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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 - 02:30pm Sep 21, 2001 EST (#9560 of 9568)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I've been rereading this thread since MD8744 rshowalter 9/10/01 9:26pm , with the links to so many fine NYT stories. There have been terrible things that have happened, and some terrible and wonderful things about human beings shown. There was a tragedy-crime, and something fewer than ten thousand people died --- not enough, I'd guess, to be stastically detectable in world mortality statistics, and perhaps not that large in American mortality statistics either.

But nerves were struck. A world has changed. Things that were frozen are now subject to more question.

Perhaps it is time for care, and sorrow, and fear, but also for a healthy dose of wary hope.

For an effective missile defense, and an effective defense against mass destruction, we need better, more resiliant patterns of community than we've had. A lot of people who weren't worrying about that before are now.

rshowalter - 02:31pm Sep 21, 2001 EST (#9561 of 9568)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

One thing seems basic to me. We have to do possible things. We have a much better chance of finding them if we strip away the impossible approaches that may present themselves. It isn't nearly as difficult as people think to reject things as impossible, or too far fetched to be worth resources, and to do that with confidence.

In some fields (math and engineering, for instance) some of the most powerful techniques are very easy. For instance, to solve for N unknows, it is necessary (not sufficient) to have N independent equations. And the solutions have to be mutually consistent - - - if satisfying one condition or subset of conditions rules out another, there is no solution.

It is a hopeful thing to know when there is no solution according to a particular pattern. If we know that something is impossible to do, we know we have to find a new pattern. That trades a hopeless task for one that may be hopeful.

If we have the discipline to rule out impossible things, an impossibly complicated, hopeless situation may become much simpler, much more hopeful. Possible solutions may practically jump out at us.

I've felt, on missile defense, that one of the most productive things I could possibly do was to correctly rule out solutions that can't be expected to work. In engineering, being a nay sayer , if the nays are correct, is an honorable task, and a hopeful one.

Life is short, after all, and we need to proceed in ways that can actually do what we want to do.

Sometimes, that means we need a reframing.

rshowalter - 02:41pm Sep 21, 2001 EST (#9562 of 9568)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

We need "win-win" situations MD8266-8273 rshowalter 8/31/01 3:02pm
Especially .. MD8269 rshowalter 8/31/01 3:09pm

I think win-win solutions are there to be found.

Not magical solutions, but arrangements much better than those we have today. Good enough for us, as we are, or as we could easily become.

To find these win-win solutions, one needs to avoid configurations that classify hope out of existence.

No solution:
MD8300 rshowalter 9/1/01 3:52pm ... MD8301 rshowalter 9/1/01 3:54pm
MD8302 rshowalter 9/1/01 3:55pm ... MD8303 rshowalter 9/1/01 5:55pm

We need to get a feel for what can be impossible, and I think it is helpful to know how complex the world is, in a way I explained to almarst in postings cited here:
MD7389rshowalter 7/24/01 8:18pm

In a world as complex as ours, lots of things are impossible.

That's a hopeful fact.

It keeps things simple enough that we can hope to deal with them.

rshowalter - 02:43pm Sep 21, 2001 EST (#9563 of 9568)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD9484 rshowalter 9/19/01 5:42pm .... An absolutely fundamental fact is that to get ideas focused well enough for action takes a lot of crossreferencing, and crosschecking - - and somehow people "form" connected idea systems out of context.

You can't expect enemies, or people from very different worlds, to sort out their differences, well enough to keep out of each others' way, and even cooperate, with radically less talking than people who work together need to sort out their relationships.

You may not need an unreasonable amount of talk. But it takes a lot of talking.

When people interact successfully, there is a lot of talk, while they're getting ready, if you count words (people have, and word counts are huge). People need this talk.

A major reason why so many young Arab men are going malevolantly crazy, collectively, is that they are going wrong for want of something useful to do with themselves. ... Fantasies of Vengeance, Fed by Fury by John Tierney http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/18/nyregion/18BIG.html

Want to ASSURE misunderstandings between groups - - enough so that they cannot really cooperate, except in very minimal ways?

Restrict conversation.

We've been doing that, big time.

We have what we regard as compelling and justified reasons for restricting information flows as we do. But it hasn't worked well in human terms - - even for us.

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