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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 (7898 previous messages)

rshow55 - 08:33am Jan 22, 2003 EST (# 7899 of 7901) 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.

I was assigned the task of finding out how animals so often found good solutions to control system problems, as individuals and groups, and also asked to understood why these solutions sometimes went so bad that they produced horrors and wars.

People who wonder how much people cared - and how hard they and I tried - might look at the movie Thirteen Days - and consider how close the world had come to nuclear war. The higher the rank of the people I dealt with - the more concerned they were.

I have solutions that leave something to be desired, but that are servicable.

In essence, you can do any damn thing you want to do with a properly crafted and maintained sociotechnical system (inluding people and machines) - so long as what you want to do is simple enough to actually understand within limits that are themselves understood well enough. If you're prepared to take time doing it, you can build a system of people and machines to do anything within reason that you care enough to do - enough to do every damn thing anyone needs to avoid wars, and control human horrors. There have to be conventions. Human interactions can't be more complicated, or less conventional - than the step by step interactions one sees in the birds because people are animals, too.

Animal interactions always involve some conflict, and they repeat the primordial patterns used for eating, reproduction, fight and flight again and again and again and again and again in alternating and switchable patterns.

Contradictions - at the most basic level (a change in sign) are necessary so that things that have to be controlled - that can be both too much or too little in a particular circumstance - can be controlled. If a set of controls is locally unstable, a swich of signs makes it locally stable - for a while - until it becomes unstable again, and needs to be switched again.

Switching is necessary - and in control logic, once the logic becomes complicated enough - this means that alternating "contradictions" are necessary. There are no monolithic, static solutions - and the world couldn't be as beautiful or diverse as it is if there were.

People are as smart as animals are ever going to be now - so far as basic equipment is concerned. With better ordering, symmetry and harmony, they can do very much better than they're doing now, about a lot of things. Everything that animals can possibly do with logic, people do, and have been doing for a long time. Usually very well, and very fast. That's why people do the "magical" things they so often do - so many wonderful things that even the New York Times can't cover all the beautiful examples. When we screw up on something specific - we need a specific solution to that specific screw up. Some kinds of screwups sort themselves into broad classes. We can do better with some of the grosser problems. We can find solutions good enough to take the incidence of horror from war and poverty way below where they are now.

I'll keep my promise in 7787 - and respond in more detail about oscillatory solutions.

lchic - 08:37am Jan 22, 2003 EST (# 7900 of 7901)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Americans see their own people in their internal market as breaking down into the following segmentations

Innovators

    Thinkers | Achievers | Experiencers | Believers | Strivers | Makers
Survivors

{Thinkers being HighHigh ~~ Makers being LOWLOW } ... see graphic ...

http://www.sric-bi.com/VALS/types.shtml &

Primary Motivation

  • Consumers buy products and services and seek experiences that fulfill their characteristic preferences and give shape, substance, and satisfaction to their lives.
  • An individual's primary motivation determines what in particular about the self or the world is the meaningful core that governs his or her activities.
  • Consumers are inspired by one of three primary motivations: ideals, achievement, and self-expression.
      Consumers who are primarily motivated by ideals are guided by knowledge and principles.
      Consumers who are primarily motivated by achievement look for products and services that demonstrate success to their peers.
      Consumers who are primarily motivated by self-expression desire social or physical activity, variety, and risk.
    Resources

  • A person's tendency to consume goods and services extends beyond age, income, and education.
  • Energy, self-confidence, intellectualism, novelty seeking, innovativeness, impulsiveness, leadership, and vanity play a critical role.
  • These personality traits in conjunction with key demographics determine an individual's resources.
  • Different levels of resources enhance or constrain a person's expression of his or her primary motivation.

    begging the question as to how the USA actually 'SEE' consumer demand in 'Other/Elsewhere' countries say where kids scramble in the dirt for spilt corn.

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