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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 - 04:45am Nov 7, 2003 EST (# 16727 of 16729)
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.

Here are links that are relevant

16574 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.glPrby0rWmm.1951323@.f28e622/18289

Had a talk with the NYT line guy I've referred to before. I was glad we had a chance to converse

I'm not sure the line guy I talked to knew my key concerns until we talked a little while - - and I wasn't nearly as clear about his concerns prior to talking. Formats do what they do - and a thread like this - superb for some things - is inadequate for others.

16589 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.glPrby0rWmm.1951323@.f28e622/18304

It appears that there will be no face to face meeting - and that one isn't needed in this case. I hope that the paragraph above will work out in essentials, with this modification:

I'm hoping that the Missile Defense thread - after one or a few phone conversations referring to and clarifying correspondence and an exchange of short letters, (one of which seems fine now) will clearly demonstrate how to solve the TECHNICAL problems of negotiating stable outcomes to complex games involving both competition and cooperation. In a case big enough to study, but not too big. With real stakes, but not stakes too high to permit intelligent function of intelligent people. Maybe that's really going to be possible.

One thing I'm looking forward to is a chance to comfortably and safely write a very warm thank-you letter to The New York Times.

16633 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.glPrby0rWmm.1951323@.f28e622/18348 includes this:

One can give much weight to those considerations ( of confidentiality ) - and still worry about issues of logical structure and manipulation. Under the usages MIT is using - it makes some sense to think about logical analogs of the

. Interactive Graphic: How the Partnerships Worked available at http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/14/business/_ENRON-PRIMER.html

. If people can have private conversations that others know nothing about - and wish to manipulate the picture to be presented of a circumstance - there are as many ways to bend the truth as Enron found to shuffle accounting - and more. These shell games have to be subject to some checking - if anything is to be checkable at all - and if any really complex cooperative sequences are to be consistently constructable.

There are strong arguments for confidentiality and social fictions. There are very strong arguments for openness , too. You need both stances - and reasonable decisions about how to switch from one to the other - that people can agree on well enough to do their work and work together.

There's no contradiction at all - but it takes care.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense