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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 - 09:42am Jan 8, 2003 EST (# 7479 of 7501)
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.

Everything that people are wanting to do, that they can decently and clearly explain in public - to all the people they really do have to be able to explain it to - can go much better.

A lot of things are happening that look very right.

But some things are much too fast.

You need mutations - they dither the system. You have to have systems of dealing with them. Usually, when they are new - it helps if they are applied in small ways - so systems can adjust to them - both when they are good and when they are not.

For stability and peace - there need to be reasonably explicit and clear transforms (or at least implicit understanding that actually use them) between the sorts different people and social systems use. If all are sorted, on the most basic levels, for order-symmetry-harmony - you can always get them - and most, when understood, are not impossibly expensive or cumbersome or unacceptable.

Though not always. Sometimes there do have to be fights.

But not nearly as expensive as the ones we've been having.

We have to take time - time that we have - and use skills that we have - and find ways to be careful enough for decency and stability for all concerned. I'm doing my best, as best I can, from where I am - to try to coach that through. Just making suggestions and pointing out patterns.

rshow55 - 11:21am Jan 8, 2003 EST (# 7480 of 7501)
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.

Here are sorting guidelines that are useful, and sometimes used, for basic reasons:

I come first

The children come first

You come first

The tribe comes first

The community of tribes comes first

What happens second - and later - under standard conditions also matters.

. . . . . . . . .

and, at levels, where eating, fighting, and reproducing or their analogs happen, these are important sorts.

fighting comes first

eating comes first

reproducing comes first.

Again, what happens second, and laer - under standard conditions also matters.

Different people and groups use kinds of sort criteria in different ways in different temporal-spatial-logical contexts - and decisions are made. It becomes complicated. Some sequences become fixed and conventional for cultures or groups or individuals - for good reasons.

Different sorts work better, and worse, for different things - and orderly, symmetrical, and harmonious sorts are much better than others, when you can get them. Sometimes millions of times faster, more stable, and more flexible at the level of assemblies than other sorts. You can't win, exactly, after things are complicated enough - but you can do very well. Sometimes beautifully.

Consistent sorts "all look alike" in ways that can be very convenient - and become fixed - and the most basic of these are present, with only a few lethals, in most systems that actually work. Especially when those systems are new - or old systems that have been subject to resorting many times.

You can't win - about everything. But you can do very much better than we've been doing.

When patterns emerge, fully sorted, at a higher level of complexity - things can happen fast - that open new possibilities with the same resources that people have had before. I've felt that was possible for some while, and am trying to teach people to sort themselves out, in interaction with the people they care about - in ways that work for them. Trying to be orderly, symmetrical, and harmonious about the matter, as best I can - and knowing that I fall short more often than I'd like. You can't win. But sometimes you can improve, and I'm trying to do that.

If gisterme thinks I'm ignoring him or the needs he's working to serve - I think I'm doing the best I can, in tight quarters - telling him just what he needs to know, in ways that he can actually use it. We don't have to like each other - very rarely can - though sometimes that might help.

Parables are hard to build. Harder than sonnets. My favorite sonnets are by Shakespeare - especially #1 and # 130.

When lies or random switching patterns are replaced with conventions - thing change - often for the better.

I apologize for moving slowly - but I'm doing the best I can.

almarst2002 - 12:40pm Jan 8, 2003 EST (# 7481 of 7501)

"...the missile shield "philosophy" assumes the desirability of the limitless global hegemony..." - http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Trifkovic/News&Views.htm

lunarchick - 01:09pm Jan 8, 2003 EST (# 7482 of 7501)

hegemony

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