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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 - 04:37pm Mar 20, 2003 EST (# 10272 of 10276)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

I made a proofreading error.

"There are times when force is necessary - and though I have many disagreements with the Bush administration - they're right about that."

is my language, not Kristof's.

http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.7AUNasdd5v6.447339@.f39a52e/154 from Reader Discussion: 'Repress Yourself' summarizes points that ought to be remembered - that people don't even know how their own minds work - or what their own motivations are - and there may be a lot of reasons for "conspiracy theories" - which may absolutely be conspiracies - but may be less simple than that. <a href="/webin/WebX?14@28.7AUNasdd5v6.447339@.f39a52e/154">rshow55 "Reader Discussion: 'Repress Yourself'" 3/10/03 10:26am</a> inclused this:

" On this ( Repress Yourself ) thread, there's a series of posts by me, taken from the Science, Missile Defense thread

114 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.7AUNasdd5v6.447339@.f39a52e/114 to 126 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.7AUNasdd5v6.447339@.f39a52e/126

"The issues of repression and other kinds of unconscious or semiconsious processing are important when we think about the decisions that people make, the reliability of those decisions, the biases, conscious and unconscious, that may have been in play in the formation of those decisions - and practical and moral consequences.

Psychologists and psychiatrists have much to say here - and perhaps the most important thing - logically - is that humans are fallible - even leaders - that repression - deception - self deception happen .

"Everybody knows that? Sure. For safety, we need to know it better.

For getting negotiations to closure that we need to get to reasonable closure - we need to know it better, too.

We need a realistic international law - not the muddle we have falling apart around us today.

It has to be negotiated into being.

almarst2003 - 05:12pm Mar 20, 2003 EST (# 10273 of 10276)

Kristof may enjoy the God-Like feeling by deciding who has a right to kill or live alive. He ASSUMES he KNOWS what is good and what is bad. What if I tell you one of those killed is next Enstein? What if one left alive is next Hitler?

Those types of calculations are disgusting to say it politely. I hoped after the Hitler we will not come back to the idea of a mersiful calculated murder

How wrong I was.

rshow55 - 06:15pm Mar 20, 2003 EST (# 10274 of 10276)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

Almarst , perhaps you've lived your life without exercising power that has shaped other lives ( and of course, you've made decisions shaping your own ) but most people - including most people who have enough competence and social position to be likely readers of The New York Times have exercised power that has had big effects on other lives. Not always in the ways the people who own those lives have wanted.

That's inescapable - it is dishonest to deny it - and the higher you are in any sociotechnical organization at all - the more you have to "play God".

By the time you get near the top of large organizations - including big firms, or governments - you have to "play God" to a degree - and often enough, do it in a manipulative, abstract way - dealing with groups of people. If you're anywhere near the top of a pyramid-like organizational structure - that's how it has to work.

Is that unfortunate? Perhaps so, but life would be unthinkable otherwise.

Perhaps I'm a little more matter-of-fact about such things than others - but not by so very much.

Putin , surely, plays God in many, many ways. People dealing with leaders expect it - and sometimes tolerate horror to an extent that makes people watching want to turn their heads away.

Oh, to feel the Warmth of Stalin's Hand by Michael Wines http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/09/weekinreview/09WINE.html

Dead but Not Forgotten by Serge Schmemann http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/10/opinion/10MON4.html

Sometimes there have to be fights - at least at the level of ideas - often ideas with human interests and lives attached. Decisions have to be made.

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