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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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mazza9 - 12:16pm Aug 3, 2002 EST (#3436 of 3445)
"Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

Robert:

I injected the statement, not to test your Latin, but to test your premise of connecting the dots and verification. This question is as old as the language and circumstances from which it arose.

You appear to be trying to apply mathematics to obtain perfection of thought and action. Yet people are like the Heisenberg priciple. To measure their position is an imprecise and multi variable activity. Therefore, the solution is imprecise.

It is arrogant to suppose that one individual, (except maybe Jesus), could direct our actions. Indeed, the Judeo Christian rules are quite comprehensive and yet we still have war and misery. Could it be the free will is the variable which will argue against your premise.

Be that as it may or "quae cum ita sunt", missile defense will work where your labors are DOOMED!

rshow55 - 12:39pm Aug 3, 2002 EST (#3437 of 3445)

Verification, a focusing of "connecting of the dots" often works very well indeed -- if there are places where we're fuzzy, there are many others where people become clear. And progress can occur, and often does.

Now efforts to interject doubt and muddle - to postpone or destroy focus -- can be quite effective - especially in the absence of effective umpires. And you're a master at it.

And such efforts can justify paying people like you a lot of money - - after all, military expenditures are VERY large.

You say something interesting:

"You appear to be trying to apply mathematics to obtain perfection of thought and action."

Sometimes, and in a limited and focused sense, yes.

I am working to apply statistical and mathematical principles that people have been using in their minds for millions of years - and that permit us to accomplish almost all the good things that we actually do -- in a few spots where we are more muddled than we should be. We should be able to do things that we often do quite well, a little better.

There are plenty of examples where people understand specific, limited things perfectly well in terms of a defined context. And there should be some more examples - when the stakes are high enough to justify the work.

They are high enough to justify the work on the subjects we've been discussing on this thread.

I stand by what I wrote in rshow55 8/2/02 9:22am . . . and ask again. What are priorities for you Johnson - Mazza?

I'm not asking for perfection, from you or me or anybody else. But after all your postings -- what ARE your priorities?

rshow55 - 01:11pm Aug 3, 2002 EST (#3438 of 3445)

A CD archiving of this thread has been significantly improved since md3145 rshowalt 7/19/02 9:16am . . . and is now on 8cm disks - with postings linked to a calender, so that this thread can be followed from its beginnings in March 2000 -- day by day. There's much left to do. For instance, I've got more than 300 searches, linked by topic, connected to this thread that can be added. But the thread is shown in good detail - and that seems worthwhile - since a reasonable accounting of the labor costs and institutional costs it represents would exceed a million dollars by now - - and the thread discusses matters of life, death (and prosperity) that matter to everyone.

md3146 rshowalt 7/19/02 9:19am points out that this thread has included and linked to copyrighted material from the following sources:

The New York Times .....Guardian Newspapers
Acronym Institute .... American Institute of Physics
Asia Times . . . Australian Broadcasting Company
BBC . . . Brookings Institution
ChinaOnline . . . . Center for Strategic and International Studies
Center for Defense Information . . . . Common Dreams
Council on Foreign Relations . . . . . Cato Institute
Citizens for Legitimate Government . . . . Dawn [Pakistan] Group of Newspapers
The Economist . . . . . FAS
Financial Times group . . . . .International Crisis Group
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War . . . . King & Spalding
Los Angeles Times . . . . The Mercury
Massachusetts Institute of Technology . . . .Moscow Times
MSNBC . . . National Cable Satellite Corporation
The New Criterion . . . . News Limited
Online Journal . . . . PBS
Pravda . . . . Rockford Institute
St. Petersburg Times . . . . Telegraph Group Limited
Terrorism Research Center . . . . Time Inc.
Times [London] Newspapers . . . . The Trustees of Indiana University
University of Wisconsin-Madison . . . . . Washington Post
The Weekend Australian . . . . chinadaily.com.cn
democratic-alliance.com . . . GlobalSecurity.org
holocaustrevealed.org . . . . NationalSecurity.org
theworldnews.com.au . . . . . worldpolicy.org
WorldTribune.com . . . .

These organizations have different interests - but they DO have a shared interest in checkable truth - - because the world is so complicated that to get decent arrangements, people sometimes need to know what the facts actually are. And it is sometimes worth the work to find those facts out - by a combination of thought and checking.

This thread has shown some things about how that checking can get done.

Complicated problems of shared interest can very often be worked out. md3147 rshowalt 7/19/02 9:24am

Am I overstating in MD1999 rshow55 5/4/02 10:39am ? Maybe, but it still seems to me that this thread includes a lot that is worthwhile, a lot to be proud of -- and a lot, I think, for The New York Times to be proud of.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense