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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.

rshow55 - 02:12pm Jul 10, 2002 EST (#2980 of 3052)

mazza9 7/10/02 12:56pm .. Why don't you write a book?

Because of some basic issues of neural mechanics - there are things that have to be handled in other ways. Sometimes, the things that people most desperately want to avoid, to evade, to repress - are things that they need to know.

If I can get some things across, then I CAN write a book -- and some very good books would find a better market. - Including, for example, The Haunted Land by Tina Rosenberg, which won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award but sold damn few copies.

I face two problems you can't handle with books alone. First, a 90 degree phase limitation in memory storage. Second, problems with inhibition - inhibition that needs to be "on" somebimes - but "off" some other times, as well.

(more by 2:30).

rshow55 - 02:29pm Jul 10, 2002 EST (#2981 of 3052)

My main assignment from Casey and others was to find out enough about how the brain works to permit people to do tho following for themselves.

Do the things they already do well somewhat more often, and somewhat more easily.

Catch mistakes, particularly serious mistakes, considerably more often than they do today.

Especially since I've been working with lchic , I made some headway. We've made some headway. http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?13@@.eece621/17 There are parts of the work that are mainly mine, though much is mainly hers. .

Here's something specific.

I believe that, with competent debriefing, I can teach people to reduce huge errors, such as the gross overestimation of optical cable demand that has cost our economy so much. I believe it is reasonable to estimate that the risk of such errors can be reduced between ten-fold and a hundred fold - and that very many kinds of errors can be made less likely.

I believe that, with competent debriefing, I can teach people to significantly improve the rate of return on engineering and research, especially in areas that involve mechanical engineering, but elsewhere, as well.

There are some similar things - that involve understanding of how human brains work at the level of ordinarly human function. I have enough of them understood well enough that, with the help of debriefers, we can work them out effectively and safely.

(more in an hour.)

rshow55 - 02:35pm Jul 10, 2002 EST (#2982 of 3052)

I can teach the CIA and the DOD to do the jobs they promise the people of the United States they'll do -- better in a longish list of technical ways.

Both when it comes to a fight, and when it comes to finding ways to avoid one.

And getting stable and reasonable resolutions, both when fights occur, and when they are avoided.

Much of what I'd like to tell them ought, in my opinion, to be considered for classification - on a case by case basis.

(Casey would have been able to make good judgements here, and people responsible now should be able to do so, too.)

rshow55 - 02:40pm Jul 10, 2002 EST (#2983 of 3052)

I think I could be of some help in stabilizing our relations with the Islamic world on a mutually satisfactory basis, working as an occasional consultant.

rshow55 - 03:08pm Jul 10, 2002 EST (#2984 of 3052)

My guess is that, if I had lchic's help, or Emily Eakin or Erica Goode's help (or help from someone equally gifted) we could teach the people who care about such things how to significantly increase reading scores (perhaps especially for the black population) and I.Q. scores (perhaps especially for the black population.)

I could not do this effectively alone - and may be incorrect here -- but I believe that in the most important organic ways, everybody is as smart as I am.

Maybe I'm grossly wrong here.

This seems clear to me. Nothing would be well enough worked out until people like Laura Bush could understand it. And actually teach it to others.

rshow55 - 03:11pm Jul 10, 2002 EST (#2985 of 3052)

Steve Kline and I did a math job. Worked hard at it. If I were competently debriefed, and the government could be made to listen, the people who could use it would use it. Themselves. With minimum disruption of the patterns of work they now have - so that it produces progress, rather than chaos. Wouldn't cost much, but would take some organization. There's more to it than "just writing a paper" not because the mistake to be corrected is hard to understand (it isn't) but because it is 350 years old.

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