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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 - 06:49am Sep 25, 2003 EST (# 13956 of 13958)
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.

Draft Report Said to Cite No Success in Iraq Arms Hunt By DOUGLAS JEHL and JUDITH MILLER http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/25/international/middleeast/25WEAP.html

A draft of a report by the American leading the hunt for weapons in Iraq says his team has not found any unconventional weapons.

How was this just a mistake ?

We're dealing here with nonrandom, basic patterns of human behavior that get us into messes. We need to face them. If we did - we could do better.

We ought to think about the behavior set out in http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~epritch1/social98a.html and realize that if we're "wired to be nice" - that is - to be cooperative - we're also "wired to be self deceptive and stupid" whenever the immediate thought seems to go against our cooperative needs.

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/413

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/414

And people who keep thinking and keep talking to each other

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Delusions of Power By PAUL KRUGMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/28/opinion/28KRUG.html is a wonderful piece - and very important. Krugman cites a wonderful phrase

" incestuous amplification" defined by Jane's Defense Weekly as "a condition in warfare where one only listens to those who are already in lock-step agreement, reinforcing set beliefs and creating a situation ripe for miscalculation."

"Incestuous amplification" can lead to ornate , internally consistent and convincing systems of ideas - virtual maps. Now more than ever.

Living Under the Virtual Volcano of Video Games This Holiday Season By VERLYN KLINKENBORG http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/16/opinion/16MON4.html contains a haunting, and very important, idea. .

" every human activity, serious or playful, eventually ramifies into a world of its own, a self-contained cosmos of enormous complexity."

But is that self-contained cosmos right? When one matches that complexity against checkable things - some things that are real may be mapped almost exactly - or even exactly.

But even when the match is exact, the map remains virtual . I think that virtual mappings that are correct in every way that matter are precious - and think people are getting clearer on how they happen - by "connecting the dots" and keeping at it.

But virtual mappings that are correct are also hard-won - but because right anwers are so sparse - we can find them .

On Missile Defense - a procedure that would work out patterns that would solve may problems has been repeatedly suggested. Some issues - beyond a point - do take staffing to respond to. The procedure could be applied generally - and would sort out a lot . I think people at the United Nations could solve some key problems if they could institute similar procedures. You don't have to be binding - if clarification, with umpiring, can be done in public.

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