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 - 11:47am Sep 11, 2003 EST (# 13606 of 13609)
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.

Should you expect them to tie their shoes early, or later?

It is hard to force a kid to learn anything - or even to listen - though it is surprising, sometimes, how much kids hear "without listening."

On tying shoes. I think, and a lot of people think, that you should teach kids the skill - in the sense of presenting the lesson - as early as seemed comfortable for teacher and child - and keep doing it from time to time. Only a good deal later should you expect kids to actually master the skill. Some kids pick up the skill earlier than others. All normal kids eventually learn the skill.

People who do jobs masterfully, logically, and well didn't start out so masterfully. They had to learn.

Often, they screw up, and have to go back and try things again and again. Sometimes, a skill or idea that didn't work for them they first thought of it, or first heard of it, works for them later

The Bush administration is screwing up badly. But there is some learning taking place.

If Bush is

Not afraid to lead.

he's also

Not afraid to lie.

but, so far, he seems very afraid to think hard, or to check assumptions or his work.

Maybe he'll learn. Or maybe people around him - and more voters - will learn. I don't feel like giving up. It seems to me that there are glimmers of progress. Also - I promised to try to get some things understood and actually taught.

rshow55 - 02:59pm Sep 11, 2003 EST (# 13607 of 13609)
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.

"Connecting the dots" works because, when patterns are put together in different ways, and checked for internal consistency and for fit to external information workable "connections of the dots" are very sparse . So sparse that, if you keep at it - there is a very good chance that you'll make progress- and might even find exact truth in a paticular situation.

Because often enough there are relatively very few alternatives consistent with what is known. Uniqueness may not occur. But there are few enough options, often enough, that they can be checked, and the checking is worth it.

Focusing matters. And it is also possible.

3792 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.wYkOb19DECd.8500203@.f28e622/4772

Getting the most basic, most frequent facts and relations straight is very important.

For fundamental reasons, for the most common things, it is also very hard. That's both a challenge and a source of hope.

When we learn basic things, the odds of our successfully solving problems can get much better - and impossible jobs can become possible, and sometimes even easy.

That's pretty general - though a lot of kids could follow it, and adults, too. How about a specific example? The connection between math and the physical world offers some examples of work I've done - and that lchic and I have done together - where we've come to new and useful generalizations. Not more complicated than tying one's shoes, maybe - but not a lot easier, either.

Perspectives matter - and different people can feel differently. And there are many ways of looking at things. Edward Tufte cited many of them in a great paragraph

http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md8000s/md8211.htm . . . http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md8000s/md8214_8218.htm

But if some things "depend on how you look at it" - some few and precious things focus to sharp clarity - and that can be useful.

Here's a fact. If you will, a "search key" - a way of organizing material. I don't believe that it existed, in such a clear form, until I worked it out - with lchic's help.

Fact: All the math that is applicable to engineering comes from these basic fields - each old - each informing each of the others dialectically, in focusing fashion - every which way.

. Geometry . . . . Calculus

. Arithmetic . . . Algebra

Each of these fields stands, and relates to the others - in an entirely abstract way.

But there are analogies - very, very often essentially exact correspondences - between what is seen in this abstract logical world of mathematics and the real, tangible world we live in - which includes things we sense and measure.

. . . .

You could start teaching kids that in nursery school, if you wanted to. In the beginning, simply as a fact. As they got older, they could understand more about it. It would permit the kids to figure things out for themselves more comfortably and effectively than they do now. It would guide and organize their understanding.

I was asked to do something fairly advanced - to go in and find a "stumper problem" - buried deep in the interface between abstract mathematics on the one side, and science and engineering on the other. Mathematics is an abstract, "unreal" -- indeed magical tradition - and has been for thousands of years. http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/636 Because people wanted to solve science and engineering problems where the issue matters, and things were going wrong, I was asked to think about the nuts and bolts questions of building "concrete bridges to and from abstract worlds." ( It wasn't as clear as that - people were stumped - the bolded phrase just before is

(2 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense