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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 - 06:59am Jun 14, 2001 EST (#5070 of 5088)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Point of hope:
md1205 rshowalter 3/20/01 12:43pm

"If George W. Bush found a way to clean up the messes left by the Cold War, get rid of the terror of nuclear weapons, and use American leadership, in cooperation with other countries, in a way that made the United States safer, more prosperous, and more respected, and all legitimate nation states more secure, he'd go down in history as one of the greatest presidents of the United States. "

If he blows it, the reaction could be just the opposite.

rshowalter - 07:35am Jun 14, 2001 EST (#5071 of 5088)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Some points my old partner, Professor Stephen J. Kline of Stanford, made about scientific controversy, specifically linked to the somewhat out-of-the-way field of fluid mechanics, offer, I think, nice analogies - removed enough from the passions of most readers, to be useful in considering the mess the world is now in about nuclear terror and related military issues. I quoted some from Steve's last publication between
MD1163 rshowalter 3/19/01 9:16am .... and MD1176 rshowalter 3/19/01 11:27am ..... , which reads:

" There are lies here, there are deceptions, there are gross injustices, and there are also misunderstandings along a spectrum from entirely innocent to entirely self serving.

" You need to have enough command of details, and enough ability to establish facts before witnesses, to be able to establish these differences.

MD1172 rshowalter 3/19/01 11:08am . . . reads in part:

“What does this survey of the history tell us about appropriate paths to the future? In my own view, two things are of first importance.

" We need to build and study DNS databases . . . . .. (details omitted here )

"We need to hold clearly in mind the Guideline for Scholarly Controversy. The human mind is a wonderful associative engine, but a weak logical engine. As a result we all tend to emphasize the data we have taken and know well. For example, my own group overemphasized for a time the role of sublayer streaks and ejections. We need to keep asking ourselves two questions: (i) What are the credible data from ALL sources? (ii) How can we formulate a model or solution that is consistent with all the credible data?

I feel these two key questions (i) and (2) bear repeating when right answers matter. On issues of nuclear balances and war and peace, both as they concern the future and as they concern a necessary understanding of the past, these ideas seem especially importantl.

(i) What are the credible data from ALL sources?

(ii) How can we formulate a model or solution that is consistent with all the credible data?

Because if our model doesn't fit reality, on a matter of life and death -- the wrong answer can bring death which more care and wisdom could have avoided.

On nuclear weapons, and communication problems specifically:
MD1179 rshowalter 3/19/01 12:05pm ... MD1180 rshowalter 3/19/01 12:08pm
MD1181 rshowalter 3/19/01 12:30pm ... MD1182 almarst-2001 3/19/01 12:34pm

lunarchick - 07:36am Jun 14, 2001 EST (#5072 of 5088)
lunarchick@www.com

book

rshowalter - 07:44am Jun 14, 2001 EST (#5073 of 5088)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

A major source of credible information, though only one of many, is the output of THE NEW YORK TIMES.

A sampling, from this source, gives, I believe, a sense of what a challenge it is to consider "all the credible data" -- indeed, what an impossible challenge it is.

Even so, I'm posting places where this thread cites specific NYT articles -- (which are about 1/3 of total citations on this thread) to give a sense of how much information there is out there to integrate. For every NYT article I posted, I read perhaps 20.

The following postings, though extensive, make a point about the extent of information related, in various ways, to ordinary human argument -- and will be useful, I believe, if staffs wish to consider and coordinate arguments here -- or in threads in the future that use some of the crossreferencing techniques this thread shows.

People "make sense" of their world in a kind of statistical way -- and it matters very much, whether the "information" they condense generalizations from is right or wrong. The only way to see is by crossmatching, and a good deal of intellectual work. This is work that all people, everywhere do, and have to do to be human. We make sense of the world, by a lot of talking, and a lot of thinking -- and bring patterns into focus. Often those patterns are wrong -- but when we look at the same information -- organized in a certain way, most of us, most of the time, make the same patterns.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense