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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 - 11:50am Oct 4, 2003 EST (# 14292 of 14294)

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

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

Hope your “mathematics” and “applied mathematics” considers and includes ‘facts’, properly verified [“checked out”] for relevance and needed statistical analysis. Without that, you're most likely to get a “SCATTER” instead of any “converge.” Wouldn’t your repetitious posting of the same disjointed unverified facts/opinions here also be a form of “endless series”?

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

“Specific things” could well be a facts/fiction blend.

What “specific things” are YOU are referring to in your OWN effort here ? Asked this numerous times, without a “specific” answer, YET.

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

REALLY ? Your “brain” or the brain in general ?

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

ALL in a serious scientific piece ? Awww !

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

fredmoore , Shakespeare, and politics.

These three in the same sentence ?

rshow55 - 12:25pm Oct 4, 2003 EST (# 14293 of 14294)
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.

No problem putting those three in the same sentence.

Thanks for your excellent recent posts, Cantab . I appreciate the civility. It makes it easier for me to respond.

Here's a thought for a grant proposal title, and key questions to be considered:

Conditions for convergence and divergence in human discourse and negotiation - large scale study.

Sometimes a lot of complexity organizes itself - when careful people insist on internal and external consistency, and keep at it - and it seems to me that that is happening now. http://www.mrshowalter.net/Similitude_ForceRatios_sjk.htm discusses a kind of organization that may be "unoriginal" - but is very useful - as it happened in fluid mechanics - through the work of Steve Kline - as an example of some organization that could and should happen elsewhere, I believe.

How does it happen? How does the process misfire or go wrong? How can we make it go right more often?

- - - - -

My guess is that foundations would be very interested if they knew who was actually contributing on this board.

It happens that I'm working trying to answer your questions.

One thing I'd suggest - just as a conjecture - is that every one of the basic rules and conditions people use to evaluate convergence and divergence of series has an analog in discourse.

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