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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 - 06:10am Jan 5, 2003 EST (# 7347 of 7355)
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.

gisterme 1/5/03 3:20am is a thoughtful post, and I'm glad to see it. We have some common ground - and there are some areas where we do not understand each other - and where, if we did, I think gisterme could do a better job in his own terms. Gisterme points out something basic.

"One person's aesthetic sense of order, symmetry and harmony, can and has lead to the ugliest sort of disrder, assymetry, discord and death for millions of others.

"Stalin... Hitler... Hirohito... Chariman Mao... Pol Pot... Saddam Hussein...

"See the point?

Of course I see the point.

Every functional human being, good or bad, is orderly, symmetric, and harmonious about something (some mix of things) and as a necessary consequence not orderly, not symmetric, and not harmoniously organized about many other things.

Leaders who can get many other people to follow them are very orderly, symmetric, and harmonious about some things that the people who follow them care about a great deal - right or wrong.

You have to make choices. You have to consider values, and pay prices. Sometimes describing the way someone is beautiful and the way someone is ugly offers an extremely good argument for punishing or killing that person (or that organization).

I don't think I've made any naive assumptions at all. I'm a long way from a pacifist.

A big question, for me, has been -- how can people be so insensitive that they let the horrors of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and others happen? Why, for example, weren't these people assasinated, or stopped otherwise?

I believe that anything that works well and quickly in the human mind, or in human organizations, has to be characterized by order, symmettry, and harmony in some ways - - but not in others - and that this is a way of organizing things (a checking code, if you will) useful for judging both good and bad.

I think that, to judge anything, or to try to organize ideas about anything - it makes sense to ask "how is this beautiful? -- on what assumptions" and "how is this ugly? -- on what assumptions." - questions that involve order in a context, symmetry in a context, and harmony in a context (according to some standards but not others.)

In a lot of ways, I believe, I'm more intolerant, more moralistic, more concerned about human suffering, than you are.

I don't think I have ever assumed complete, simple good faith on the part of anyone on this board, including myself, nor asked anyone to make such an assumption, except perhaps to make a short term hypothetical point. Of course evil exists, in some very real senses. So does muddle.

I'll be notating 7339-40 line for line - with comments, and will post within the next two hours.

rshow55 - 06:11am Jan 5, 2003 EST (# 7348 of 7355)
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.

gisterme 1/5/03 6:03am - - just saw. Will respond. Thanks.

kalter.rauch - 06:30am Jan 5, 2003 EST (# 7349 of 7355)
Earth vs <^> <^> <^>

lunarchick 1/3/03 7:20pm

Ergo Hego Mego Hugo .... Mapping Texas!

......"the MOST valuable mind Rshow has EVER seen!!!"

rshow55 - 06:51am Jan 5, 2003 EST (# 7350 of 7355)
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.

Ever seen or worked with well enough to judge. Indeed so. She's exquisite, and very able. Powerful.

Have to watch her though. She can be treacherous too. Twitchy. Switchy. She can come at you in ways you can't predict.

Steve Kline was very good, too. http://www.mrshowalter.net/klineul

And calibrated. She's calibrated too. Differently.

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