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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?

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rshow55 - 09:43am May 12, 2003 EST (# 11605 of 11609)
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.

Would there be people, including scientists, who might laugh at the decision? Sure. Nothing wrong with that. Even so, the decision would carry weight, either for a conceptual change, or against it.

The kinds of cases involved are likely to be SIMPLE in a logical sense.

In the case of fluid mechanics, the question was whether turbulent fluid flow was a statistical process decoupled from any sensible connection to fine scale Newtonian physics, or whether if was a process with structure, connected to the differential equations that govern other physics, and other fluid flow. This was a question of fact and logic, together. In retrospect, the people on the statistical side (almost everybody) seem to have suffered from a group delusion. The PTO could have resolved the issue cleanly, and in a way that would have saved a decade, and much ugliness.

In the case of McCully, the question was whether McCully's data made sense, or whether he was delusional, in a circumstance that was technically and morally quite clear. . Again, the people who shunned McCully (everybody who mattered for McCully's careeer, and for scientific decision) seem to have suffered from a group delusion. The PTO could have resolved the issue cleanly, and in a way that would have saved decades, and many lives.

I believe that a relatively minor modification of our institutional usages could resolve paradigm conflicts, at low cost, and make our scientific usages much more efficient than they are now, in the places where current usages look worst.

rshow55 - 09:43am May 12, 2003 EST (# 11606 of 11609)
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.

None of the people involved would be need to be "mere government payrolled bureaucratic obscurantists." For the issues that matter in conceptual conflicts, it is entirely reasonable to ask of a full enough grasp of the scientific issues involved. In the cases I know about, those issues have been quite simple.

No human group is perfect for everything. Nor can any set of instititions be perfect for everything. The people who populate institutions, after all, have the limitations of consciousness, so well discussed in this forum. That means they are fallible. It seems to me that a minor change in procedures for dealing with conceptual conflict might be useful insurance, so that very serious mistakes, that we know occurred in the past, might be avoided, or made less expensive, in the future.

There would be another use. If a scientist, to scientific group, or journalist, was faced with a person claiming paradigm conflict, they could say:

"We have an institutional arrangement for that. The procedures are rough, but fair - go through channels."

Anybody who had a good idea (and any academic group which had a good reason to contest the stance of another) would have a good chance of both being heard, and being validated to a limited but significant extent, by such a procedure.

And the crackpots, who really do exist, would be less trouble.

Bob Showalter

rshow55 - 09:46am May 12, 2003 EST (# 11607 of 11609)
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.

When I wrote that, at the beginning of 2000 - I was concerned with a subset of a key problem I was working on - which was verification procedures in social context.

Here's a point that the last three years have made clearer, I think:

Usually , deference to the notion that "credibility goes with status" - - the standard that the United States (and The New York Times) mostly goes by - is a workable standard.

But there are important exceptions.

rshow55 - 09:52am May 12, 2003 EST (# 11608 of 11609)
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.

Making those exceptions involves inherent costs - and shouldn't be lightly done. But for some very important things - issues of life and death - there has to be a way to check facts - even when status usages and conventions stand against the checking.

The math case is one example - and it has the advantage that it is relatively uncontroversial.

There are kinds of questions that recur again and again - and are "obvious." People and groups depend on ideas for their status - and for their livelihood. When stakes are high - these question always arise, or always should.

1. What happens if the facts are clarified - in terms of our understandings?

2. What happens to the people involved - if these facts are questioned?

Most times, these questions are evaded - and on some big issues - we're incurring terrible costs for that reason.

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