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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 - 08:18am Aug 31, 2002 EST (# 4054 of 4055)
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.

Landauer, Dumais, and co-workers made a big contribution - that had precedents, of course - but that made a big difference.

Landauer T.K. and Dumais, S.T. “A Solution to Plato’s Problem: The Latent Semantic Analysis Theory of Acquisition, Induction, and Representation of Knowledge” Psychological Review, v 104, n.2, 211-240, 1997 --- draft: http://lsi.argreenhouse.com/lsi/papers/PSYCHREV96.html

We're trying to clarify -- and simplify - - and generalize some of the basic points of Landauer, Dumais, and co-workers - and carry them further.

What's new is a clear sense of HOW VERY BIG the payoffs with simplification usually are -- how VERY likely checked sequences are to converge on useful (if imperfect) order. And how VERY large the number of checks often are.

Looking hard at the statistics of induction is worthwhile. That hard look lets us think about induction in a more orderly, hopeful way.

I have tremendous respect for the references cited in 3936-3945 rshow55 8/23/02 6:11pm

But it seems to me that as far as human welfare goes, lchic's rhyme, widely taught, might do as much good as all those references put together. In part by summarizing much of what those references teach. With an added "sense of the odds" that hasn't been taught enough.

Adults need secrets, lies and fictions
To live within their contradictions

If children and adults understood that - we'd be more humane, and solve more practical problems.

Before adults would let children learn lchic's little rhyme -- they'd have to learn some things themselves.

rshow55 - 08:31am Aug 31, 2002 EST (# 4055 of 4055)
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.

Why is it so hard for America to wake up?

We're dealing with basic things here, and a great deal of resistance to looking. On taxes, and simple arithmetic, and a lot of things where Welch's question is a good one - and in some ways a more cutting one than in 1954.

Missile defense discussion is relatively easy. If you can't show that the missile defense boondoggle is a mess - it is because, these days, you can't prove anything in the face of opposition.

If you can show that the missile defense boondoggle is a mess - you can set out some very clear judgements on other military-political issues, as well.

But perhaps reading instruction is an especially good example - it, too, is part of a "war" -- with some aspects hot, some cold. It, too, involves human hopes, good intentions, but terrible failures, too. And on the "reading wars" - almost everybody is on the same side about the things that matter. We share a sense of tragedy. There's another point about it. Both "liberals" (not so liberal, these days) and "conservatives" (often crazy radicals, when you check) can see patterns, on the part of "their" side in the reading wars - that are just the patterns that they criticise in politics - including the politics of missile defense.

C.P. Snow: 3999 rshow55 8/27/02 1:21pm

Simplicity isn't "mickey mouse":
4000 rshow55 8/27/02 3:51pm ... 4001 rshow55 8/27/02 4:06pm

In some ways, all wars are alike: Reading wars
4013 rshow55 8/29/02 7:18pm

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