New York Times on the Web Forums Science

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?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

rshow55 - 10:02am Dec 29, 2002 EST (# 7117 of 7119)
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.

There is a certain family resemblence between convergent situations - that get good stable answers - and divergent situations - which move away from right answers - sometimes explosively.

Suppose you have a convergent sequence - in a control system - or a mathematical series. Each step gets somewhat closer to a stable, workable answer - and even if there is overshoot - as things progress - you get closer to the answer if you keep the process going. Often, though not always, as you get closer to the anwer, you can change the pattern - and zero in on the answer fast.

If you take any such sequence, and switch every sign in it - you have a divergent sequence - one that moves away from the right answer - and can do that explosively.

Arguments can be like that - fights can be like that - wars can be like that.

In November of last year I sent a postcard to head of a large organization. The consequences of doing so nearly destroyed my life in very practical ways - ways different from any I'd anticipated - ways I'm still digging out of. Some people with quite a lot of power used coercive forces at their disposal - that I could not defend against very well. That force has been effective. All the same, the message (and the pattern) of that postcard still seem sensible to me. I wish people who have read that postcard might consider the request again. That postcard contained this:

" Some explosive instabilities need to be avoided by the people who must make and maintain . . . relevant agreements. The system crafted needs to be workable for what it has to do, have feedback, damping , and dither in the right spots with the right magnitudes. The things that need to be checkable should be.

" Without feedback, damping, and dither in the right spots with the right magnitudes -- a lot of things are unstable - even when those things "look good," "make sense" and there is "good will on all sides."

All those things are true - but an "obvious" point was left out. In very many of the most unstable situations, things do not look good, things do not make sense, and there is nothing like good will on all sides. When that's true - it is important to avoid sign errors - where people get messages exactly backwards, either intentionally or unintentionally.

When people want to cut off communication, they do this intentionally. The individual who lunarchick refers to as "the poster" is a specialist in exactly this. Again and again and again - the effort is to cut off communication - to prevent convergence - to distract. Another very effective way to cut off communication is to tell lies. Everyone uses fictions - or distractions that actively mislead from the purpose of continuation of discussion - as a way of cutting off communication.

Far and away the best way to deal with the possibility of sign errors and bad faith (in situations where right answer matter enough so that the notion of good faith has moral force) is face to face contact in the presence of witnesses who can serve the role of judges, with some ability to persuade or exert force on the discussants or negotiators. That isn't always possible. In some ways, the internet, carefully used, offers something like face to face contact (at least, the ability to see faces) and the possibility of arranging witnesses with some persuasive power.

Is it far-fetched to suggest that some leaders, and nation states - have some things backwards - have their signs exactly wrong in some long logical sequences - believe that they are right - - and that we need to sort some of these things out ?

If that's true, and we are to get stable solutions, there are some very practical reasons why we'd like to sort them out.

The logical problems involved wi

rshow55 - 10:09am Dec 29, 2002 EST (# 7118 of 7119)
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.

The logical problems involved with that kind of sorting are the same, again and again and again and again in situations where people are stumped, and arrangements are ugly.

People have to be committed to their own ideas, and the ideas and committments of their groups. But unless there is some exception handling - unless there is a willingness to doubt - to check - to modify - when it matters enough, some explosive fights are inevitable.

We're close to two such fights. Both are of an especially ugly kind. Rematches. The loser on the last fight has thought long and hard . . . . . and things are dangerous.

If enough people, whatever their other religious and philosophical beliefs, could come to undertand that we are animals - that we , as human beings - have no direct connection to either the world or to any God - and can get things wrong - - we could sort these things out.

Most of what people do, most of the time, would be entirely unchanged. Nothing I think has value in the world would be compromised, except to be made better, if people knew that.

But we'd be better equipped, as individuals and groups - to avoid mistakes - stumps - and fights. Enough better equipped, I believe, that the incidence of death and damage from war would be radically reduced. Without our having to be any better, or better organized, than we are in any other ways.

(1 following message)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense