New York Times on the Web Forums Science

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 - 07:02pm Mar 24, 2003 EST (# 10438 of 10442)
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.

God is the Projection of Man's Unrealised Potential started Nov 15, 2000 http://www.mrshowalter.net/GodistheProjection1_1534.html has many more postings by others than by me - and deals gracefully with many key philosophical and religious questions. I think the thread is a treasure.

and a thread that has been discontinued, Details and the Golden Rule http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md01000s/DetailNGR.htm

Bill Casey, years ago - was worried that we human beings - in our current state of culture "weren't playing with a full deck."

There was reason to think something basic was buried, and wrong, in applicable math. I think I've made headway about that - and, with help from Lchic , may explain things that need to be understood.

There was also some reason to think that things were going perversely wrong in problems of analysis, strategy and tactics that determined human actions - including the actions of nation states. Plato's problem was connected to that. Working inspired and guided by the brilliance of Dawn Riley, I think we've made some headway about that, to.

Here's a dream. A question. What would it mean - and what would happen, if people finally were - "playing with a full deck" - in the sense that they knew everything useful, at the level of basic logic - that could be used for them to understand the world, and make reasonable arrangements in it?

Sometimes it seems to me that we might be getting closer to that. Dawn and I are chipping away at it, anyway.

I deeply appreciate the chance to post on this thread.

mazza9 - 07:31pm Mar 24, 2003 EST (# 10439 of 10442)
"Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

Rshow55:

"I can't hear you!!!!!

dccougar - 08:04pm Mar 24, 2003 EST (# 10440 of 10442)
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts.

rshow55 - 07:02pm Mar 24, 2003 EST - "What would it mean - and what would happen, if people finally... knew everything useful, at the level of basic logic - that could be used for them to understand the world, and make reasonable arrangements in it?

Knowing logical rules and fallacies would be helpful, but this would still leave people far short of having a workable understanding of the world or of enabling them to "make reasonable arrangements" in it. As any artificial intelligence researcher could tell you, logic isn't enough. For understanding to occur, there is the hugely important component of context which even today has yet to be successfully addressed and accounted for in the study of human understanding.

Highly relevant reading: Goodbye, Descartes, The End of Logic and the Search for a New Cosmology of the Mind [1997] --Keith Devlin

(2 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense