensions - including lethal tensions, between our notions of "legitimacy" and "honor" and "truth" - - because we've tried almost everything else - and it is time to look at basics.

rshow55 - 09:10am Mar 7, 2003 EST (# 9571 of 9572)
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.

9510 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.cbaFaYLT4lF.498026@.f28e622/11049

9534 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.cbaFaYLT4lF.498026@.f28e622/11073

especially 8300-8302 http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md8000s/md8298.htm

We need a reframing. We can do a great deal better, from where we are - if we sort some things out - checking for consistency for things that happen to be factually true - however we may happen to feel about them.

9531 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.cbaFaYLT4lF.498026@.f28e622/11070

If leaders of nation states insisted on getting some facts checked, from where we are - it would happen. For the checking to happen - we need not only truth in the sense of consistency with real checkable facts - we also need legitimacy. Our notions of truth and legitimacy shouldn't be as different as they now are. We need to work to make our notions of "truth" and "legitimacy" and "honor" clash less than they now do.

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