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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 - 09:56am Mar 27, 2003 EST (# 10558 of 10581)
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.

On "new rules of conflict" - we could use some new rules. And there's nothing inherently wrong with "endless series" solutions. All the tabulated mathematical functions are calculated with "endless" series that converge - often very nicely.

Some "infinite" repeating sequences are divergent - explosive.

Some go on an on.

But some converge - and do so very nicely.

Many do, in fact. Within a region of convergence. And the needed conditions, in specific cases - are well worked out and clear.

Sometimes, conditions that are similar in form, but with different coefficients, show stable, metastable, and explosive behavior in different regions for clear reasons. Chain Breakers http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee79f4e/618 deals with that.

I'm optimistic, myself - because there is a lot of damping built into the systems that involve conflict between nations. We're seeing a lot about how damped things are - and how small the body counts are - in Iraq now.

Maybe too optimistic, but I'm not sure I was wrong when I started this year on the Missile Defense board with this: (# 7177 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.YcdBaNU862c.1890338@.f28e622/8700

"I think this is a year where some lessons are going to have to be learned about stability and function of international systems, in terms of basic requirements of order , symmetry , and harmony - at the levels that make sense - and learned clearly and explicitly enough to produce systems that have these properties by design, not by chance.

We need to negotiate workable, just structures of international law into being. We don't have them now.

From where we are - would that really be so hard? Doesn't look so hard to me.

If leaders of nation states were actually prepared to insist on getting facts straight, when it mattered enough - we'd be there . That doesn't seem like so very much to ask for or hope for or work for.

10524 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.YcdBaNU862c.1890338@.f28e622/12073

jorian319 - 10:32am Mar 27, 2003 EST (# 10559 of 10581)

Alarmst, it is indeed regrettable that the media dilute the facts when it comes to "collateral damage", i.e. the tragic death and maiming of innocent civilians. We should all be cognizant of this extremely high price of our actions. The big problem is that there is every reason to believe that if it suits the purpose du jour, the SH regime will/does murder any number of people without a second thought - if they think they can blame it on us.

rshow55 - 10:46am Mar 27, 2003 EST (# 10560 of 10581)
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.

If people are at all careful and responsible - I think a lot of things can go well. If leaders of nation states were actually prepared to insist on getting facts straight, when it mattered enough - we'd be in a far, far safer and more decent world. Not perfect - but very much better.

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7b085/384 cites includes this:

When we apply SIMPLE models of structure to circumstances that have a more complicated structure than we are thinking of, we can get into trouble.

We can fail to see how thing work.

And we can be misled by thinking we see "contradictions" where there are no logical contradictions -- though there may be aesthetic or moral tensions.

A complex system can be two "contradictory" things at the same time -- in different places within the larger structure -- without contradiction.

Bertrand Russell got caught up with this one -- but for complicated circumstances, and for dealing with complicated histories, it is an essential thing to know.

It you know it -- solutions that seem "classified out of existence" are seen, and these solutions can be real.

Some moral points can get clarified, too.

Of course, poets have said the same thing more clearly - and earlier.

The Blind Men and the Elephant by John Godfrey Saxe (1816 - 1887) http://www.wordfocus.com/word-act-blindmen.html starts:

It was six men of Indostan

To learning much inclined,

Who went to see the Elephant

(Though all of them were blind),

That each by observation

Might satisfy his mind

- - -

9743 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.YcdBaNU862c.1890338@.f28e622/11285

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