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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

lchic - 02:54pm Apr 8, 2002 EST (#1182 of 1196)

Showalter - sorry to hear you were denied hard copy of NYT Sunday. It retails at $au30 an issue hereabouts - with a $au10 post wholesale mark-up!

lchic - 02:56pm Apr 8, 2002 EST (#1183 of 1196)

Sharon is deaf to Bush, blind to the world ... makes him a war criminal - again! Yes/No ?!

lchic - 02:58pm Apr 8, 2002 EST (#1184 of 1196)

The newly born child is suckled then socialised - much of the early years are about both learning and learning to live with others. When does the i-logic of war-thinking step-in to deviate it from the regular projectile ?

rshow55 - 03:47pm Apr 8, 2002 EST (#1185 of 1196)

The newly born child is suckled then socialised - much of the early years are about both learning and learning to live with others. When does the i-logic of war-thinking step-in to deviate it from the regular projectile ?

Maybe when the sperm hits the egg, there are the beginnings of "war thinking" -- built into our logic, and some of its limits.

Communication is hard - - when you think about it -- near miraculous. Sometimes, under special circumstances, still not completely understood -- communication is stunningly effective. Complex cooperation within groups is also sometimes near-miraculous and stunningly effective. People are complicated - and much of the best of us involves a lot of unconscious stuff. We all share the meanings of some 50,000 words -- and it is astonishing, even with mistakes considered, how often we agree, and about how many different, complicated things. How many words can you remember learning, or inferring? When children are asked, they can remember few if any.

Sometimes things go well - - for reasons we don't completely understand.

Still, breakdowns of communication happen often.

Fights have something to do with this basic fact about human beings. When someone tries to "impose" an idea that someone else is uneasy with -- people can get angry, emotional - and ready to fight -- pretty easily.

Trust is hard to build up, and complicated. Ways to break trust -- ways to get aversive responses are many. Far too many to count. It is always easy to cut off communication -- to set up fights.

And aversion can go very far, and seem very natural -- it is easy to get people to hate, and to fight. (A six month old child hates, in some ways, and fights in some ways - and if the rationality is not advanced - the emotions that are there are intense.)

Here's a fact. When, in terms of the logic in their heads, people can think of no alternative -- they fight. When groups can think of no alternative - they fight. Both individuals and groups are willing, often enough, to fight to the death. And also willing to tolerate injury and death to people they "love." Military training "mass produces" organized groups of people willing to kill on command, and fight to the death.

To keep fights to the death from happening, there have to be alternatives to the fighting, at the level of practicalities and ideas - and they have to be real alternatives, to the people actually involved.

It is easy to get groups into self-reinforcing "fight" sequences that are horrific from the point of view of most people involved.

Peace takes more wisdom, can be more complicated - and often enough takes both an external placement for communication - and some force.

We face problems of this kind in the Middle East - and people are struggling with them. Who knows? The worst happens often enough, but the worst doesn't always happen.

mazza9 - 04:32pm Apr 8, 2002 EST (#1186 of 1196)
Louis Mazza

RShow55:

If the ovum had a missile defense system, maybe the sperm could be countered!

LouMazza

BTW lchic: you might want to read "Lord of the Flies"

rshow55 - 05:07pm Apr 8, 2002 EST (#1187 of 1196)

Fertilization isn't a good bet for any given sperm - but when you look at the odds from the species point of view -- it works.

Missile defense may be a "natural" idea - but when you look at it in detail - the proposals made so far in public cannot possibly work.

And maybe we have to learn to do better than the behavior described in "Lord of the Flies." But we ought to be able to do so.

Did you see the Pulitzers ?! :)

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense