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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 - 06:20am Jun 27, 2002 EST (# 2737 of 17697)
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.

Things to check, every which way, when it matters.

Berle's Laws of Power
Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs
The Golden Rule

"Solutions" not consistent with these constraining patterns may work for a short time, or with great strains on parts of the human system involved -- but they are unstable.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs by William G. Huitt http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/regsys/maslow.html . . . especially the image.

Berle and Maslow:
MD667-8 rshow55 3/18/02 12:13pm

I think the Bush administration is trying to deal with Berle's laws, and Maslow, sometimes reasonably well, but I feel they are thinking much less than they should about the golden rule -- not in any goody-goody sense -- but as it applies to practical deals that the people involved can actually live with.

Pardon me for moving slowly.

rshow55 - 09:25am Jun 27, 2002 EST (# 2738 of 17697)
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.

George Johnson and I have sometimes had problems with each other, but I very much respected, and personally appreciated his What's So New in a Newfangled Science? http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/16/weekinreview/16JOHN.html . . . and particularly this language, which has a lot behind it on which we've interacted.

"SCIENCE is a cumulative, fairly collegial venture. But every so often a maverick, working in self-imposed solitude, bursts forth with a book that aims to set straight the world with a new idea.

. . . .

"Mainstream science is rooted in the notion that space and time form a continuum: a perfectly smooth expanse that can be precisely described by what mathematicians call the real numbers, those that can have an endless string of digits after the decimal point. This kind of mathematics - the basis of calculus - is undeniably powerful. Physicists can predict the characteristics of a single subatomic particle with an accuracy equivalent to, as Richard Feynman liked to say, estimating the distance between New York and Los Angeles within the width of a human hair.

"Why even think about replacing something that works so well? The problem is that when you put a few electrons together and throw in a sprinkle of neutrons and protons, the system that emerges rapidly becomes so complex that exact predictions are impossible. The infinitesimally precise numbers have a way of causing the equations to crash.

"And that is where the contrarians rush in, proposing that reality is not continuous but discrete, with a smallest possible length and a smallest possible duration of time

I'm no contrarian - I've wanted to fix the system, and fit into it, rather than say anything like the "unnerving message" that "everything you know is wrong." I think enormous masses of science are right, though there are problems in a few spots, due to a problem I was assigned to find and fix.

Since undergraduate days, I've been concerned with the mathematics of coupled physical systems -- actually - working on building bridges from the measurable world to abstract math. MD1570 rshow55 4/20/02 4:07pm

The New York Times has had some entirely valid objections to my postings on this topic, that go back a long way - why have I "resisted" peer review? I hadn't thought I had. But I've had some problems that I haven't been able to explain. A big problem, now maybe 95% of the way along to a workable resolution, is concern about security classification. Another problem, now much less than it was due to efforts of Johnson himself, and lchic , had and has to do with paradigm conflict. There are some other problems as well, getting smaller, but still real, having to do with the terms of my "quarantine" - - limitations on who I am permitted to interact with, and on what basis.

I'm working, within the limitations of my situation and understanding, to conform, as much as the situation permits, to the standards of peer review that George and I share, subject to the "special needs" (in the sense of hadicaps) that I happen to have.

rshow55 - 09:26am Jun 27, 2002 EST (# 2739 of 17697)
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.

Saw Good Will Hunting , with Robin Williams, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Minnie Driver last night, and parts again this morning. Like The Bourne Identity , it wrenched me. Could people think of me as "Will" in Good Will Hunting, or as "Jason Bourne" ? There may be some similarities, but the differences are huge, and I think those differences are important, too. I understand that there are "Typhoid Mary" aspects to my person and situation - and I am willing to accomodate those problems. All the same, I believe that, in mercy to me, and so that I can be permitted to be more useful, and less trouble, and as a matter of justice, there are some terms to that quarantine that ought to be subject to modification.

I'm not an assasin - like "Bourne" - - nor a "lost genius" like "Will" - - I've been working, with focus and discipline, doing the best I can to serve my society and fit into it, since 1970.

To be thought of as "Bourne" or "Will" is painful, from my point of view, and also seems to me to be considerably less than a perfect fit.

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