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 [F] New York Times on the Web Forums  / Resource Area for Forum Hosts and Moderators  /

    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 (3789 previous messages)

rshow55 - 06:27am Aug 18, 2002 EST (# 3790 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.

About looking at a case, looking at a pattern, figuring The Odds of That http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/11/magazine/11COINCIDENCE.html and making a judgement about whether the pattern is real, or coincidental.

Facts about the number of combinations of possibilities are crucial. The factorial series is THE most basic of these facts.

A sense of how big the factorial series is - and how it grows is basic - - both practically and morally, too, because results have moral consequences. It is absolutely central to understanding how human reasoning can possibly work - and how closure, by reasonable standards, is actually possible.

To know how necessary it is to eliminate possibilites - and check. To know how easy it is to be wrong. But also, to know how real and reassuring our chances are, quite often, of being right. (Chances, not certainties.)

When we ask, in a defined case, what truth is, what are our chances of finding it?

Numbers matter. Some numbers matter so much, it seems to me, that everybody, including politicians and clergymen, should have a sense of them.

rshow55 - 06:56am Aug 18, 2002 EST (# 3791 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.

When we ask, in a defined case, what truth is, what are our chances of finding it? That depends on a lot, for any particular case. But chance plays a part, and often a big part.

Here's a simpler question, basic to evaluations of the hard question bolded just above.

. When we're "looking for a needle in a haystack" "How big is that haystack?"

If you're looking at random combinations, and only one possibility is right, how big is the search? How much does it help to eliminate possibilities, in this random case?

Let's compare N! , N!/(N/2)! , and N!/(N/5!)
Here they are 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

These are huge (or tiny) numbers.

Narrowing down the number of possibilities makes a HUGE difference - even when we're just talking about random searches - and when there is order in the system, narrowing down the possibilities can be MORE important.

The differences that come with simplification are so great that they make differences of life and death -- and the difference between learning and not learning.

Focusing matters.

rshow55 - 07:12am Aug 18, 2002 EST (# 3792 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.

Suppose one child is trying to read a text, and knows 80% of the words? Suppose another child approaches the same text, and knows 20% of the words? Who has a chance?

How much can it change the odds, when basic relationships get mastered, in a situation which really does have basic order?

3696 rshow55 8/13/02 2:23pm ... 3697 rshow55 8/13/02 2:27pm
3698 rshow55 8/13/02 2:35pm ...

Getting the most basic, most frequent facts and relations straight is very important.

For fundamental reasons, for the most common things, it is also very hard. 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.

Statistics isn't everything - but it is a lot -- and some basic sources of fear and hope can become clearer if we understand how The Odds of That http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/11/magazine/11COINCIDENCE.html change as information is focused to near-certainty. There is a lot of coincidence in the world, but much order, too. If we work at it, we can very often tell the difference when it matters.

On missile defense, and on other defense issues which are matters and life and death, and matters of $1200 per year per american, it is worth the work to get much clearer than we are. For all sorts of practical, moral, and aesthetic reasons. Survival being one of them.

MD1075-1076 rshow55 4/4/02 1:20pm

My chances of getting the proposal described in many links in MD1075-1076 isn't great just now. But if I could get my security problem solved - get my situation clarified in writing --- how those chances would improve !

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