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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 - 07:33am Sep 22, 2001 EST (#9601 of 9607)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

On the question of "bailing industries out" or cultures, or people out.

I was taught a test, pretty seriously, by a military guy who also taught me some things about Godel's proof. When we discussed the question

"When does a combat patrol in trouble need to be rescued?

he explained the classic test.

Can they help themselves?

As they are, where they are, with the situation as it is in real details?

How are they to do so? A phrase he taught me was fundamental in several senses, but memorable. (Useful in evaluating when people need help, and useful in thinking about Godel's proof, as well.)

Ask them to help themselves? Look at their situation. If the phrase

" You cannot pull yourself out of your own as*hole"

seems apt, then that patrol (or person, or culture) needs help from the outside.

Think about the exemplar. You yourself. Your biological equipment. How on earth would you do so?

There are plenty of problems where people can and ought to help themselves, and they should be expected to do so.

But circumstances occur where companies (patrols, cultures, people) cannot help themselves without aid from the outside.

The aid needed might be objective, or logical, or some specific mix fit to specific circumstances. It would depend on specific information, and for the help to be effective, the information that informs the aid needs to be correct enough.

When situations occur where people or groups of people cannot help themselves, as they actually are, with circumstance as they actually are, helping ought to be considered.

If it were, a lot of otherwise insoluble problems could be solved.

If people thought carefully enough about such questions, we might get past terrorism, in all its forms, with considerably less trouble than otherwise.

rshowalter - 07:35am Sep 22, 2001 EST (#9602 of 9607)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

lunarchick 9/22/01 7:19am . . if people are rational and competent, those things don't have to happen. We don't know as much about economics as we'd like, but we ought to know enough for that.

rshowalter - 07:53am Sep 22, 2001 EST (#9603 of 9607)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

rshowalter 9/22/01 7:33am . . . Godel's proof concerns the impossibility of proving the internal consistency of an axiomatic system (a system based on assumptions ) without reference to something outside the axioms themselves.

Godel did a nice illustration, making the question "how on earth would you do so?" clear in the particular context of "axiomatic systematics".

. . . . .

As part of my instruction on Godel's proof, I was taught to remember a mnemonic for "assumption" (by a teacher who had some sympathy for empiricism).

" assume . . makes an A*S out of U and Me"

Axioms are assumptions.

If they are models of something real, they can be checked against what they purport to represent.

If consequences matter enough, they ought to be.

. . .

In specific cases, such as the specific circumstances of a particular missile defense proposal, that isn't hard to do.

rshowalter - 08:07am Sep 22, 2001 EST (#9604 of 9607)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

When people

(or groups of people, or nation states)

ask other people

(or groups of people, or nation states)

to do something, the question "How on earth can they do so?" needs to be asked.

And there need to be answers that have a reasonable chance of working, for the people involved and the circumstances as they are.

It seems to me that Safire, and Friedman, and a number of other people make some very good but incomplete suggestions to people of Islamic culure, where that FUNDAMENTal kind of question needs to be considered carefully enough so that it has answers.

I think there probably are good answers. But getting them will take some work.

I think there are many times, in the current flurry of diplomatic exchanges, where the same question needs to be given more attention than it is getting.

Perhaps a mnemonic might be remembered, as well, and some things might be checked.

rshowalter - 08:09am Sep 22, 2001 EST (#9605 of 9607)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Very often, if checking is refused, all solutions are classified out of existence.

How on earth could you find them?

That is why I've been asking for checking on missile defense and other issues. There isn't any way to sort some key things out without doing some checking.

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