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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 - 09:45am Jan 19, 2003 EST (# 7807 of 7811)
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.

Does anybody know how a digital volt meter works - or how other digital instruments work?

In a sense, at every switching in the network, there is an element of chance - of statistics - of guessing - but the size of the guesses gets smaller and smaller in a stable and convergent manner, until a point comes where the limit of resolution of the instrument is reached, and it switches the last digit back and forth "at random".

Sometimes, that means you can use a digital logic circuit as an excellent random noise generator.

It is "guessing" - but all the same, it can make very fine and stable distinctions, and the "guesses" that it does make are stable.

To go further than you can, with a particular setup, using digital logic, a point come where in some sense you have to use statistics, or analog techniques, or a mix.

Some of these transitions are much better than others.

We can do a lot better than we've been doing, from the point of view of everybody involved who tries to be decent in the ways that matter to the people they actually care about.

rshow55 - 09:48am Jan 19, 2003 EST (# 7808 of 7811)
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.

Mistakes are unavoidable. Treachery is unavoidable, in some senses. Fights are unavoidable in some senses. Conciliation is unavoidable, in some senses. We need, now, to be more careful than we sometimes are to make small - small - small - small -small - small - small and stable transitions - with stable and convergent sequences of treachery-honesty, and fighting-conciliation. That way, step by step, it is possible to come to accomodations that can work well for everybody concerned (or almost) and be stable.

People have to guess. The guesses have to be small, and stable.

I'm trying, within my circumstances - to tell people things that THEY can use - especially leaders who are switching back and forth, unsure of what to do, and uneasy.

We can do a lot better than we have - and I'm doing my best to show some things that have to be shown carefully.

It is a fact that some procedures can do a job millions or billions of times faster than other procedures - sometime people can, and do improve things by a LOT.

Some matters of structure - of orderliness, symmetry, and harmoniousness - are worth remembering. Especially when folks are stumped.

rshow55 - 09:51am Jan 19, 2003 EST (# 7809 of 7811)
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.

Mothers know some of these things (not others) when they are breaking up fights between kids - especially ugly ones - sometimes fights between kids with very different interests who are different sizes. Stability is a big consideration, of course, though not the only one. Mothers know that sometimes there do have to be fights - but the care about consequences, try to have foresight, and are careful. We need that kind of carefulness, too. If people think I'm going slowly, and using "parables" - I am.

Mothers and fathers have their problems, try as they may. Kids have problems, too. Here's a story I'm claiming is true.

When I was pretty small, I achieved clarity on some things that most kids my age were a bit more muddled about.

I felt absolutely sure that my mother loved me. I thought about the matter hard, and warily. There didn't seem to be any question about it at all. My father did, too. Differently, but there didn't seem to be any question about that, either. I felt sure - and the more carefully I thought about it, the surer I felt.

I was also absolutely sure, there seemed no doubt at all, that both my mother and my father insisted that I stop getting into really big fights. Dad was ambiguous about it, around a few edges - but mostly harsh and clear. My mother was clearer, and felt more strongly. She'd told me, a lot of times, and in a lot of ways, that she would kill me, in every way that mattered to me, if I kept on getting into fights. I understood why she felt that way - partly because she'd made it clear that if she didn't stop me, other mothers would kill her - and I just wasn't important enough to spare, on this matter, if it came down to it. So far as I could tell, Mom really was going to kill me if I kept on fighting when I was cornered - the only time I ever fought - it seemed to me.

I hadn't gone to the the first grade yet.

But I remember some things about how I felt. I was terribly worried about it. I couldn't see for the life of me how I was going to be able to stop fighting. Every way I looked at it, I was going to die.

I knew I didn't want to do that. The more I thought about it, the clearer I was that I wanted to stay alive.

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