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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 - 05:30pm Sep 1, 2003 EST (# 13463 of 13465)
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.

It is my judgement as a trained sociotechnical animal that this thread is working in interesting ways - and may much more than justify the efforts that have been put into it. I used to think a lot about cryptography - and got a lot of training about code breaking. It seems to me that some basic codes are breaking usefully. With work proceeding essentially as I was taught classical crypto had to proceed.

You get a big enough, properly interconnected corpus. With internal predictabilities and a lot of repetitions. Big enough to do statistics, and logic, and pattern recognition of all kinds. Big enough to crosscheck a lot of ways. Big enough so that you can break codes - and show that they are broken. The way I was taught to do (none too gently) in 1968-69.

The thread is partly about the question - "what can you prove?" - and I can prove that a lot of effort has gone into this thread.

I think that the work will be well worth it.

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.597abcaf/0

includes this:

' http://www.mrshowalter.net/rshow55.htm summarizes some of my hopes for the NYT Missile Defense thread and related work, and includes what is to me one of the most important recommendations for the thread. The thread contains Lchic's postings and citations she collects. Lchic's work is graceful, perceptive, and well worth sampling. I think she's the most valuable mind I've ever encountered.

. . .

I think we're both proud of the accomplishments described and put in context in MD1999 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.gWfVbKtHC8A.6659464@.f28e622/2484

" The long and the short of it is - you need both long and short. From the long, quite often, the short condenses."

I believe that some useful condensations have occurred on the NYT Missile Defense thread, and that more will.

"Including some simple exemplars that lchic and I have worked to focus - that might be usefully taught to four or five year olds. Kids and their parents might be better if they learned one of lchic's poems http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.gWfVbKtHC8A.6659464@.f28e622/3745 . And in a little while, that poem might be learned with a small addition http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.gWfVbKtHC8A.6659464@.f28e622/3784 .

We'd all be a lot safer if, early on, kids were also taught that they were sociotechnical beings . And taught what hope looks like, for real sociotechnical human beings - in their practical lives. And what hopeless looks like.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense