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.

rshow55 - 06:42am Sep 18, 2002 EST (# 4363 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.

A Road Map for Iraq http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/18/opinion/18WED1.html

If Washington is serious about working with other nations to restrain Iraq, it can't expect to dictate every move to the U.N.

Lemon Fizzes on the Banks of the Euphrates By MAUREEN DOWD http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/18/opinion/18DOWD.html

In just a few days, the Iraq crisis went from Saddam having a noose around his neck to W. being bound by multilateral macramé.

Iraq, Upside Down By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/18/opinion/18FRIE.html

If we don't find some way to help Arab nations, their young, angry radicals will blow us up long before Saddam ever does.

We have to find ways to understand, and better control, human craziness - and a lot of ugliness that goes with it. To help Arab nations, as Friedman suggests - we've got to understand much better what they're stumped about - and what we're stumped about, too.

We're falling short as human beings - and it is partly a moral failing - but partly a logical failing, too. We're not facing some obvious facts. Whether we're all children of God, or only part of nature - we're built as we are, and have the strengths and weaknesses we have - for better and for worse.

We're human beings - and in fact, we're animals - special animals. If we acknowledged that - a lot could sort out. We aren't "blank slates." And we have to do the best we can. If we had better hearts, we'd do better. But often, we'd do a lot better if we just faced facts more often.

We have a lot to be proud of, some things to be ashamed of - and a lot where we'd do better if we'd just be a little bit more discipined and more careful. When facts can be established beyond any reasonable doubt -- and plenty of facts can be - - we should face them - and our cultures should accomodate them.

Not to do so paralyzes us. Doing so would cost comparatively little.

The technical problems with establishing facts are a lot less difficult than they used to be.

The moral problems ought not be so hard, either, with a little courage. We're not blank slates. If we acknowledged that - we could preserve and accentuate everything we have that is good - and screw up less often and less severely.

- - -

Messes like the current problems in Iraq would be far less likely to happen if we did so - and would resolve more easily.

rshow55 - 06:55am Sep 18, 2002 EST (# 4364 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.

This thread, more than anything else, has been about human rationality - and the lack of it -- in the context of the Cold War and its aftermath - all issues connected to the issue of missile defense and its difficultes. An enormous amount of technical discussion about MD has gone on here - - and patterns have been discussed here which, if funded and backed by reasonable force, could resolve key issues at the level people need for real decision - to the courtroom standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt" - with everyone able to watch, and check - and with umpiring standards that could for essentially all reasonable people.

The US "missile defense" program and set of doctrines makes no technically detailed sense at all, if one weighs odds, costs, and what can reasonably be done. The program is quite interesting as an exemplar of human frailty, deception, self deception, agressiveness, and recent military history - and has been a format for a great deal of discussion.

We're animals. Very special animals. We've got capacities that have emerged, that are natural to us - that make all the wonders, beauties and horrors of the world possible.

We have to face up to the checkable - and inescapable parts of what Francis Crick calls "the astonishing hypothesis" -- and do it without reducing man. Here's the beginning of the Introduction of The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul by Francis Crick

The Astonishing Hypothesis is that "You," your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll's Alice might have phrased it: "You're nothing but a pack of neurons." The hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people alive today that it can truly be called astonishing.

I put "no more" and "nothing" in italics - because they are problematic. We're everything we are. But whether you happen to be religious, or not - our ideas are representations in our brains - and we can be wrong - even when we feel passionately that something must be true.

(13333 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Resource Area for Forum Hosts and Moderators Missile Defense