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 - 05:31pm Jun 7, 2003 EST (# 12378 of 12383)
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 was asked to find solutions to technical problems. AEA demonstrated, as well as a small (20 million $) project could - that those solutions (at least, very good, arguably optimal solutions) can be found, in a technical sense, on a routine and predictable basis.

Eisenhower was stumped by a lot - but he was very clear about this - and maybe a little clearer after he read a paper I wrote in the summer of 1967.

When you have a problem involving both physical-technical constraints and social usage constraints - it makes sense to define clearly what can be done considering only the physical-technical constraints.

Solve with only the physical constraints FIRST - then fit social arrangements to the human needs.

Not because only the technical constraints matter. But if you sort them out first - you may be able to arrange good, fair social systems around the best technical solutions possible.

On a routine basis.

People who review what I did to build AEA might want to turn their head away - about how ruthless I was. I thought I was offering investors a better deal than I explained to them. And the stakes from the perspective of the national and world welfare were very high.

rshow55 - 05:38pm Jun 7, 2003 EST (# 12379 of 12383)
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 I'd been able to deliver that answer to Eisenhower in 1953, I think that world per-capita income in real terms today might be 2-4 times larger than it is.

We live in a world where simulation is very easy - where the engineering knowledge we need to know to get key human needs solved is well in hand - but the solutions for some key things - global warming - energy - nutrition - are essentially certain to be monolithic and large scale solutions that require the involvement of a nation state ready to " pick winners" - even if all or almost all the capital has to be raised from private investors.

And such projects - once they work - need to be regulated - and the fruits of them need to be controlled enough so that results are tolerable in terms of human needs.

rshow55 - 05:50pm Jun 7, 2003 EST (# 12380 of 12383)
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.

Communist government, the government of the Nazis, and the government Eisenhower hoped for for the United States were very different in many, many ways - but there were essential similarities for technical and human reasons that are basic.

The communists talked of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" - which involved many things - including a core idea (a promise often unmet, but clearly stated) of "an elite, with authority, administering things for the common good.

The Nazis were wrenching in many ways - but they talked of "National Socialism" and they definitely did have welfare state ideals in mind (for Germans.) There was a core idea (a promise often unmet, but clearly stated) of "an elite, with authority, administering things for the common good."

Eisenhower also believed that government and industry, together, had to include, de facto, "an elite, with authority, administering things for the common good."

Those systems, those elites, were, in Eisenhower's view, and in the view of most people alive in his time - to be evaluated in terms of human results - - definitely including economic results - not just notions of "freedom."

- - -

Eisenhower wanted as close to Jeffersonian democracy as he could get - under the circumstances. He had no way of accomplishing this in reality - or setting up a coherent system - but did the best he could - guided by both heart and mind (and self interest as well) using ideas that included fictions, and sometimes deceptions.

It only works as well as it works. We talked about that - and Eisenhower felt we could do (much) better with better technical solutions.

I'd add, we need better exception handling, as well.

rshow55 - 05:52pm Jun 7, 2003 EST (# 12381 of 12383)
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 Almarst argues - with much evidence - that US actions do not work toward the common good (nationally or internationally ) he is making an important point.

(2 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense