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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 - 09:19am Aug 31, 2002 EST (# 4057 of 4069)
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.

If Bill Casey were looking down, I think he'd be very proud of me. Though not of his old agency.

We're learning a lot about what war is - how diplomatic negotiation can work -- and why ugly things so often happen.

Hilary Putnam said this:

" We think because Newton somehow reduced the physical world to order, something similar must be possible in psychology. . . . . as we say in the United States . . . "I'm from Missouri -- show me! "

We're trying to take some steps in that direction. Order, when it comes, is often simple. Simple enough to learn and teach. You don't get much more condensed than f = m a , a relation which (with Einstein's small correction) is perfect for what it does.

As of now, psychology is not, in Hilary Putnam's sense, "reduced to order."

But we're moving in that direction. I hope the whole world will be happier and safer because of what we're doing. And think there's a chance that it will be.

rshow55 - 09:32am Aug 31, 2002 EST (# 4058 of 4069)
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.

Bill Casey, Henry Kissinger, Nixon, and other leaders of the cold war were not children. And if they were monsters in some ways - not simple monsters, either.

Casey knew very well that he was participating in decisions that were killing millions of entirely innocent people -- decisions that were degrading values that he held dear - - and yet he went ahead.

And talked to me about it. Casey wanted better answers.

He didn't know how to do any better than he did, given the risks he saw, the situation he was in - and the terrible stupidity and ignorance both around him and within him.

He was stumped.

So were the Russians.

We can do a lot better now.

We're making progress.

And I'm keeping my promises to Casey - who said that, in a pinch, I'd have to come in through the New York Times . . . and said that, when it actually happened - I needed solutions that I could actually explain - - - Casey liked a certain C.P. Snow quote a lot. You have to be sure of what you want to do, and able to explain it.

People have been stumped.

Not angels. Maybe mosters. But stumped, all the same.

Now we can make a lot of progress.

I try to look for justifications - and maybe, on Iraq, the Bush administration is doing many of the right things.

But I wonder. Are they really just beating the war drums because they are in a morally and practically indefensible position - legally, morally, and politically? Could they be as bad as they look?

If they are, they are much, much, much worse than Bill Casey at his worst.

If they aren't - - they have some explaining to do - and both Americans, and people with power all over the world - should see to it that they have to do enough of that explaining so that the key questions get answered correctly. And in a balanced way. That the whole world can understand.

rshow55 - 09:35am Aug 31, 2002 EST (# 4059 of 4069)
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.

Things are tough. But lchic and I are making progress. On something important -- not only to ourselves, but to the whole world - and especially to the New York Times, which worries a lot about the issues set out in

Thomas L. Friedman . . The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization Farrar, Strauss and Giroux NY 1999

We're working - and showing progress - on the barriers to communication and understanding that now make globalization work so much worse than Friedman (and the TIMES) hoped during the period Friedman wrote Lexus.

What are the odds that there may be much better outcomes even in fields that have been "worked to death" ?

Very good.

Chain Breakers http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee79f4e/618

2633 rshow55 6/20/02 12:56pm

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense