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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 - 09:20am Oct 17, 2002 EST (# 4975 of 4979)
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.

A lot of interesting activity since rshow55 10/16/02 5:17pm . . . I'll be reading.

Saw a movie last night. Nurenberg . There was an interesting line in it. The character who played a psychologist wanted to define the nature of evil. He settled on

"the absence of empathy ."

Not an ideal and complete definition, standing alone. But worth thinking about - when "respectable" people on this board often speak so casually (even enthusiastically) about killing thousand and millions of people.

I'll be eating breakfast, and studying the board. But for now - this posting from the past seems sensible to me:

4400 rshow55 9/19/02 8:56am reads:

" Arming the Arms Inspectors By JESSICA T. MATHEWS and CHARLES G. BOYD http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/19/opinion/19MATH.html is superb - - and very promising. As an "abstract solution" - I think it is a thing of discipline and realistic, practical beauty.

"What a wonderful thing, for the whole world - if decisions went as Mathews and Boyd suggest !

"It seems to me that people ought to consider two questions:

"How could the points of the proposal be "fought out" in time - in the ways where "battles of ideas" have to get to closure (with adjustments of positions as they make sense) ?

"How could the proposal, with sensible adjustments - be sold effectively, and in time - so that it would actually happen?

"If this solution were actually argued to closure - and, with modifications, implemented - we'd be well on the way to a safer, better world -for America, for western culture - for islamic culture and its people -- for the whole world.

"Muddles like missle defense would get solved almost automatically if the procedures and honesties this would require actually came into being, and actually were worked through to success.

. . . .

Has there been progress along these lines? It seems so. And the problems along the way - the things that have kept good thing from happening - seem interesting.

Back in a while.

lchic - 09:35am Oct 17, 2002 EST (# 4976 of 4979)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

herself with Asperger's Syndrome, explains this very clearly in terms of what a psychologist might call an inability to empathise (or be aware of another's feelings) or, in a more concrete sense, a "lack of appreciation of social cues"

http://www.iol.ie/~wise/autinet/attach.htm

rshow55 - 10:21am Oct 17, 2002 EST (# 4977 of 4979)
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.

Or a lack of "appreciateion of social cues" for "outsiders" - classified as "not human" - and "not to be talked to."

When dealing with such "outsiders - - empathy can be replaced with active hostility. People find this easy - so it is easy to pick fights. Something usually to be avoided.

Empathy has to have some limits, too. Sometimes (not often, and not quickly, but sometimes) fights are necessary. One has to ask "about what" and "how" and "with what limits."

Some basic issues of international law and morality are being discussed, reconsidered, and renegotiated - and it has to happen, if we're to go on stably.

A point comes where, try as you might - you need to make judgements about degree, and have workable, explainable patterns of exception handling.

Is Kissinger a war criminal? It is easy to say so - and on good evidence. But is that "all there is to it?" Is application of the category enough - or remotely enough? What ought to be done about it? What ought to be understood?

A knee jerk - "hunt him down and kill him" may miss some things - both as a matter of morality, and as a matter of practicality.

Other names can be substituted for "Kissinger" and the logic remains the same.

If we're to live in a safer world, there will be times when interdiction is necessary -- when an exception has to be made to a number of rules.

But if we start making these exceptions (and I think we have to consider that) - we have to be worried about real balances - and what real people and real socio-technical systems actually do.

We need to do the best we can - - or at least avoid stupid moves that are almost guaranteed to be bloody - excessively expensive -- and destabilizing.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense