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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 (14900 previous messages)

rshow55 - 03:19pm Oct 13, 2003 EST (# 14901 of 14912)
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.

In 1999, the guy who claims to have the best job in the world - though maybe not the top job at the NYT - wrote The Lexus and The Olive Tree - with a lot of NYT connections involved. The thrust was that, with the new communication technologies - we'd get a lot straight. A very optimistic book.

After 9/11, he wrote this:

Global Villiage Idiocy http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/12/opinion/12FRIE.html was summarized by the TIMES as follows:

"Thanks to the Internet and satellite TV, the world is being wired together technologically, but not socially, politically or culturally."

Friedman's piece includes this:

"If there's one thing I learned from this trip to Israel, Jordan, Dubai and Indonesia, it's this: thanks to the Internet and satellite TV, the world is being wired together technologically, but not socially, politically or culturally. We are now seeing and hearing one another faster and better, but with no corresponding improvement in our ability to learn from, or understand, one another. So integration, at this stage, is producing more anger than anything else. . . . " At its best, the Internet can educate more people faster than any media tool we've ever had. At its worst, it can make people dumber faster than any media tool we've ever had. . . . . . the uneducated believe information from ( the internet) even more. They don't realize that the Internet, at its ugliest, is just an open sewer: an electronic conduit for untreated, unfiltered information.

"Worse, just when you might have thought you were all alone with your extreme views, the Internet puts you together with a community of people from around the world who hate all the things and people you do. And you can scrap the BBC and just get your news from those Web sites that reinforce your own stereotypes."

Some bad patterns do converge - but to sort that out - we have to get some logic straight - and be more honest.

And if we can't get convergence about a boondoggle like MD - that's because our discourse patterns are still a mess.

We need to sort them out - and even the glorious New York Times may have to do some adjusting.

bbbuck - 03:19pm Oct 13, 2003 EST (# 14902 of 14912)

mazza9 posted a picture of himself?

where's that picture of lunatichic?

And how damn many people am I anyway? I've lost count.

"I am spartacus".

bluenova: or klanman: "Still haven't heard from the mods[moderators]"

good one.

rshow55 - 03:30pm Oct 13, 2003 EST (# 14903 of 14912)
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.

Ordinary discourse - conversation - communication most of the time on most channels - is largely

"untreated, unfiltered information"

How is it that people get so much straight?

Even the high shots at the NYT could use clearer answers.

- -

We connect a lot of "dots" in a lot of ways - at a lot of scales. And loops are often involved - and have to be involved for focusing. Here's an example.

When the target is a nuclear tipped missile - and the job is "hitting a bullet with a bullet" the standard systems questions become especially awkward for the defense - and can be thought of in a loop structure.

For i = 1 to infinity

1. For a specific missile target - specify "How in detail can the defense system see , hit and destroy the target. "

2. Given a specific defensive system with specific affirmative answers to 1. above - "How can the offensive target system be modified to defeat the defense? "

Repeat and reanalyze - in a loop.

"Going around" this loop - even just in your head - gets you clearer on what interconnects - what issues are - and gets more things focused enough so that they can be tested.

Unless people say "no fair checking" whenever anybody with power actually objects.

That happens very often now.

Many different, interrellated loops make for clarity.

But they aren't patterns you'd want in a newspaper.

But prize-winning articles in newspapers get their effects from homogeneous responses on the part of their readers that come because there is so much going round and round to clarity.

People are very much alike because of processes that naturally converge - that usually work very well, and sometimes misfire.

klsanford0 - 03:49pm Oct 13, 2003 EST (# 14904 of 14912)

Jorian:

" I will defend to the death her right to be boring, incoherent and irrelevant."

Ha!....perhaps even Tom Paine would have to re-think free speech if confronted by the Colossus of Showalter...

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