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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 - 04:34pm Sep 26, 2002 EST (# 4565 of 4573)
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.

Casey liked C.P. Snow, and I think this passage fits here.

" It is one of the firmest convictions of most of the best administrators I have known that scientists, by and large, cannot do their job. There are many reasons for this conviction, including various human frailties . . . . . But there is one good one. Many administrators have had to listen to the advice of scientis-gadgeteers. To Bridges and his colleagues, to a good many of the high civil servants who played a part in the Tizard-Lindemann story, it must have appeared scarecely human that men should be so lacking in broad and detatched judgement. Most administrators would go on to feel that there is something of the gadgeteer hiding in every scientist.

" I have to admit that there is something in it. I should phrase it rather differently. The gadgeteer's temperament is an extreme example of a common scientific temperament. A great many kinds of creative science, perhaps most, one could not do without it. To be any good, in his youth at least, a scientist has to thinkof one thing, deeply and obsessively, for a long time. An administrator has to think of a great many things, widely, in their interconnections, for a short time. There is a sharp difference in the intellectual and moral temperaments. I believe . . . that persons of scientific education can make excellent administrators and provide an element without which we shall be groping: but I agree that scientists in their creative periods do not easily get interested in administrative problems, and are not likely to be much good at them.

" The euphoria of secrecy goes to the head very much like the euphoria of gadgets. I have known men, prudent in other respects, who became drunk with it. It induces an unbalancing sense of power. It is not of consequence whether one is hugging to oneself a secret about one's own side or about the other. It is not uncommon to run across men, superficially commonplace and unextravagent, who are letting their judgement run wild because they are hoarding a secret about the other side - quite forgetting that someone on the other side, almost indistinguishable from themselves, is hoarding a precisely similar secret about them. It takes a very strong head to keep secrets for years, and not go slightly mad. It isn't wise to be advised by anyone slightly mad.

Casey and I talked about this, because it was clear that, subject to conditions and promises, I was going to have to keep secrets - for a long time. I've done so, and kept faith.

And tried hard to keep my head straight.

rshow55 - 04:40pm Sep 26, 2002 EST (# 4566 of 4573)
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.

It seems to me that conditions today are much worse, and somewhat different, from the way Casey imagined they would be -- just as they are different, and worse, than Snow imagined _ (he thought the world would be uniformly prosperous by now - with world poverty almost banished.)

But though things are different and worse - - I feel that I've been keeping faith with Casey - and that things have been going fairly well, considering - from the point of view of the national interest -- though in ways that show just how messed up and corrupted things have become - and how much things need to be clarified, and fixed.

If we simply found ways to tell the truth - from where we are -- a lot could sort out - and a lot of it could do so pretty gracefully.

And I'd be very glad for a chance to live a more normal life - a chance to contribute - with people knowing enough about my background that they could work with me - without expecting either too much, or too little - or the wrong things.

There aren't so many "Robert Showalter problems" out there - but there are a few - enough, I sometimes feel, that there ought to be a place for me.

lchic - 04:42pm Sep 26, 2002 EST (# 4567 of 4573)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Secrets become open

The instance of their expecting you to lie

How many creative, earnest, high level performers have they had throught their hands whom they've tried to snap and break?

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