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.

rshow55 - 07:13pm Oct 19, 2003 EST (# 15249 of 15263)
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.

Medical History's Oddballs Go Prime Time By RANDI HUTTER EPSTEIN http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/16/health/16HIST.html

The medical oddballs today who feel shunned by mainstream practitioners can take comfort, for better or worse, in a new mini-series on medical history that makes heroes of fanatical scientists of yesteryear. To say the least, they lacked tact.

Imagine the reaction to Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, a surly Hungarian, who called his colleagues murderers because they refused to wash their hands between autopsies and delivering babies. He was onto something (hygiene) but lacked people skills. Dr. Semmelweis died in a mental hospital, but hand-washing eventually caught on.

If you look at the full history of the Semmelweis story - one has to ask - considering that he was a human being, dealing with other human beings in a social system, with the cognitive limits he had and others had - with aversion to change and challenges as it was, and always is - and with his limitations of time and power - what else was there to do but get into a fight?

How, exactly, might a "tactful" apporach have worked ?

Semmelweis did the best he could - and millions of innocent people died in wrenching circumstances because he was not listened to.

People didn't understand their logical limitations - didn't have patterns of exception handling that were workable - and results were far, far uglier than they had to be.

Paradigm Shift .... whose getting there? deals with the Semmelweis story, and related stories - here and elsewhere.

3: http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/2

5: http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/4

29: http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/33

46: http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/51

( Almost the whole Paradigm thread is here - and more than a meg - http://www.mrshowalter.net/Paradigm1_Recent.htm )

In paradigm conflict, the urge to punish cheats misfires http://www.mrshowalter.net/UrgeToPunishCheatsNotJustHumanButSelfless.htm

People involved have big difficulties with cognitive limits - and emotions run high http://www.mrshowalter.net/PiagetCognitiveLimits.htm

And the stakes are high. An institutional solution to the problem - that would work well enough to reduce losses from paradigm conflict down significantly - was suggested here:

http://www.mrshowalter.net/ScienceInTheNewsJan4_2000.htm

If the rule " never fight" is strong enough - it is easy to make someone who asks for big changes the bad guy - for instance - Galelio can be described as "the bad guy" - http://www.mrshowalter.net/Contrarian'sContrarian.htm .

But if good decisions are to be made by society - sometimes (relatively seldom, but sometimes) there do have to be fights.

http://www.mrshowalter.net/ScienceInTheNewsJan4_2000.htm suggests a mechanism, involving existiing institutions and procedures - that would handle such fights at the level of ideas - could do it with much greater fairness than today - and could do it at low cost.

http://www.mrshowalter.net/ScienceInTheNewsJan4_2000.htm starts with this:

In "Geniuses, Crackpots and a Grand Unified Theory" JAMES GLANZ makes an important point. People with ideas off of the mainstream, right or wrong, are a nuisance. There's an extraordinary presumption against them. That presumption is statistically justified. Nor are individual scientists, or scientific organizations, or journalistic operations, well set up to handle them.

and ends with this:

If a scientist, to scientific group

(14 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense