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.

mazza9 - 01:44pm Jan 1, 2003 EST (# 7185 of 7191)
"Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

Robert:

Ugly is as ugly speaks. You are the leader of the pack! You are not the ugly sheriff!You show no compassion for our feelings with your nonsensical posts. Your synchophants are as delusional as you and that's the fact jack! Hidden in my post is some interesting movie quotes!In case you can't find them, play the white album backward!

lunarchick - 04:33pm Jan 1, 2003 EST (# 7186 of 7191)

Ugly - there once was a (rhymes with Mazza) ... an ugly duckling ...

watch this spot!

rshow55 - 05:36pm Jan 1, 2003 EST (# 7187 of 7191)
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.

I think gisterme 12/26/02 4:42am is beautiful, and agree when gisterme says:

"If I am involved in a conflict of convictions with others, how am I sure that my own conviction is more correct than the convictions of those who differ with me?

"Physcal sequences of events occur whether there are observers or not. If there are one or more observers of such a sequence, the sequence itself remains the same whether or not any observer's report accurately describes it.

"If some cosmic cataclysm were to befall the earth such that all life here were snuffed out in an instant along with all physical evidence that life had ever been, would that mean that there had never been life on earth? I think not.

"Another example is that we all have a conviction that something happened to begin life on earth. Even though the provable objective truth about just what that "something" was is known to no human, none can reasonably deny that the objective truth is that it did happen.

"So objective truth is independent of human conviction, or conversley, human conviction does not drive objective truth.

"To claim that there is no such thing as objective truth, is to claim that one conviction or point of view is as good as another, simply because it is a conviction or point of view.

"I for one don't buy that. Otherwise there would be as many differnt universes there are different convictions or points of view. It is self apparant that that is not the case.

"So the most correct conviction about a sequence of events is the one that most accurately describes it and the objective truth about a thing, whether it is known to us or not, is the way that thing really is.

"Wouldn't you agree, lunarchick?

I would agree - about the nature of physical truth, and what things physically happened. At the level of ideas in people's heads - individual people, or people in a culture - there's more detail than that - and differences that I think must be considered valid and worthy of respect in both a phyical and a moral sense.

(4 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense