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Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 03:56pm Mar 1, 2001 EST (#811 of 818)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Some risks aren't worth taking. Because they can't be assessed, and the penalties of very probable, or even certain mistakes are prohibitive.

Here is Billy Grassie <grassie@meta-list.org> Subject: Complexity Powwow

"This past weekend I had the privilege of attending the annual meeting of the various tribes of scientists and science enthusiasts. The American Association for the Advancement of Science .......

"Religious themes were everywhere in presence, if mostly invisible and embedded in metaphors below the horizon, for instance in Francis Collins' oft repeated "Book of Life" metaphor and his explicit mention of non-reducible spiritual dimension of human life. Stephen Jay Gould told the parable of Mary and Martha in introducing the new AAAS president Mary Good ....

"In the many press briefings that I attended I was struck that so much of the ground breaking work being done today in the sciences involve highly interdisciplinary efforts (and always the ubiquitous information technology specialists). The subtext to the whole gathering was complexity and not just because I don't always understand the technical aspects of atom-level manipulations to create nanomachines or the pharmaceutical implications of bioactive lipids. Rather, as Craig Venter noted in his own talk, the interdisciplinary nature of many contemporary scientific projects often leaves team members unable to "speak the same language" as their colleagues. ....

"In one small seminar room, there was a powwow on "Simulation, complexity, and ethics." There were presentations by Sergio Sismondo from Queen's University, Stephen Batill from the University of Notre Dame, Carl Mitchum at Colorado School of Mines, Joe Berry from Stanford University, Bill Joy from Sun Microsystems, and John Ilgen from Ilgen Simulation Techonologies. Simulations are quickly becoming the tool for thinking through science and engineering problems, but simulations are only as good as the science and engineering of the selected variables. There is a circular problem here. More over, these variables and the algorithms of the simulations can fluctuate wildly in results based on miniscule differences. Scientists, engineers, economists, and policy makers often take these simulations too literally, committing what A.N. Whitehead once labeled "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness." It appears moreover that we are quickly approaching an ethical crisis. Forget the debate about utilitarian ethics, deontological ethics, or virtue ethics, we are losing moral agency in our growing collective inability to predict consequences of complex systems, for instance in the much heralded genomic revolution. Nor will the precautionary principle work, as the opportunity costs of doing nothing could themselves be profound. As individual persons, we can still productively talk about individual ethical behavior and duties, but in the increasingly important distributed space of 21st century technoculture, we just don't have the foggiest idea what is around the bend. "

The unpredictability of simulation casts doubt on ALL the simulations in the field of nuclear strategy and tactics, and a detailed consideration of most of them would essentially remove any validity they could claim.

In complicated circumstances, people using simulation make many mistakes. In the nuclear weapons field, we know that "mistakes" could destroy the world.

The risks associated with nuclear weapons, and strategies that commit to them, are not worth taking.

rshowalter - 03:58pm Mar 1, 2001 EST (#812 of 818)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Especially when diplomacy looks like it can work so well.

News Analysis: Russia May Help Persuade North Korea to Give Up Missiles ...By PATRICK E. TYLER

" . . . .from the South Korean perspective," he continued, "it was inevitable for Kim to go along with Putin because in return, Putin is working very hard to convince Kim Jong Il to give up this missile program."

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