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 [F] 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.


Earliest Messages Previous Messages Recent Messages Outline (7511 previous messages)

almarst2002 - 09:35am Jan 9, 2003 EST (# 7512 of 7532)

Anti-U.S. Sentiment Deepens in S. Korea - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30309-2003Jan8.html

rshow55 - 09:52am Jan 9, 2003 EST (# 7513 of 7532) Delete Message
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.

almarst2002 1/9/03 9:35am . . and reasonably so.

commondata 1/9/03 8:58am - - is an interesting post - and asks about how an "argument from design" can make sense.

Let me start from an example. I think the book of Job is a better read, and more fun, and more beutiful, if it is read switching back and forth between a religous and an evolutionary perspective. It is beautiful either way - but better, it seem to me, if both perspectives are considered.

Some things like that are inescapable. The fundamental premise of much science is that things are causal. In that argument - people invoke statistical arguments that decouple from details of cause. To really believe in statistics, you have to be believe in order - but you can't. To really beieve in order, you have to believe in statistics - but you can't.

On a personal note - a matter of life and death for me (I'm speaking literally here - I'm in physical trouble - I cannot sleep, just now, and it is dangerous.)

I bought a big, expensive, wonderful computer - an HP760n - at an auction - and cared a lot before I did it. A very short time after I connected that machine to the internet for the second time - a cd writer that had been working minutes before became disconnected. The DVD-rom was disconnected, too. I can't shut down my computer - it won't shut down in an orderly way without the CD and DVD - and wouldn't boot - and the program is far to big to deal with from a floppy.

I suspect that somebody who works for GW Bush reached out and did that to me. But there could be some other explanation, as well. Often there are other explanations to a presumption of hostile intervention. I can't know. I doubt either explanation some - but use it some. I switch back and forth. On an issue that is, for me, a very serious one, for all sorts of reasons.

MANY times, the argument from design, and the argument from randomness - look the same in a particular case. Sometimes, one happens to be right, sometimes the other.

commondata - 09:57am Jan 9, 2003 EST (# 7514 of 7532)

rshow55 1/9/03 9:08am - [I'm] ugly and misshappen in other ways that I can barely believe it.

I'm sorry for offending your aesthetic sense, rshow, and I'm still interested in understanding why the assertion torture can be an essential part of our social system doesn't. Your "no fault" point about Bush being a child of nature applied to Hitler as well; that should not clear anybody of their responsibility for plunging the planet into disaster. There are exception handling mechanisms that Bush could use but he chooses instead to spend half a trillion dollars a year on weapons of mass destruction. That's his alternative. He deserves to be criticised strongly for it by all well-intentioned people.

rshow55 1/9/03 9:13am - Anyone in his senses, I think - would need an argument from design in the step by step process of raising children.

Why? I'd consider one of my responsibilities as a parent to be teaching what I'm sure is true (as defined in terms of standard scientific validation), to be honest about what I don't know and to be honest about what we, as a population of primates, don't yet or can't ever know. I'd do that to the best of my ability, I'd know that I'd often fail, and I'd explain that too. Filling a child's head with the mumbo-jumbo that often spills from American churches would not be on my agenda.

One very good thing with arguments of design is they much more naturally accomodate matters of aesthetics which are vitally important.

Mapping the world as honestly and as completely as we can (finding good natural law operators?) appeals more to my aesthetic sense. I guess it's a personal thing.

An argument from design NEEDS an evolutionary argument to work well.

Of course it does, Intelligent Design was formulated in response to evolutionary ideas as an attempt square spurious religious belief with what we actually know about the world.

rshow55 1/9/03 9:52am

Auction bought computers often go wrong. I don't thing you need to worry about The Firm.

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