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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?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

rshow55 - 11:11am May 11, 2002 EST (#2156 of 2162)

So God's Really in the Details? by Emily Eakin http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/11/arts/11GOD.html ...is a wonderful, wonderful piece! In that article (and a wonderful illustration in the print paper) some basics about the strengths and unavoidable weaknesses of probability arguments are set out vividly.

Eakin doesn't, in those few words, set out everything in Scientific Reasoning: the Baysian Approach by Howson and Urbach, ..... or everything that J.M. Keynes wrote in A Treatise on Probability . .. . But how clear she is about what she shows!

And what her piece implies about what checking can and cannot do.

What are the odds? You have to check.

A "baysian probabilty" is a construction that attempts to "connect the dots" after a somehow reasonable "collecting of the dots."

The more dots, and the more different ways to check parts and pieces, the more reliable an explanation for a particular purpose can be.

MD2116 rshow55 5/9/02 9:34am

rshow55 - 11:12am May 11, 2002 EST (#2157 of 2162)

A Man Who Would Shake Up Science by EDWARD ROTHSTEIN http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/11/arts/11WOLF.html is fascinating, as well.

the search for evidence matters when it matters, for the reasons it matters -- and those reasons can be compelling. Krugman's been dealing with problems of that kind, and Smoking Fat Boy http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/10/opinion/10KRUG.html is another fine example.

When the stakes are high enough -- and when decent decisions have to be made -- times may come where checking has to be morally forcing -- and the techniques of checking have to be competent. These days, on these issues, there's room for improvement.

lchic - 12:06pm May 11, 2002 EST (#2158 of 2162)

For its part, the industry must continue to look at its structure. Fragmentation of the industry into more than 100 parts has created an unstable environment [Rail : UK ] http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/transport/story.jsp?story=293901
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/transport/story.jsp?story=293906

lchic - 12:12pm May 11, 2002 EST (#2159 of 2162)

RU : PU : tactics
^{http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,713456,00.html}

rshow55 - 12:23pm May 11, 2002 EST (#2160 of 2162)

With information flows as they are, with hardware as old as it is, and with the complications involved -- our nuclear arrangements just about have to be unstable, too. I worry about it. That could destroy the world.

How could anybody check - a real person - with real distractions - with the mechanics of concealment that is actually in place?

The technical parts of the question - "how do you check" have been a major subject of this board, since September 2000 -- and remain so.

The things required to actually check missile defense are the things required to actually check many other things that also matter.

Matters of life and death. Matters of propriety. Matter of interest and comfort.

Missile defense is a major issue - discussed here, and elsewhere.

On questions of the mechanics of verification -- discussion where the NYT staff can see it is important - because the NYT is in an almost unique position to exercise leadership on the subject of checking MD2101 rshow55 5/8/02 7:51pm .

rshow55 - 12:35pm May 11, 2002 EST (#2161 of 2162)

I'm having to spend time on solar energy questions, and that's going well, and is enjoyable. But it is important to talk about questions of checking that apply to missile defense and much else.

Some of that mechanics is set out in links in MD1076 rshow55 4/4/02 1:20pm . . . and a good deal could be set up, fairly quickly I believe, if I could be either "completely unshackled" MD2131 rshow55 5/9/02 8:41pm or have my situation with respect to security rules defined in a way I could understand, and explain to others.

It seems to me that if the government wishes to restrict any product of my mind in any way based on national security law - they should talk to me about what the restrictions are.

I do not personally believe that there is a single thing that I have ever written on this thread, or any guardian thread, that ought to be considered classified or restricted by classification laws in any way.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense