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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 - 04:11pm Dec 26, 2002 EST (# 7052 of 7058)
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.

rshow55 12/26/02 3:46pm - - if mistakes are deeply embedded in a logical or operational system - it is either necessary to discard the whole system as an assembly or to fix and adjust the system step-by-step - carefully - in terms of the situation that actually is there especially if the system has to continue to function during the fix.

For example, to fix a simple but deeply embedded problem in math described in http://www.mrshowalter.net/nterface and http://www.mrshowalter.net/bhmath - considering math as the sociotechnical system that it really is - will take a team - and something operationally equivalent to mercy, or forebearance - or a sense of justice. Because many people, individually and in groups, have done some things that will have to be discarded - and you don't want to discard the people - or invalidate the human value of their efforts.

To make other deep adjustments in other systems takes the same sort of thing.

Unless one wants to accept a logic of extermination - a "discard the whole assembly" logic that can be sensible for appliances - and that sometimes makes sense to soldiers, too. But a "logic" that is based on explicit or implicit assumtions about the value of human life that I think are ugly.

To fix things without fighting is sometimes an intellectually challenging job that also takes time, resources, and something like mercy. For logical reasons.

Bill Casey was clear about the distinction - but I feel he sometimes valued human beings less than he should have. He said to me -

"you want better results - show me how !

I've been trying, within my limitations, to do that.

lunarchick - 04:18pm Dec 26, 2002 EST (# 7053 of 7058)

Pakistan

... a search was under way for those who carried out the attack and, particularly, for two people who disguised themselves in women's "burqas" before walking up to the church and tossing the bombs ...

rshow55 - 04:27pm Dec 26, 2002 EST (# 7054 of 7058)
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.

Sometimes, there is no option but to fight - and to fight groups.

Sometimes. But the questions

What are the costs involved?

and

Why, on what assumptions, is this unavoidable?

should be asked much more seriously than they usually have been in the past.

Leaders bear a great weight of responsibility - and leaders in the Arab countries, and in North Korea, are bearing especially heavy burdens of responsibility - because they've built systems so simple, and so inflexible that, even with good will - it is hard to figure out how to deal with them, except as assemblies.

In the Arab world, the logic often seems to be

"we can do this - after all - they can't kill all of us."

If that logic is pushed too far, in my personal opinion - the answer "yes they can" starts looking better and better.

And reasons to attack logical structures, even those called religious, that are generating such ugly human results start looking better and better, as well.

lunarchick - 04:31pm Dec 26, 2002 EST (# 7055 of 7058)

A question to ask of religion is

constructed by whom?

and for who?

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