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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 (8029 previous messages)

rshow55 - 10:23am Jan 25, 2003 EST (# 8030 of 8040) 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.

We ought to change some things, too. We can get along, much better, from the point of view of everybody decent - - if we understand enough about what is involved to come to accomodations that pass tests of disciplined beauty from everybody's point of view. Accomodations that meet needs that the Bush administration is right to insist have to be met. But not only those.

Workable solutions would be oscillatory - as bird courtship and nurture patterns are oscillatory - and as language discourse is often oscillatory - and accomodates inconsistencies, conventions - and some necessary degree of repression in the psychological sense - as gracefully as actually possible.

This thread, if the relations in it were checked to closure - could make a contribution.

rshow55 - 08:20am Jan 1, 2003 EST (# 7177 contains this:

" I think this is a year where some lessons are going to have to be learned about stability and function of international systems, in terms of basic requirements of order , symmetry , and harmony - at the levels that make sense - and learned clearly and explicitly enough to produce systems that have these properties by design, not by chance.

With some help, relaxation of some stupid constraint, and enough checking to weed out some obvious deceptions - that should be possible.

A big question of fact, that may need to be answered more clearly than it has been - is who gisterme is, or represents. There are now well over 1000 postings by gisterme on this thread - and if he is Bush, or close to Bush - they say a good deal about how much blind faith we should put in his judgement. I have some limited faith in his good will and intelligence - but he puts his pants on one leg at a time - and we shouldn't trust him so well that he kills and maims more people than he could be forced to sit down and count.

U.S. May Not Press U.N. for a Decision on Iraq Next Week By ELISABETH BUMILLER and STEVEN R. WEISMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/25/international/middleeast/25IRAQ.html contains some important points about how much blind faith is being asked of us - and how much "connecting the dots" matters now. We have to be careful.

The UN Security Council has its hands full - and I believe can handle a great many things well - in ways that are to the credit of the United States - and many other nations, as well. We need to craft an international law that can do the things we need it to do.

lchic - 11:45am Jan 25, 2003 EST (# 8031 of 8040)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

A CEO taking stock would ask the question 'What business are we in?' before trimming or restructuring to streamline the entity in line with visionary journey.

War Strategy is a military game. People are asking 'What game are we in?'

Are 'The People' and the 'Axis of blind-faith leaderships' USA et al, in different games?

_______________

If a Machine Creates Something Beautiful, Is It an Artist? By DYLAN LOEB MCCLAIN

    The question arises partly because of the very different ways that humans and computers play chess. People rely on pattern recognition, stored knowledge, some calculation and that great unquantifiable — intuition. Computers, on the other hand, have a database of chess knowledge but mostly rely on brute force calculation, meaning they sift through millions of positions each second, placing a value on each result. In other words, they play chess the way they attack a large math problem.
If Chess has so many potential moves that only moves relating to the last six pieces on a board have as yet been scripted into program ... then

What is the 'GAME' of war?

How complex is it?

How many 'moves' and 'countermoves' are there?

When would the game end?

Would defeated 'pieces' fall off the board to be boxed?

How many 'sides' in a war ... there are two in Chess.

Is the WAR GAME played against the clock?

Will it end with 'Checkmate!' or in 'Stalemate!'?

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