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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?

jqb00 - 09:40am Apr 10, 2001 EST (#2132 of 2135)

rshowalter 4/10/01 8:57am

For example, I've said that "Missile Defense" is, in Menken's wonderful phrase " as devoid of merit as a herringfish is of fur."

Many people, with far more credibility and far better credentials and in far more widely read forums, have said similar things. What's is so important about the fact that you have said it? Or that you have said it?

Freeman Dyson has said that, while physicists know that SDI was a fraud, it was a great way to get funding. So much for "morally forcing". It should have been "morally forcing" for people to investigate the claims about the German death camps rather than dismissing them.

You have no idea how the political world works.

rshowalter - 10:29am Apr 10, 2001 EST (#2133 of 2135)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

George Johnson, I believe that I may be having some effects. And, with technical change, the "way the political world works" may change.

rshowalter - 10:32am Apr 10, 2001 EST (#2134 of 2135)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

" It should have been "morally forcing" for people to investigate the claims about the German death camps rather than dismissing them."

Indeed so.

The idea that some issues should be checked, and the checking should be morally forcing has been a central theme of mine, and Lunarchick's, for a long time.

If that idea became accepted, so that facts could be established, a great deal that is ugly about the world could be cleaned up, at rather low cost, gracefully and quickly.

It would be big change. But the world is in a mess, in many places because "no one owes an obligation to the truth, when it is inconvenient to someone of status."

rshowalter - 10:39am Apr 10, 2001 EST (#2135 of 2135)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The conventions that keep checking from occurring are a stain on the honor of The New York Times , which prides itself so much on truth. And on the honor of all other newspapers, and broadcasters, and all journalists.

Some conventions for getting facts checked would do a great deal to raise the status and power of journalism, and would be good for the United States and the whole world.

I've suggested some conventions, for the special case of scientific paradigm conflict, here and with Lunarchick on the Paradigm Sift thread on Guardian Talk. There are no doubt many ways to get facts checked under circumstances of conflict.

The key requirements are enough logical space to get to closure (and the internet helps here), and the presence, when it matters enough, of umpires who can make disinterested judgements that can stand the light of day.

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