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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 - 07:26am Sep 18, 2003 EST (# 13710 of 13824)
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.

Repeat: If good decisions are to be made by society - sometimes (relatively seldom, but sometimes) there do have to be fights. They need to be better organized and conducted than they are now - they need to have a valid place in society and discourse - if we're to get right answers that we badly need.

http://www.mrshowalter.net/ScienceInTheNewsJan4_2000.htm suggests a mechanism, involving existiing institutions and procedures - that would handle such fights at the level of ideas - could do it with much greater fairness than today - and could do it at low cost.

http://www.mrshowalter.net/ScienceInTheNewsJan4_2000.htm starts with this:

In "Geniuses, Crackpots and a Grand Unified Theory" JAMES GLANZ makes an important point. People with ideas off of the mainstream, right or wrong, are a nuisance. There's an extraordinary presumption against them. That presumption is statistically justified. Nor are individual scientists, or scientific organizations, or journalistic operations, well set up to handle them.

and ends with this:

If a scientist, to scientific group, or journalist, was faced with a person claiming paradigm conflict, they could say:

" We have an institutional arrangement for that. The procedures are rough, but fair - go through channels."

Anybody who had a good idea (and any academic group which had a good reason to contest the stance of another) would have a good chance of both being heard, and being validated to a limited but significant extent, by such a procedure.

And the crackpots, who really do exist, would be less trouble.

There are times when there are basic disagreements about facts - and on this thread there's been a lot of work to resolve them. I think there's been progress - and think this is basic.

There are basic conflicts between patterns of discourse that "keep the team together" and those that get facts and relations straight.

If you're to "be sure you're right" BEFORE "going ahead" - you need both patterns of discourse to work. There are problems about end games - and I think this thread is being constructive.

When I went onto this thread - at the NYT's suggestion - and after some phone discussions with lchic - I hoped I'd be on it only a day.

fredmoore - 07:50am Sep 18, 2003 EST (# 13711 of 13824)

Robert,

The USA was built by so called crackpots. Bill Gates didn't go through the proper channels to get to Microsoft ... He MADE the Channels.

Some existing channels will eventually cede to superior ideas, research and intuition!

rshow55 - 08:07am Sep 18, 2003 EST (# 13712 of 13824)
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.

Eisenhower agreed - partially - but had serious reservations. Around the edges - there are wonderful opportunities - and in the center of the sociotechnical systems - and the systems of ideas that support them - there are enormously valuable systems of ideas and infrastructure that have to be preserved.

But with enormous resistance to change. The AEA project was set up precisely to provide a mechanism for that kind of change - as a sort of exception handling.

This thread has been a pattern of exception handling in a somewhat similar sense.

Many of the biggest problems we have in the world occur because the patterns that keep teams together - and that are both deeply instinctual and massively important for society - classify the search for right answers right out of existence.

We don't have to (in your phrase) "throw the baby out with the bathwater" - if we have patterns of exception handling that accomodate change - and get things to clarity - in ways that can work for the teams that have to execute work - and stay together - every day.

Just now, I want to spend some time with my mother - who didn't throw this baby out with the bathwater - though she had plenty of frustations in dealing with me. And spend time with my father, too. My parents have been wonderful to me - and I love them very much.

I'm grateful to have a chance to spend some time with my parents - and grateful for this thread, as well.

Out for a while.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense