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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 - 07:10pm Mar 15, 2001 EST (#1056 of 1057)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

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.

This thread has largely been about that.

There may be different ways of getting the checking done. Some suggestions have been discussed in the thread. If the moral point is granted, many different approaches to the checking could work well. Here is one, set out for scientific problems New York Times Science in the News thread rshowalt (# 381-383) rshowalt "Science in the News" 1/4/00 7:43am Similar patterns, variously modified, would be more than sufficient to determine the questions of fact that must be resolved in order for our nuclear impasse to be resolved.