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 [F] 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.


Earliest Messages Previous Messages Recent Messages Outline (14286 previous messages)

rshow55 - 05:08am Oct 4, 2003 EST (# 14287 of 14292)
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.

Shakespeare lived before there was much math - but he'd have understood the connections to math needed here, I think.

There are functions.

Rates of change of functions.

Rates of change of rates of change of functions.

Rates of change of rates of change of rates of change of functions.

and so on

- and though this may seem "circular" or "philosophically meaningless" - the fact is that "endless series" solutions involving these things (derivatives and derivatives of derivatives) are central to most of the key results of applied mathematics - and pure mathematics, too. Often - these sequences - properly chosen - converge.

In animal logic - especially human logic - some "intermediate processing" that is analogous goes on.

There are actions.

People think about their actions.

People think about how they think about their actions.

People think about how they think about how they think about (specific things)

People think about how they and specified others think about (specific things) in specific ways.

and so on - in complex recursive sequences . .

Often these patterns not only "go round and round" - they converge.

THE PATTERNS THAT CONVERGE CAN BE REMARKABLY SIMPLE, COMPACT, POWERFUL, AND FIT TO PURPOSE.

Like f = ma .

The process is partly statistical - and partly logical. We'd be better human beings - in senses Shakespeare would understand - and other ways, too - if we knew this.

And SAFER.

Moves in that direction are going on in this thread. And even if you discount my work entirely - some excellent entertaining minds are involved. ( For instance, search Fredmoore ).

http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.JijcbXfKLlj.459469@.f28e622/14463

A sense of what I've tried to do, and hopes worked on, is set out in a piece I wrote in the old How The Brain Works forum

http://www.mrshowalter.net/bw2203_apology.htm

That piece, read now -has elements of tragedy. Elements of comedy - and farce. And is involved with interesting stories.

rshow55 - 05:31am Oct 4, 2003 EST (# 14288 of 14292)
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.

fredmoore , Shakespeare, and politics.

12982 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.JijcbXfKLlj.459469@.f28e622/14658

13003-6 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.JijcbXfKLlj.459469@.f28e622/14679

cantabb - 11:33am Oct 4, 2003 EST (# 14289 of 14292)

lchic - 04:05am Oct 4, 2003 EST (# 14284 of 14287)

This begs the question - If Shakespeare were Commander-in-Chief today and acknowledged for his 'generousity of spirit towards humanity' - then: How would Tudor-Bill handle the 'Terrorist Question', Iraq, and Missile Defense.

More irrelevancies from you. Including just the words [“Missile Defense”] is NOT going to make it relevant. Childish.

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