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 - 03:56am Nov 13, 2003 EST (# 17481 of 17481)
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.

My 26 October letter to Sulzberger includes this.

A tremendous amount of my effort on the Missile Defense board has been to solve TECHNICAL problems of negotiating stable outcomes to "games" and negotiations, including those that result in wars, that involve complexity, competition, cooperation and high emotional stakes. These problems have been major barriers to progress in international relations and commerce.

I think . . . . we're quite close to a situation where general and simple solutions to this class of problems can be demonstrated and explained so that they can be solved routinely and practically. With a model of the kind of solution needed in general worked out - in the presence of a record that I believe many people and organizations can and will learn from.

The question is how you produce a "win win" solution under circumstances where negative sum outcomes are also possible, and instabilities are a problem. Currently, such circumstances result in stasis, unnecessary losses, and wars.

At the end of my phone call to Apcar, I felt all that was very close. It has slipped away. Since that time, there have been missteps, stasis, unnecessary losses, and a great deal of posting on the Missile Defense thread that might be described as a "little war."

I'd hoped to resolve the problems involved in a few hours of face to face contact. That would have been, and I think should have been possible.

I'd also hoped to be able to help the NYT make a great deal of money in ways "the average reader of The New York Times" would root for. And make some for myself, too.

There's an interesting scene, early in My Fair Lady - where Eliza tries to hit Higgins up for the price of some flowers - where the right is not necessarily on her side. Higgins refuses to treat her as a human being - but does, as if by accident, drop more money than was being discussed on the wet street at her feet - as he shuns her. Much of the behavior of The New York Times to me, to the rest of the journalism profession, and to the rest of the world, is too much like that. I believe that detracts quite significantly from both the status and the bottom line of the newspaper that puts:

" All the news that's fit to print"

on the upper left corner of its front page.

Anyway, my sleep cycle has been disrupted - and there's only so much I can hope to do before the this thread closes. I'm going to sleep for a little while - and then finish a letter that may not interest NYT people - but may interest some others.

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense