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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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cantabb - 11:39am Sep 30, 2003 EST (# 14163 of 14165)

Re-formatted:

rshow55: The following postings, though extensive, ....... will be useful, I believe, if staffs wish to consider and coordinate arguments here -- or in threads in the future that use some of the crossreferencing techniques this thread shows.

You think "such crossreferencing techniques" are new or original ? What "techniques" ? Naive, to say the least !

rshow55 - 02:34pm Sep 30, 2003 EST (# 14164 of 14165)
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.

I'm working hard now to illustrate parts of those techniques at the interface between statistics and logic in detail - to post in a short form here - and a longer form on the Guardian - for your reference.

I appreciate your reformatted comment just above - it is in a form better fitted for a "little fight" that can converge.

Cites for Plato's Problem

http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md01000s/md1431_1433.htm http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md2000s/md2565.htm http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md5000s/md5361.htm http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md7000s/md7970.htm

Cites for Latent Semantic Analysis

http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md01000s/md1431_1433.htm http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md2000s/MD2076.HTM http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md2000s/md2565.htm http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md5000s/md5353.htm http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md5000s/md5361.htm http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md7000s/md7970.htm

These citations are linked but not identical.

I'm not being totally original, by any means - but I do think that some useful clarification is happening - that can be worthwhile.

http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md01000s/md1431_1433.htm includes this:

A Solution to Plato's Problem: The Latent Semantic Analysis Theory of Acquisition, Induction and Representation of Knowledge by Thomas K. Landauer and Susan Dumais ..... (Landauer is at the Department of Psychology, University of Colorado, Boulder, and Dumais is now at Microsoft.)

"Here is a draft of that paper, which was accepted with revisions, and published in Psychological Review, v104, n.2, 211-240, 1997 http://lsi.argreenhouse.com/lsi/papers/PSYCHREV96.html

Landauer and Dumais draw this basic conclusion:

" " . . . with respect to (correlations) supposed to allow the learning of language and other large bodies of complexly structured knowledge, domains in which there are very many facts each weakly related to very many others, effective simulation may require data sets of the same size and content as those encountered by human learners. Formally, that is because weak local constraints can combine to produce strong local effects in aggregate(9).

" ". . . a particular computational arrangement is not assumed.

" " We, of course, intend no claim that the mind or brain actually computes a singular value decomposition on a perfectly remembered event-by-context matrix of its lifetime experience using the mathematical machinery of complex sparse-matrix manipulation algorithms. What we suppose is merely that the mind-brain stores and reprocessed its input in some manner that has approximately the same effect(10)."

Working out in more detail, step by step - how that happens - and how we get far beyond it - is essential - I think - in a number of areas. It is also dead center on a job I promised Casey I'd do.

I'm working, sorry if I can't move as quickly as we'd both like. I hope you'll find my efforts clear - even if you find them trivial. If they are merely interesting enough to teach in elementary school, I'd be more than satisfied.

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