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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 - 03:40pm Sep 26, 2003 EST (# 14022 of 14030)
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.

After stable "agreements to disagree" - there's time, and safety - for incremental agreements to form and focus.

When that's useful. Without coercion.

This thread is a very good illustration of why it is that getting to stable agreements is hard - but because "going round and round" so often focuses - and so often ends with results that are not muddled - there's a great deal to hope for - as well as plenty to fear.

International law is being renegotiated - because it has to be - and it is clear now that the logic of hegemony - no matter how attractive it may have seemed to many Bush supporters - simply doesn't work in isolation.

Here's a quote from Quinn - page 17 - describing the successful strategies he studied in corporations - which are complex groups - full of tensions:

Because each subsystem (in an enterprise) has its own cognitive limits, its strategies tended to be arrived at logically and incrementally. Consequently, the total enterprises' strategy - which had to deal with interactions of all the subsystem strateties - was also arrived at by an approach most appropriately described as "logical incrementalism"

In the hands of a skillful manager, such incrementalism was not muddling. It was purposeful, effective, proactive management technique for improving and integrating both the analytical and the behavioral aspects of strategy formation.

But basics were agreed on - and formed a template for coordinated focusing at the many levels needed.

Now - we need to learn to "agree to disagree" in ways that do not require fighting and do permit cooperation.

Because "connecting the dots" works so well - when "loop tests" are used - and when people ask for balance from many perspectives - there is a lot to hope for.

I don't think this thread has been a waste.

rshow55 - 03:43pm Sep 26, 2003 EST (# 14023 of 14030)
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.

But this thread is surely limited in some key ways. Some jobs - just because of the geometry of the situation, and the number of interconnections - need staffing.

cantabb - 04:06pm Sep 26, 2003 EST (# 14024 of 14030)

lchic - 03:03pm Sep 26, 2003 EST (# 14018 of 14023)

Cantabb

'You' can mean 'thou'

'You' can mean 'any reader'

'You' can mean that person to whom one is interacting with in a particular post - where there is a contribution to the board

---

Hint : Rather than swimming in minutiae, contribute to the discussion!

IF the above [on 'you'] is NOT the 'minutiae', I don't know what else it would be.

Hint: I am just responding to the posts directed to me [since my very first posts here].

Another hint: Wildly digressive monologues and bringing in totally unrelated things are DO NOT contribute to any "discussion."

rshow55 - 04:14pm Sep 26, 2003 EST (# 14025 of 14030)
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.

Cantabb - we disagree on some key things.

Maybe lchic and I have been like the mosquito in fredmoore's mosquito and the elephant joke. Bush and Putin know that answer. They also know what relation, if any, they have with almarst and gisterme . If that relation is at all close - at least at the level of simulation - a staffed "going over" of what has been said on this thread might be a useful way to clarify what each side thinks - and what disagreements are worth clarifying.

Some , it seems to me - are worth fighting about - in a controlled way - and that should be possible.

If there's interest in discourse patterns - http://www.mrshowalter.net/Sequential.htm surely offers a corpus.

Posts by Almarst are set out and posted separately at http://www.mrshowalter.net/PostsBy_Almarst.htm - a list of links which would take 130 pages to print.

Posts by Gisterme are set out and posted separately at http://www.mrshowalter.net/PostsBy_Gisterme.htm - which is a 32 page list of links.

- - - -

Here's a fact. It is often easier to sort things out at a relatively small scale - get things worked out at that relatively small scale - and then transer what has been learned to larger scales - where the stakes are much higher.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense