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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 - 08:18am Oct 28, 2003 EST (# 15769 of 15786)
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 applied math and lots of pure math connected to calculus - people work with differential equations that show very good or perfect rules about how things happen often with undetermined coefficients (magnitudes) for particular terms. For a model equation with undetermined coefficients - the addition of facts about where something started and stopped can determine the coefficients - and predict what happened in places where the data are not available. If, for some reason, the coefficients are already determined - the addition of a single fact ( a single value of the function) determines the function everywhere else where the model is defined.

In this way - people can understand a great deal more than they could from raw data. Facts and causal models are combined - and mutually defined.

Facts - that fit into a set of otherwise known relations or rules - can play a role - sometimes a very important role - in modelling what happened.

You need models and facts together - and you start with what you happen to have - one can start with facts first, or a model first - and crosschecking crossvalidates the patterns of facts and relations in question.

jorian319 - 08:20am Oct 28, 2003 EST (# 15770 of 15786)
The earth spin rate is slowing 2 msc/day as evidenced by the additon of a leap second every 500 days - James "I failed math" Nienhuis

rshow55 - 08:18am Oct 28, 2003 EST (# 15769 of 15769)

So what?

cantabb - 08:26am Oct 28, 2003 EST (# 15771 of 15786)

rshow55 - 08:18am Oct 28, 2003 EST (# 15769 of 15770)

You need models and facts together - and you start with what you happen to have - one can start with facts first, or a model first - and crosschecking crossvalidates the patterns of facts and relations in question.

BUT do you think you have either the "facts" [the so-called "dots"] or the "model" YET ?

Still floundering around ? With your loyal followers, lchic & fredmoore ?

rshow55 - 08:36am Oct 28, 2003 EST (# 15772 of 15786)
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.

If you have a complicated mess - if the facts that actually matter for a decision are clarified - a lot can be sorted out - and quite often well enough that good solutions are possible.

It seems to me that if we're to solve problems, leaders and followers must both, must each, try to exercise good judgement. Good judgement takes some switching. And leaders and followers need to expect good judgement from each other.

Here are facts that it seems to me are basic - things that we all know - and have to know at some level - from about the time we learn to talk.

People say and do things

What people say and do have consequences, for themselves and for other people.

People need to deal with and understand these consequences, for all sorts of practical, down to earth reasons.

. So everybody has a stake in right answers to questions of fact that they use as assumptions when they think about what they say and what they do.

If the bolded point, just above, were more widely and deeply understood - and linked to the simple points just above it -- a great many things in the world would be better - and people, just as they are, could solve many of the most important and practical problems they face.

We are now in a situation where "the powers that be" are very often against checking - where checking is prohibited whenever anybody with real power actually objects.

A great many problems would sort out if that changed. That change, if it occurred boradly, would be a paradigm shift.

That change, if it happened in my particular case on a few key facts - would permit me and the NYT to sort out every problem we have between us that actually matters in a way that would be win-win - and for both of us.

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