New York Times on the Web Forums Science

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 - 05:58am Apr 20, 2001 EST (#2411 of 2414)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

But some contradictions, at some levels are just too expensive to be borne, and Putin needs, at some essential level, to deal with these with a minimum of compromise. Other leaders should do the same -- so far as I can tell, almost all other leaders should do the same.

To do so is, in very large part, and intellectual problem.

Exemplary cases of how social groups actually function, small enough to study, large enough to contain all the major difficulties of socio-technical function, ought to be studied.

So that the lessons they could teach could be used, with care, by analogy, haltingly, to apply correction to other cases --- including the case of nuclear terror,where the impasse, still today, could easily destroy the whole world.

The Osprey case might serve well as such an example, if understood in detail.

The paradigm shift engineered by the engineer, S. J. Kline, and his associates, in fluid mechanics, might serve well as an example, if understood in detail.

A paradigm shift impasse - in the middle of resolution, involving me, and others, at the University of Wisconsin and elsewhere, might serve well as an example. If the fiction - forming, the incrementalism, the logical limitation, and the active and passive deception and lying built into real human affairs was understood as the inescapably human species behavior that it is, many problems, insoluble now, could be gracefully solved.

The Chinese and American spy plane case might work as a good example, too. The impasse is, essentially, about denial, on both sides, of the possibility that their side could be lying. Both sides are massively in the wrong here. Both sides are sophisticated, accomplished, and very ingenious liars, both in individual and group function. They couldn't run their lives and their societies as well as they do, being the animals that they are, if it were otherwise.

There are many other examples that might be studied.

Full understanding of any one of them would teach the lessons that need to be learned (though those lessons are hard) -- because the patterns causing problems in an otherwise workable set of human socio-technical interactions are, in essentials, monotonously the same.

rshowalter - 06:03am Apr 20, 2001 EST (#2412 of 2414)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Denial of plain facts, monotonously, makes key accomodations that ought to be possible misfire, horrifically and monotonously.

Misfires that could end the world. Misfires that do, and long have, made human life far worse than our animal limitations force it to be.

I wish, for selfish reasons, but for other reasons too, that a really "free press" could do a full reporting, just once of how a complex sociotechnical affair actually works.

It might humanize, and even save, us all.

(We wouldn't have to admit, every time, and in every way, that we were capable of such follies -- if only, when it mattered, we knew the difficulties well enough to fix problems.)

rshowalter - 06:16am Apr 20, 2001 EST (#2413 of 2414)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Any clergyman knows the virtues of the example -- with analogies very clear, but still removed from embarrassing specifics in space and time, so that people can, reasoning by analogy, solve some of their own problems, and do so gracefully.

Most leaders lead, not only by example, but also by homilies of this kind.

The world needs some examples, clearly understood, of behavior that is very common and damaging, but yet denied. Whether one believes in God or does not, human beings are animals , and "a little lower than the angels."

To do as well as they do, they deal incompletely, with incomplete knowledge, and in muddled ways, and then, in order to remember what they did, clean up their stories.

Often the fictions are graceful. And ought to be appreciated, as works of practical and graceful art.

(I feel that the graceful lie is part of a reasonable and humane life. My mother taught me that, and her father, a clergyman, was careful to teach her that.)

But the probablility that very much of what we "know" and believe is fictional and incomplete needs to be much more widely understood.

MUCH MORE WIDELY UNDERSTOOD.

Because denial of that fact stands in the way of progress, or hope. -- And as situations and complex cooperations become more complicated, the losses become more serious in a factorially explosive manner.

rshowalter - 06:17am Apr 20, 2001 EST (#2414 of 2414)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

We need to tell many fewer lies than we do -- and we need, all of us, to acknowledge that we all, as animals, decieve both ourselves and others. And to live our lives, within our real and inescapable limitations, we have to.

But to fix problems, the deceptions have to be identified. When things are complicated, technical truth is, very often, essential if there is to be any hope at all.

To take down nuclear weapons, something on which the survival of the world is likely to depend, we need to face some truths. We need to face similar truths in many other human affairs, as well. If we did, the world would be a much more hopeful (and entertaining) place.

Some of these lessons, by the way, might make it more fun, and a prouder thing, to be Vladimir Putin.

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense