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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?

rshowalter - 05:21pm May 6, 2001 EST (#3376 of 3380)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Yes, but now, we'd like to "step away from the table" in another sense.

There's something called "gambler's ruin" in statistics -- for limited stakes, with gambling odds, if you keep playing -- eventually, the gambler will get wiped out.

We'd all like to avoid that.

And that will mean, in a fundamental sense, changing the game.

I'm not asking for people to stop being people. But I think we should be able to manage a situation where we can prohibit nuclear weapons.

As an end hope -- and much sooner -- get them under enough control so that the risk of having them used is much less than it is now.

rshowalter - 05:22pm May 6, 2001 EST (#3377 of 3380)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

possumdag 5/6/01 4:24pm asks great question:

"Did you find 'consistency' within each monikers' viewpoint ?"

My answer is -- as discourse went on, internal consistencies got sharper, and assumptions got sharper -- and by the time stances seemed like they were beautiful in their terms it seemed to me that accomodations were very close at hand.

But it took a lot of talking --

a lot of "looking at things from different points of view"

a lot of "comparing and matching"

and even more thinking..

Focusing comes hard -- and I think all people basically do it the same way.

I also think that, once a person has a clear, internally consistent point of view, that seems beautiful to her, it is possible to talk to communicate with that person, in the ways that count for complex cooperation, and come up with an accomodation that fits the needs of people and circumstances.

But to get to this convergence it takes a lot of talking, and even more thinking.

People do an enormous amount of talking, an enormous amount of thinking, and usually it works.

It almost always takes a lot of taling, and thinking -- and I can't concieve of that changing. I do think that we can hope for better outcomes, where things now go wrong, complex cooperation fails, and people dehumanize, fail, and harm each other.

When talking and reasoning fails to meet human needs, it seems to me, the failure happens for a relatively few reasons. But those reasons can be devastating, and they are monotonously common. Dawn, you and I have been trying to understand those reasons,and clean some things up, at least a little.

With a tighter focus on the mechanics of thinking to focus (which is what "disciplined beauty" is about) and with some more detailed knowledge of how to make "the golden rule" (which, at some levels, is as old as homo) workable for the real team-hunting animals we are, in the complicated circumstance we face, it seems to me that we can do better. Not enough better to solve "all the world's problems." But enough to solve a lot of them -- including getting nukes down, and getting the risk of nuclear destruction low enough that we can live with it - and ideally, down to zero.

rshowalter - 05:23pm May 6, 2001 EST (#3378 of 3380)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

As people, we need better memories than we've had, and more ability to handle complexity than we've had. The internet, and social usage fit to it, are providing that.

As people, we need to insist on getting things in workable proportion -- and that means that, for things that matter, we can't just be doing stark, computer-like logic. It is too easy, for instance, to "prove" that "nuclear weapons are good" -- or to prove other ugly, disastrous things. -- Our aesthetic feelings have to be engaged, as well - because the aesthetic sense is how we judge balances, and what works for us. We need to be much less tolerant of ugly solutions. Even if we have to settle for "least bad" solutions sometimes, and for a while, we ought to work, and keep working, trying to make things more beautiful for ourselves and other people we cooperate with - which means, at some level, everybody.

I think we can do a helluva lot better about nuclear risks than we have, just by working at it, and thinking straight, and doing the negotiation that real accomodations actually take -- that is, doing a lot of talking and a lot of thinking and a lot of checking and matching in all sorts of ways.

I think possumdag 5/6/01 4:24pm asks one of the most fundamental questions possible for human cooperation:

"Did you find 'consistency' within each monikers' viewpoint ?"

Not at the beginning. Not about everything. But as discourse went on, internal consistencies got sharper, and assumptions got sharper -- and by the time stances seemed like they were beautiful in their terms it seemed to me that accomodations were very close at hand.

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