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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 - 04:06pm Jun 16, 2003 EST (# 12562 of 12573)
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.

Been rereading Snow, and things written about him - and his biographical essay on Churchill - who had "deep insights" but often very bad technical judgements - for example at Gallipoli - one of the greatest disasters of the First World War.

Bad judgement and deep insight can go together - because intellectual creativity and bad judgement are likely to go together.

Unless and until judgements are tested, refined, rejected, redone, and focused. Bush may be, in some key intellectual ways, a very creative person, surrounded by some other very creative people. His judgements may be disastrously bad for that reason - unless he checks - connects the dots - and keeps at it - without selecting the dots perversely - and without relying on something as dangerous as a feeling that he has trustworthy devine guidance.

The Boys Who Cried Wolfowitz By BILL KELLER http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/14/opinion/14KELL.html was summarized in the OpEd web page yesterday as follows:

The information-gathering machine designed to guide our leaders in matters of war and peace shows signs of being corrupted.

And that information-gathering machine never was nearly as good as the leaders wanted to to be - and felt it should be. Judgement is a big issue. And we need better judgement procedures.

I thought Bertrand Russell might have touched on another issue in addition to bad judgement - to the extent that Wolfowitz and some other in the administration have been deeply influenced by Aristotelians, especially Bloom.

"There is in Aristotle an almost complete absence of what may be called benevolence or philanthropy. The sufferings of mankind, in so far as he is aware of them, do not move him emotionally; he holds them intellectually to be an evil, but here is no evidence that they cause him unhappiness except when the sufferers happen to be his friends.

. . . from A History of Western Philosophy quoted in Bertrand Russell's Best , Chap 6.

lchic - 12:13am Jun 17, 2003 EST (# 12563 of 12573)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

"" ... But even Howard (Prime Minister Australia) could be in trouble if a genuine inquiry is launched into the misinformation that preceded the Iraq war. Intelligence agencies are for the most part docile creatures, but recent events in Britain suggest that they can lash out if pushed too far. Current attempts by the government to pass off the overselling of the WMD issue as an intelligence failure may just goad them into action.

Wilkie (Australian - resigned over 'mis-information/talking with UK Parliament) is not the only spook to have questioned the government's line. At a senate committee hearing earlier this month, the serving head of Australia's Defence Intelligence Organisation, Frank Lewincamp, suggested that the prime minister's pronouncements went well beyond what was known. "

http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,978593,00.html

jorian319 - 08:50am Jun 17, 2003 EST (# 12564 of 12573)

I suggest laying off "The Guardian" for a while. That rag is poisoning your mind.

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