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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 - 09:42am Oct 21, 2003 EST (# 15344 of 15346)
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.

Somebody might be interested in a Cast of Characters for this thread http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.VsacbHF1QsQ.3833007@.f28e622/14978

I heard somewhere that the truth can sometimes converge.

Even "oscillitory sequences" can focus.

( Note I didn't say "oscillatory solutions." )

Some married couples fight all the time - about everything - - it goes round and round.

In some ways they get clearer about how they hate each other (and the hatred may be diluted with some grudging reservations)

Or they may get clearer about how much they love each other ( again, with reservations. )

We do need to learn to do some things differently - using old ways that work - and maybe even find ways to make them better.

For stability in interaction of people and groups - we have to learn to do that better.

Right answers that are right "every reasonable way you look at them" can often converge - and such answers are precious - and worth working for. And the ways that they occur are forseeable - just as patterns of divergence are forseeable.

But to be "right" for some purposes, you have to be "wrong" for others - and it helps to consider both the purposes and the posters. http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.VsacbHF1QsQ.3833007@.f28e622/14978

lchic - 09:56am Oct 21, 2003 EST (# 15345 of 15346)
ultimately TRUTH outs : TRUTH has to be morally forcing : build on TRUTH it's a strong foundation

Expert Systems

http://www.cee.hw.ac.uk/~alison/ai3notes/chapter2_5.html

rshow55 - 09:57am Oct 21, 2003 EST (# 15346 of 15346)
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.

Lchic and I have been working on a number of issues connected to the idea of getting "canonicity" - as that word is used technically, by "connecting the dots" ( every which way ) and keeping at it.:

7564-7567 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.VsacbHF1QsQ.3833007@.f28e622/9087

canonical equations - are transforms from one perspective, in one set of variables - to a fully consistent other perspective, in related but different variables. One where you can jump back and forth, and keep track of the information that is perserved, and the information that is lost.

7879 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.VsacbHF1QsQ.3833007@.f28e622/9404

The notion of canonicity is important - and a notion that I'm trying to elaborate and focus. We need order, symmetry, harmony - in necessary conventional orders - and mixed up orders, and every which way - in ways that fit the real aesthetic needs of the decent people involved. Impossible? Certainly, in a sense. But we can do much better than we've done.

This board goes some way toward showing how

The questions of "who is the bad guy" and "who is the good guy" don't have to be preserved from perspective to perspective - to get clarity, stability, and good answers on many things that mattter.

I'm trying to show how to do a fair negotiation from all the perspectives that matter - in the presence of mutual threat and mixed motives - between me and the New York Times. Without asking that the question of "who is the good guy" be a subject of agreement. Problem is, I'm trying to do it while fencing on this board - - and I can be very much weakened by laughing.

Still, progress, it seems to me, gets made.

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