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 - 07:05pm Aug 29, 2002 EST (# 4007 of 4014)
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.

Are we effectively leading and collaborating in an international effort "Organizing the World to Fight Terror" ? Or are we defeating our own purposes? http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/27/opinion/27IVAN.html by IGOR S. IVANOV , Russian Foreign Minister

To sort out problems, including problems of peace (and the smaller related muddles of the missile defense boongoggle) people have to face the truth, tell the truth, and avoid misinformation. When right answers really count, they have to "connect the dots" ( MD1055 rshow55 4/4/02 7:54am ) so that patterns emerge -- and to check those patterns.

A point Krugman has been raising again and again within formats that don't get us to closure, on significant questions of fact. http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/303

When closure would be useful.

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/286

rshow55 - 07:09pm Aug 29, 2002 EST (# 4008 of 4014)
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.

To get to closure, sometimes there has to be a fight about facts and relations.

Some of the analogies to the Enron case are close. Enron was dominant - deferred to -- respected -- on the basis of a pattern of ornate but blatant deceptions. But the lies were unstable - - and once some key facts solidified - with clarity - and with many of the facts presented together in space and time, so people could see -- the fraud collapsed. An admirable collection of facts and circumstances, contributing to that instability is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/14/business/_ENRON-PRIMER.html Some key aspects of the US military-industrial-complex deserve analogous scrutiny. For it to happen, for it to be news, world leaders are going to have to ask for checking.

MD707 rshow55 3/20/02 8:42am

MD708 rshow55 3/20/02 9:36am

There may be some reason to hope for that. Had I not been tied up with a security problem, we would have made more progress. But a key difficulty stands against my proposal to get to closure about missile defense. Very many people, for many reasons of experience, doubt that it is possible to get to closure on anything that actually matters.

rshow55 - 07:11pm Aug 29, 2002 EST (# 4009 of 4014)
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.

Maybe I've been naively optimistic about the possibility of getting closure. Problem is, I had a naive and sentimental mentor.

Anyway, I sometimes think that Bill Casey was too naive, too soft, too unimaginative -- even moody and dumb. I think, hard boiled as Casey sometimes was, that he'd have been amazed and wrenched by some things that have happened to me, including events set out in http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7b085/193 ( Though the official involved was of higher rank than I described then, and is of higher journalistic rank by marriage now.)

And I think Casey would have been amazed and shamed by the fact that almost two years after my request of Sept 25, 2000 rshow55 4/21/02 3:22pm I'm still posting here - without having been given a chance to debrief.

The philosopher William James talked of the "cash value" of ideas - and thought people ought to concentrate on work that would have "cash value" - ideas that would matter to people.

Since Socrates's time, at the latest, here has been a key philosophical and practical problem -- one Bill Casey worried a lot about.

How can people be as smart, as beautiful, and as facile as they are?

and, knowing how well people often do --

How can people, individually and collectively, be so stupid, muddled, imperfect, and dishonest as we know they also are?

These are philosophical questions - but scientific, practical, and humane questions, as well.

Questions like "how do you make peace?" are related to both those questions. All reasonable open questions about missile defense are related to these questions.

We need better answers than we have for these questions - answers that can be put in workable, comfortable forms that can be explained to people and groups of all ages.

I know of no questions in philosophy or practical affairs with a higher "cash value." (These are trillion dollar questions - small subset questions, such as questions about anti-aircraft missile guidance, are themselves trillion dollar questions).

(5 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense