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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 - 07:01am Oct 6, 2003 EST (# 14395 of 14398)
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.

There are promises one makes that one doesn't have to keep. Everybody knows it - or should - and the culture tries to teach that point from an early age.

A classic of that teaching - with limitations that have concerned me and lchic - is

. Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr Seuss 1940

Horton Hatches the Egg has an interesting plot - an elephant is conned by a big bird into sitting on his nest "for just a little while" - does so - and the bird skips - leaving Horton stranded.

And Horton stays. After all, he promised. And stays - and stays - and stays . . . This phrase is repeated in the book:

I meant what I said.

And I said what I meant

An Elephant's faithful

100 percent !

The lesson - which kids just barely percieve, but don't get - is that there are some promises that you can't keep - and shouldn't.

The kids don't get it because cognitively they cannot figure it out for themselves http://www.mrshowalter.net/PiagetCognitiveLimits.htm - just as kids cannot figure out how to tie their own shoes, without help.

On teaching lessons like that - the admonition "teach early and often - and you'll get results after a while" makes sense. Kids need to be told the lessons that are being taught - in short form -as well as long form. To help them "figure things out for themselves" - as we all figure out the definitions of many tens of thousands of word - but with that figuring out in a context where the focusing is biologically possible.

Kids and their parents might both be better off if they learned one of lchic's poems http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.oIcJbRwPL7Y.733136@.f28e622/3745 . And in a little while, that poem might be learned it with a small addition: http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.oIcJbRwPL7Y.733136@.f28e622/3784 . For teaching Horton's lesson - it would be good to teach these poems, or repeat them - at about the same time - or exactly the same time - that they read the Horton story.

I'm here because I choose to be here - and because, considering everything - I think it is my duty to be here. Some people with power agree, at least partially - and they are doing their duty as they see it, too - at least partially.

rshow55 - 07:07am Oct 6, 2003 EST (# 14396 of 14398)
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.

On the last day of last year, I posted 7145-6 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.oIcJbRwPL7Y.733136@.f28e622/8668

Lunarchick and I have been worrying some about control theory - and related matters with close connections to life and death, peace and war, prosperity and muddle.

If you're trying to build something that works (or if evolution is to produce a successful result) - these very basic principles, or dimensions, are vitally important - at every level, and in detail.

. Order

. Symmetry

. Harmony

Usually in that order, though there have to be exceptions. Sometimes you have to mix them up. But if something is to develop (or evolve) that works - these principles, in interaction together, are important again and again.

Sometimes there are assemblies that are designed (or evolved, or some of both) - and if they are subject to a lot of work - over a lot of time (or a lot of evolution) patterns happen - with very good order, very good symmetry, and complete harmony witin the system itself, and in the system as it is placed in the system (environment) that it is a part of.

But things that are perfect for one purpose can be perfectly awful for some other purpose - and so sometimes there have to be exceptions. After all, sometimes a system has to do different things at different times, or has to fit into different contexts. The more specialized and perfect that system is for one job - the more ill fit it can be for another. If both jobs need to be served - there is a "contradiction" - a need for exception handling according to a pattern that may be more or less mechanical.

And the exception handling, after a while, if things are complicated and there are a lot of things going on, has to be organized itself, and becomes another system - connected to the first, lower system - with ways of changing or switching that lower system in detailed ways, through interfaces with the components.

. . .

And a system of exception handling - or exception handling system trimming - if it is complex enough, or exists in a complicated enough context, will itself involve conflicts, or problems, or situationally inappropriate responses that require a higher level of control.

And so on.

Things sort themselves out into levels - the image in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs by William G. Huitt Essay and Image : http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/regsys/maslow.html is a clear, important, and general example of a heirarchical system with controls and interfaces of mutual constraint.

Look at the picture.

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