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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 - 08:26am Jan 9, 2003 EST (# 7504 of 7508)
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.

Repeat for emphasis, concerning the question of unavoidable imperfections - the tragedies and confusions of the human condition- such as those touched on by gisterme :

We need to be able to handle questions like that much better - much more abstractly - much more formally - much more specifically - much more comfortably - much more openly - much more easily. "Whatever you do is wrong" is almost always a correct statement to some extent.

But how big are the errors - and when bad things follow - how forseeable, and gracefully controllable are they?

We can do a lot better than we're doing. Issues of order, symmetry, and harmony are important - and there are orders within orders - sequences - patterns that we need to sort out better, more clearly, and in more communicatable ways than we have been doing. We can.

Usually, perfection in a humanly meaningful sense isn't possible - even in principle - but that is no reason to stop working - or to lose hope. VERY good approximations of perfection are often possible. Problems that are forseeable are forseen, and dealt with in a first set of exception handling structures. (preferably a first set that is an ordered, matched, symettrical set of structures). That first exception handling structure has problems of its own - and a second set of exception handling structures develops

- - which has its own problems

- - which has in turn its own problems

And the problems go on and on - but it is often possible to have the costs and ugliness get much smaller at each step - and excellent approximations of perfection, in a defined context, are often possible.

An "infinite series" that works well is good enough (and that can be damn good, too) in a few easy steps.

We need more human solutions like that. To get them is possible - and compared to the costs of war - very, very cheap.

Usually possible - though sometimes there have to be fights. Relatively small, relatively controllable ones.

If we take our time people in the world can learn to do this NOW.

rshow55 - 08:41am Jan 9, 2003 EST (# 7505 of 7508)
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.

For instance, arguments from design - and arguments from evolution - applied in stages - successively - can "explain" much better than either kind of argument could without the other.

In some particular cases - one kind of argument may happen to work very much better than another - but circumstances where pure design works without evolution are rare - in terms of anything I've been able to learn about.

Human tools are designed and evolve - - in stages - often traceable back for a long time.

The tools that develop can be breathtakingly good exemplars of order, symmetry, harmony for a particular purpose.

But the perfect hammer, for a particular small job - is a very imperfect sledge hammer.

Everybody with any sense ought to be clear about that sort of thing - and be able to reasons in analogous cases that apply to their problems.

You make choices. It helps if they are clear choices - and if they are - things can go very well. But you have to think. Design (or simulation) can be much more efficient than "just winging it" at some steps. The reverse is true at some other steps. If you don't know which, in your case - and you can - you try both - and do the best you can. Bush seems to be doing that, at some levels -and at that very abstract level (not others) we're in complete agreement - or almost.

Some of this needs to be FORMALIZED.

I'm trying to do that. Not that I can do an ideal job of it, maybe - but I've been at it a while -and it seems to me that if people had some formalities straight they could do much better than they're doing - working no harder - being no smarter - being no more sympathetic than they already are in other ways.

commondata - 08:58am Jan 9, 2003 EST (# 7506 of 7508)

Computer software developers have been familiar with formal exception handling mechanisms for a decade or two now. Here's how we do it in java:

http://www.theindianprogrammer.com/learning/java6_exception2.htm

The real world too, abounds with individual, political and judicial exception handling mechanisms at different hierarchical levels (systems within systems). The United Nations and International Criminal Court are examples of exception handling at the highest level. The problem isn't that we don't understand the mechanisms required or even that the mechanisms don't exist - the problem is that the current Whitehouse incumbent and his oily friends believe that Full Spectrum Dominance is the exception handling mechanism of choice.

rshow55 1/9/03 8:41am - For instance, arguments from design - and arguments from evolution - applied in stages - successively - can "explain" much better than either kind of argument could without the other.

Is that a sad sop to the religious right that crawl across this board or, as someone who purports to be a scientist, do you actually believe that? Can you "explain" how arguments from design compliment evolution and shed light on the world around us?

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