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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 (14621 previous messages)

rshow55 - 09:03am Oct 8, 2003 EST (# 14622 of 14638)
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.

Some key code insights - journalistic insights - human insights - are being condensed - throughout society and here.

They connect to missile defense - the military-industrial complex generally - and to any humanly significant sociotechnical subject matter. Because of the way human logic works - because of the logic of the physical world - and because we are all human beings - and animals -fundamentally so similar to each other that groups of us actually laugh at the same jokes.

Human beings "connect the dots" in these ways:

We connect the dots in an associative-statistical way that works much like the way Latent Semantic Analysis works - and extracts very good guides for guessing about meaning based on what things associate with others - and how closely. Google and other search engines depend on Latent Semantic Analysis -and now we all do.

We connect the dots in ways that seem to work as well as "connecting dots" to interpret curves (which can be interpolated or extrapolated) to form curves and images. http://www.mrshowaler.net/pap2 suggests a way that may work. We know that something like that does work.

We go much farther than this - connecting entities with schema - story patterns that combine images or symbols of images, geometry or symbols of geometry - and connections of the form noun - verb - object in linked and multiply interlinked patterns. Animals must do something very close to this, too - to do what they do. People take these capacities farther.

We humans have taken our "connecting of entities" into schema very far - and have developed a condensed, symbolic language for it that we can communicate our schema to each other. This is language.

We have many ways of checking, and crosschecking - both for internal consistency and for consistency with things outside ourselves that we can check.

Now, biologically in an instant - we have machine-mediated means to do all these things more powerfully - and to remember and organize and score how we do these things. This thread, and some others - are illustrating uses of these tools.

cantabb - 09:29am Oct 8, 2003 EST (# 14623 of 14638)

rshow55 - 09:03am Oct 8, 2003 EST (# 14623 of 14623)

Some key code insights - journalistic insights - human insights - are being condensed - throughout society and here.

They connect to missile defense - the military-industrial complex generally - and to any humanly significant sociotechnical subject matter...

NOTHING you show here says you can automatically find all the "dots"/"relevant facts," and "connect" them rationally too.

Question here is MD-specific, NOT linguistic or anything else you want to bring in.

Now, biologically in an instant - we have machine-mediated means to do all these things more powerfully - and to remember and organize and score how we do these things. This thread, and some others - are illustrating uses of these tools.

We know LOT more about brain function and physiology now, this NYT thread is NOT the ONLY proof of that -- however, this thread does show how skewed and screwed up these physiological functions can also get in some cases.

This basic biology, according to a self-described "math maven" -- while he continues to dodge the basic questions on his activities and the claims he makes here !

rshow55 - 09:33am Oct 8, 2003 EST (# 14624 of 14638)
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 - call me on the phone - tell me how I can identify you - and after I'm sure who you are we can talk in interactive ways that are more effective than this thread offers in some key ways.

You might be surprised how much would get clear.

You might even be surprised at how fast it would happen.

jorian319 - 10:03am Oct 8, 2003 EST (# 14625 of 14638)
"Statements on frequently important subjects are interesting." -rshow55

tell me how I can identify you

Whothehell would do a stupid thing like that?

You can identify him by his handle: c-a-n-t-a-b-b

If you are under the delusion that anyone here wants to follow the path of gisterme, who has been stalked unmercifully for no other crime than making sense, you are in worse shape than I thought.

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 [F] New York Times on the Web Forums  / Science  / Missile Defense