Missile Defense

The world could end. We ought to see to it that it doesn't, even at the cost of some effort and embarrassment.

I set out my sense of risk, and my reasons for acting, in rshowalter "Science News Poetry" 3/1/01 2:07pm

In September, I thought that there was maybe a 10% chance of the world blowing up per year , with messes as they were, including human misunderstandings, and technical screwups.

Maybe I'd slipped a decimal point.

But maybe not . . .

Lets see --- six billion people .... a "statistical expected value" of a hundred Jewish holocausts, per year or one point six million "expected deaths" per day.

A tenth of that, or a hundredth of that -- is still a wrenchingly large risk.

The greatest single threat to our survival, as Bob Kerrey said.

I summarized reasons for my concern in MD826:rshowalter 3/4/01 1:04pm just before almarst appeared on the scene.

Since that time, discussion have given me every reason to think I was right to be concerned. And that I had a reasonable sense of the risk . ..

the probability that, without more wisdom, the world was going to end, one ugly way or another.

There are some huge, scary differences in world view between Americans and Russians - and at some absolutely fundamental levels -- we do not understand each other.

I believe that both sides understand each other better -- and are closer to enough focus to make peace possible, because of the discourse here, and the fact that some able people have been looking at it.

Reviewing the text of these threads gives some pretty solid reasons to think so.

It seems to me quite rational for people to look at the things that have been done, and believed, and argued, referenced here - - - and to be afraid.

Afraid for themselves, and for everyone else they care about, and everthing they care about.

It seems to me that we have to communicate and check better than we now do. It also seems to me that we can.

rshowalter - 06:27pm Jun 7, 2001 EST (#4564 of 4585)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

It would sure help if there was better checking in American journalism, and in Russian and Chinese journalism, too.

And it would help if people got a sense of how important right answers actually are when you have to use them to make decisions.

The world is impoverished, much much uglier than it needs to be, and may end -- mostly because - in many big and little ways -- too few people and institutions tell the truth, or expect it.

rshowalter - 06:31pm Jun 7, 2001 EST (#4565 of 4585)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

It also seems to me that the U.S. ought to clean up its messes -- including minefields and other horrors of American wars - - and paralyzing results of psychological warfare, in Russia and other places.

If the truth wasn't so often avoided - - that sort of response might be likely to follow -- if not because of American decency, because of organized insistence from the rest of the world.

lunarchick - 06:38pm Jun 7, 2001 EST (#4566 of 4585)
lunarchick@www.com

Decimal point - skid-slippery - move it one way gives 1/100, move it the other .... 100% dead cert ... right and left can be important in politics :)

lunarchick - 06:45pm Jun 7, 2001 EST (#4567 of 4585)
lunarchick@www.com

On when do wars end ... the answer has to be :

when the last person who was affected directly or indirectly leaving them hurt or injured .. in body or mind ... has faded away

lunarchick - 06:47pm Jun 7, 2001 EST (#4568 of 4585)
lunarchick@www.com

Ariel bombing of Palestine must end!
How terrifying!

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