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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 - 07:58am Jan 20, 2003 EST (# 7830 of 7836)
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.

When people know what patterns of words mean - and agree enough to cooperate safely - they agree on more than just the words. We need more shared space than just words can provide. "Collecting the dots" - and "connnecting the dots" - so that people share idea- pictures - and checking the idea- pictures in the many ways that matter - we can - if we're willing to work at it - come to good enough agreement about everything that matters for action. The logical processes people naturally use work well most of the time - and when they don't - we need to provide the conditions that are usually there - and happen to be missing - so that ordinary human thought process can work well.

People need common ground about facts, and enough understanding about each other's ideas - in enough ways. If you click "rshow55" - there's this:

Here are facts and relations that I believe are MUCH underappreciated:

If you're looking at random combinations, and only one possibility is right, the search is BIG. For complex things - impossibly big, without guesses to take it down to size.

How much does it help to eliminate possibilities (correctly), in the random case?

Let's compare N! , N!/(N/2)! , and N!/(N/5!) for three values of N . . . 10, 20, and 40

10! = 3,628,800 . . . . . . . 5! = 120 . . . . . . . . . . . .2! = 2

20! = 2.433 x 10e18 . . . 10! = 3,628,800 . . . . . 4! = 24

40!= 8.16 x 10e47 . . . . 20! = 2.433 x 10e18 .....12! = 4.79 x 10e8

For N= 10 . . N!/(N/2)! =3.024 x 10e4 . . N!/(N/5)! = 1.814 x 10e6

For N= 20 . . N!/(N/2)! = 6.704 x 10e11 . . N!/(N/5)! = 2.027 x 10e16

For N= 40 . . N!/(N/2)! = 3.358 x 10e29 . . N!/(N/5)! = 1.703 x 10e39

or, looking at reciprocals

2!/10! = 5.513 x 10e-7 . . . . . . . 5!/10! = 3.307 x 10e-5

4!/20! = 4.932 x 10e-17 ....... 10!/20! = 1.492 x 10e-12

12!/40! = 5.871 x 10e-40 . . . . 20!/40! = 2.978 x 10e-30

Because patterns that we form when we "connect the dots" are very improbably in a statistical sense, and because we can check our ideas in many ways - and weed out things that don't fit - our chances of getting to agreement are very good. Our chances of getting to truth in the practical ways and engineer can understand it are very good, too.

Getting the most basic, most frequent facts and relations straight is very important. And if people keep checking against facts - - odds of making progress can be surprisingly goo.d

All the same, for fundamental reasons, for the most common things, progress is also very hard. The odds are overwhelming that both individuals and cultures have made, and will make, many mistakes - - many of them important and deeply embedded in areas where performance is not good. That's both a challenge and a source of hope.

When we learn basic things, the odds of our successfully solving problems can get much better - and impossible jobs can become possible, and sometimes even easy.

If we keep at it - we can learn everything we need to know - and construct every cooperative pattern we need to construct - for stable cooperation and peace. Even though people are very different - we are identical enough in the ways that matter for that.

But only if, when it matters enough - we can and do check the checkable. We already know enough with respect to Iraq, as far as facts go. If they're threatining us, the threats are smaller than a certain side. We know enough to negotiate stable agreements. Either before or after the slaughter of war, we'll have to. It makes more human and practial sense to do that negotiating now, rather than go to war.

lchic - 08:01am Jan 20, 2003 EST (# 7831 of 7836)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Haiti

The US has had a particular interest in Haiti since helping to topple a military regime there nearly four years ago. (1994) But since then, the country has been left practically without a functioning government because of electoral disputes.

"Frankly, we have been disappointed that Haitian political leaders have taken so long to resolve their differences," said Mrs Albright.

"The Haitian people deserve a democratic form of government, and they deserve the ability to have the fruits that the international community is trying to give them."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/americas/74162.stm

lchic - 08:08am Jan 20, 2003 EST (# 7832 of 7836)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Albinos in Zimbabwe number 15000. Albino women girls face the problem that 'men' believe that sleeping with them can cure AIDS ... women are pestered and raped - that's raped by men with AIDS

http://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&q=zimbabwe+albino+aids&btnG=Google+Search

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