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Missile Defense

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?

possumdag - 10:12am Apr 28, 2001 EST (#2697 of 2705)
Possumdag@excite.com

CONGO:REDCROSS: It's an ugly old world !

rshowalter - 10:34am Apr 28, 2001 EST (#2698 of 2705)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Decency has to be worked for -- it has to be maintained. Barbarism and brutal dehumanization -- which comes so easily to human beings -- has to be fought. Lest the world end, as it easily could.

On March 10, 2001, there was an Op-Ed piece -- A BRAIN TOO YOUNG FOR GOOD JUDGEMENT by Daniel R. Weinberger

Let me find it, and quote some passages. Where war is concerned, people have shown, again and again, that the brain we've evolved, the one we're stuck with, is, without education, and care, too young for good judgement.

And where nuclear weapons are concerned, the point ought to be vividly clear.

People were not evolved to restrain their violence -- our ancestors lived, for millions of years, struggling to muster enough violence to hunt big game successfully, with terrifyingly simple weapons. And we did so.

Let me get some passages from Weinberger's piece.

possumdag - 10:48am Apr 28, 2001 EST (#2699 of 2705)
Possumdag@excite.com

That the red cross symbol is seen as alien by another religion shows a lack of respect for the work done.

A program on the 'crusades' showed that historically the christians and muslims often shared the SAME churches. Pity this close co-operation doesn't flow through to today.

rshowalter - 10:55am Apr 28, 2001 EST (#2700 of 2705)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

People, as animals, find it easy to hate and fear each other.

It takes work , and a lot of communication, for them to think of each other as people, unless there are very specific, and always fragile, patterns of civilized convention in place.

rshowalter - 10:56am Apr 28, 2001 EST (#2701 of 2705)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

NYT OpEd March 10, 2001 A Brain Too Young for Good Judgment by DANIEL R. WEINBERGER (with some bolding for emphasis)

" This week's shootings at Santana High School in California led quickly to now-familiar attempts to explain the seemingly unexplainable in terms of culture and circumstance: violent entertainment, a lack of accountability for deviant behavior, broken homes. While each of these issues may play some role in the tragedies of school shootings, to understand what goes wrong in the teenagers who fire the guns, you have to understand something about the biology of the teenage brain.

" Andy Williams, the boy held in the Santana shootings, is 15. Many other school shooters have been about the same age or even younger. And the brain of a 15-year-old is not mature — particularly in an area called the prefrontal cortex, which is critical to good judgment and the suppression of impulse.

" The human brain has required many millennia and many evolutionary stages to reach its current complex status.

(Comment: And as a proportion of time, NONE of that time involved weapons that could kill at a distance where the victim could not be seen -- the killing of huge numbers of victims that cannot be seen is hard for human animals to imagine, much less integrate in their decision making when stressed or afraid. )

"It (the human brain) enables us to do all kinds of amazing and uniquely human things: to unravel the human genome, to imagine the future, to fall in love. As part of its capacity for achievement, it must also be able to exercise control that stops maladaptive behavior. Everyone gets angry; everybody has felt a desire for vengeance. The capacity to control impulses that arise from these feelings is a function of the prefrontal cortex.

"This is the part that distinguishes our brain most decisively from those of all other animals, even our closest relatives.

( This impulse control is new, and biologically, imperfectly worked out.)

" It allows us to act on the basis of reason. It can preclude an overwhelming tendency for action, (e.g., to run from a fire in a crowded theater), because an abstract memory (e.g., "don't panic,") makes more sense. It knows that all that glitters is not gold. Without a prefrontal cortex, it would be impossible to have societies based on moral and legal codes.

( And our prefrontal cortices are only as advanced as they are. )

" Sometimes violent behavior may be adaptive (for example, in self-defense), in which case the prefrontal cortex will help plan an effective strategy. However, controlling violent impulses when they are maladaptive can be a very taxing duty for the prefrontal cortex, especially if the desire for action is great or if the brain is weakened in its capacity to exercise such control.

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