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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 - 03:56pm Jun 25, 2001 EST (#6009 of 6023)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD5987 rshowalter 6/25/01 11:35am , directly after midmoon's post, reads as follows:

This thread IS about missile defense -- and the motivation for missile defense on which everyone seems agreed -- the need to reduce danger from nuclear weapons, and danger and senseless death from other weapons, too.

The issues raised, since about #830 of this thread have mostly been dealt with in response to specific, and very deeply felt, questions raised by almarst , that Dawn Riley and I have worked hard to respond to, and that gisterme has spent much time on, as well.

The thread is built to deal with complexities that take staffs to deal with -- not because the solutions, in the end, have to be complicated, but because the focusing to get to right answers is complicated.

(more)

rshowalter - 04:00pm Jun 25, 2001 EST (#6010 of 6023)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

gisterme , one of the things I've suggested, pretty often, as Dawn has, is that people read for themselves.

For example, it seems to me that a very good way to judge you is to read what you say. I've suggested just that. Either read your post just above -- or to get more flavor of the same stuff --- search gisterme in this thread, keep pressing the "search" button at the bottom till you get to your first posting, and read it, from the top.

There are many things about you that are not, in my opinion, to the credit of America. But others, reading what you've written, can form their own opinions.

gisterme - 04:01pm Jun 25, 2001 EST (#6011 of 6023)

On numbers of words required to say important things:

Golden Rule: 11 words

Pythagorean theorem: 24 words

The Lord's Prayer: 66 words

Archimedes' Principle: 67 words

The Ten Commandments: 179 words

The Gettysburg Address: 286 words

The Declaration of Independence: 1,300 words

The U.S. government regulations on the sale of cabbage: 26,911 words

Robert Showalter (and cohorts including links) but managing to say almost nothing about Missile Defense: Millions of words.

For me, that pretty much shows the relative importance of Showalter words.

rshowalter - 04:04pm Jun 25, 2001 EST (#6012 of 6023)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

nice rhetoric. But not the way real people actually work. With "sound bites" you can assert almost everything, and get away with it.

Concise wording is precious. But looking at evidence is a matching process -- and you want what is said to match all the credible data.

And that can be checked (and NOT by people in the fight -- by others) -- which is why I so often say -- don't believe me -- check me --- and don't believe gisterme , either . . . check her.

rshowalter - 04:05pm Jun 25, 2001 EST (#6013 of 6023)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/361 is posting #307 of Paradigm Shift .... whose getting there? a Guardian TALK thread that I'm very proud of, that is well connected to reasons for "morally forcing" checking.

A person with academic, especially dean duty experience, might find the following passage especially interesting.

If "civility" means "deference to established intellectual property rights, and territorial divisions" then "civility" is the death knell of certain essential kinds of progress. Checking can be deferred, and discussion can be deferred indefinitely, especially according to the standard academic and diplomatic patterns described by John Kay in http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/highlights/essay_kay_lostcause/index.html

When it is important enough, there needs to be mechanisms to get questions of fact and logic in science (or military matters) CHECKED. When the stakes are high enough, that checking needs to be morally forcing.

The idea that checking should be morally forcing seems new, and is a distinctly minority position. But for want of that ethical stance, some really terrible choices have been made in the past, and will be made in the future.