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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 - 02:33pm Sep 7, 2003 EST (# 13558 of 13559)
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.

Betraying Humanity By BOB HERBERT http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/28/opinion/28HERB.html includes this:

" . . . ultimately the many tribes that inhabit this earth are going to have to figure out a way to forge some workable agreements on how we treat one another."

Those agreements are going to have to include some workable agreements to disagree.

We need logical tools, and human insights, that make closure possible, and agreements resiliant, to a degree that they haven't been before. Lchic and I have been working, long, hard, and with concentration - to provide and focus them. She hasn't been posting for a while - but we talk most days.

9040 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.NdWWbxiVENm.7738295@.f28e622/10566 reads:

Our "logic" - is mostly a choosing between many alteratives going on or being fashioned in our heads - and in the course of that choosing - people believe what "feels right."

But what "feels right," most often, is what, in our minds "cooperates with the interests of authority - with our group." Look at Pritchard's notes on Milgram's experiment - and on Jonestown - to get a sense of how wrong it feels, for most people, to go against authority. http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~epritch1/social98a.html

We need to face the fact that there is more need to check - especially when "the ties that bind" are involved - than people feel comfortable with.

13543 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.NdWWbxiVENm.7738295@.f28e622/15235 was carefully written, and includes a basic point.

"Magnitudes, weights determine answers - in logical structures that depend on, and assume patterns of arithmetic - (or at least patterns of logic).

" The issues of "logical structure" and "weights" are coupled, but distinct.

Unless two people or groups agree on both logical structure and weights - they don't agree on "right answers."

Though they may still have a lot of common ground.

. . . .

"For workable arrangements - that are stable - it helps a lot if people agree on facts (not how they feel about them) and about the logical structure of what matters (not how they feel about it.)

"Agreement about "what happened, in detail" is often possible - in enough detail for cooperation and peace.

"But people and cultures are different - people are on different teams - and that can't be changed.

And some things are worth checking.

Cooper, with your logical patterns set up as they appear to me to be - and your sense of priorities as they appear to be - I don't see any way for any set of links and arguments at all to convince you that gisterme is anyone but "just another poser" or that the matter is worth checking.

If you start with "Showalter's crazy - or irresponsible - or "not on the team" " - - - and have a very high weighting on the notion that nobody's word should be checked - you can discount as "just virtual and no more" any set of arguments I make.

Up to a point, we'd be agreed on the "just virtual" part - but not on the "and no more" part.

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