Missile Defense

Gisterme in his sub

raises periscope glub glub

spies Rhsow in the distance

sinking, he needs help and persistence

"Rig for silent running" comes the order from the con

"Load tubes one and three we got him on the run",

"target locked" and "fire", the big fish on the wire

are moving to their target , things are looking dire

oops there's tragedy a looming but torpedos miss their quarry

"Due to Canonicity, your dots were not connected and I'm really very sorry".

rshow55 - 10:19am Aug 14, 2003 EST (# 13300 of 13301)
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.

Great poetry, fredmoore - - here's a little summary for 13300 - in a while I'll get back to your interesting comments on trust - and on photocells.

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7b2bd/1792 reads in part:

Whether model formation and decision making and is basically statistical - a matter of slowly accumulating weights - as Dole's was described to be - or a matter of sharp, explicit logic - the model formation and decision making is virtual . A map - not the territory the map is supposed to describe. The model, the decision pattern, happens inside the heads of individuals and groups - and doesn't necessarily correspond to reality if it is checked.

Logic can be checked internally - and matched to checkable reality - in many different ways.

Here is a point where there is a paradigm conflict - and it is sharp. Is it morally obligatory to do the checking ? Or is a "leadership principle" all that is needed or even permitted?

- - - - -

For basic logical and mathematical reasons - leaders face strong, largely valid arguments that say:

You can't afford to guess - you have to check everything.

but

You can't afford NOT to guess. There isn't enough time or information to do anything else. You have to "connect the dots" - to make assumptions and go beyond evidence - to form patterns. If you try to "check everything" - you may be paralyzed - or stuck with "solutions" that are FAR from satisfactory - where some good "connecting the dots" could get much more beautiful and workable answers.

Decision makers, if they are to have good judgement, must SWITCH between the two stances - in a repeating sequence - so that you can SAFELY CONVERGE on right answers.

We are all decision makers sometimes.

Not always. We live in a world of complex cooperation - and sometimes we're cooperators, and followers. As such, we face strong social pressures that say

You can't afford to second guess your leaders. It is not your place. You don't know enough. You don't have time. You have to cooperate with others who follow those leaders. So you must trust your leaders- defer to them. How else can social order go on - and how else can you maintain a place in the social order?

but

If social order is to go on efficiently, or safely - it must be possible to second guess your leaders - it is prohibitively expensive to follow a leader with bad judgement blindly - and leaders can show bad judgement. Some leaders show a lot of it, in ways that are only obscure in the sense that the inhibitions that "blinded" people from seeing The Emperor's New Clothes are obscure.

.

Leaders and followers must both, must each, try to exercise good judgement. Good judgement takes some switching. And leaders and followers need to expect good judgement from each other.

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.

We are now in a situation where "the powers that be" are very often aga

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