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Science
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
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(11200 previous messages)
rshow55
- 08:34am Apr 8, 2003 EST (#
11201 of 11202)
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.
There are costs. We'd like to minimize them. Almarst, we've
both worked hard to try to do that.
http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.eL1ja7tT6WM.1061672@.f28e622/12554
If we just asked people to check for how well their ideas
fit the things they have to decently care about - that might
be all the "deep philosophy" peace, prosperity, and reasonable
religion would need.
I've been repeating this:
Starting this year - I made a guess (# 7177 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.eL1ja7tT6WM.1061672@.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.
From where we are now - it shouldn't be that hard to do.
The most basic problems have to do with the
stability of our descriptions of what we are
talking about and what we are feeling about.
People are all very different in many ways - yet the same
in many other ways - and we need to find the wit to avoid
avoidable fights, cooperate when that seems a reasonable thing
to do - and sort things out so that they meet the needs of the
people involved. Many, many, many times, all over the world,
people find ways to do this - as they always have. A few
chronic kinds of problems continue. All of them are
intractable because people are being deceptive to others, and
often to themselves - when that deception is ugly enough, in
enough ways that matter, that it needs to be corrected.
We need descriptions that people who have to interact
can understand stably, clearly - in those relatively
rare cases where it matters enough. We're having trouble with
such cases. Not very many. But matters of life and death.
Here are facts that it seems to me are basic - things that
we all know - and have to know at some level - from about the
time we learn to talk.
People say and do things
What people say and do have consequences,
for themselves and for other people.
People need to deal with and understand
these consequences, for all sorts of practical, down to
earth reasons.
. So everybody has a stake in right
answers to questions of fact that they use as assumptions
when they think about what they say and what they do.
If the bolded point, just above, were more widely and
deeply understood - and linked to the simple points
just above it -- a great many things in the world would be
better - and people, just as they are, could solve many of the
most important and practical problems they face. Some
technical insight might help that understanding, and lchic and
I have been trying to focus such insight into place on this
thread. But it doesn't seem to me that people need a lot of
insight, from where they are, if they just make and effort to
do things they can be reasonably proud of, that they can find
reasonable ways to explain.
http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?224@@2cb4d7cb@.ee7b2bd/1631
http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?224@@2cb4d7cb@.ee7b2bd/1636
I'm worried, but pretty hopeful. Not that agony and horror
can be avoided in the future. But that there can be a lot
less.
rshow55
- 08:56am Apr 8, 2003 EST (#
11202 of 11202)
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.
Just for emphasis - I think people ought to really think
about this:
. Our most basic problems have to do with
the stability of our descriptions of
what we are talking about and what we are
feeling about.
If we work for consistency - which is hard to get for
anybody at all - and keep at it - checking not only what we
think we said - but what people understand - and try for
stability - not patterns that jump around whenever
anyone tries to "pin anything down" - we can avoid
misunderstandings serious enough to produce really ugly
consequences - almost always.
Not always. When there are conflicts - there may have to be
fights. But if we're clear - they can be small, relatively
stable fights - mostly about ideas, with no need for rending
of flesh.
With stable consequences.
Requirements of order, symmettry, and fit to purpose are
primordial - they apply, in many, many ways - to every species
that has ever lived - and to every situation that people have
ever been able to handle decently.
When discourse patterns are so unstable - so full of
deception, evasion, and disorder - that these basic
requirements aren't possible - progress isn't possible.
We ought to have sense enough to do better than that.
If we did just this well - horrors like Saddam's Iraq
simply couldn't come to exist - or continue for very long.
There's a lot to fix. When people keep at it - and get
descriptive focuses that fit cases - they can do that things
the need to do .
We've got problems today with insanity - and need to
find ways to be less crazy when it matters.
Some things are going better than they have a lot of times
in the past.
New York Times on the Web Forums
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Missile Defense
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