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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
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(4562 previous messages)
rshow55
- 03:32pm Sep 26, 2002 EST (#
4563 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.
lchic
9/26/02 9:56am -- the "reading wars" might be good
exemplars for studying all wars - and showing the possibility
of great and healing progress. Here are some references
to reading instruction, and possibilities of improvement.
3969 rshow55
8/24/02 6:38pm ... 3970 rshow55
8/24/02 6:44pm 3971 rshow55
8/24/02 6:45pm
Can a rudimentary orthographic processor
connected at first only to the phonological processor, and
working only for the most common words, be trained first ?
Is it easy to do this?
Even if it is easy, is it worthwhile?
I'm arguing that it IS easy, and that it IS
worthwhile. Both testable assumptions.
3923 rshow55
8/23/02 10:10am ... 3924 rshow55
8/23/02 10:16am 3925 rshow55
8/23/02 10:29am ... 3930 <rshow55
8/23/02 4:52pm 3931 rshow55
8/23/02 4:55pm ... 3932 <rshow55
8/23/02 5:00pm
3972-3975 rshow55
8/24/02 6:46pm
3992-3999 rshow55
8/26/02 7:44pm
4013-4014 rshow55
8/29/02 7:18pm
MD, physical laws, and politics: 4016 rshow55
8/29/02 9:01pm
rshow55
- 03:34pm Sep 26, 2002 EST (#
4564 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.
Casey liked C.P. Snow, and I think this passage fits here.
" It is one of the firmest convictions of
most of the best administrators I have known that
scientists, by and large, cannot do their job. There are
many reasons for this conviction, including various human
frailties . . . . . But there is one good one. Many
administrators have had to listen to the advice of
scientis-gadgeteers. To Bridges and his colleagues, to a
good many of the high civil servants who played a part in
the Tizard-Lindemann story, it must have appeared scarecely
human that men should be so lacking in broad and detatched
judgement. Most administrators would go on to feel that
there is something of the gadgeteer hiding in every
scientist.
" I have to admit that there is something
in it. I should phrase it rather differently. The
gadgeteer's temperament is an extreme example of a common
scientific temperament. A great many kinds of creative
science, perhaps most, one could not do without it. To be
any good, in his youth at least, a scientist has to thinkof
one thing, deeply and obsessively, for a long time. An
administrator has to think of a great many things, widely,
in their interconnections, for a short time. There is a
sharp difference in the intellectual and moral temperaments.
I believe . . . that persons of scientific education can
make excellent administrators and provide an element without
which we shall be groping: but I agree that scientists in
their creative periods do not easily get interested in
administrative problems, and are not likely to be much good
at them.
" The euphoria of secrecy goes to the
head very much like the euphoria of gadgets. I have known
men, prudent in other respects, who became drunk with it. It
induces an unbalancing sense of power. It is not of
consequence whether one is hugging to oneself a secret about
one's own side or about the other. It is not uncommon to run
across men, superficially commonplace and unextravagent, who
are letting their judgement run wild because they are
hoarding a secret about the other side - quite forgetting
that someone on the other side, almost indistinguishable
from themselves, is hoarding a precisely similar secret
about them. It takes a very strong head to keep secrets for
years, and not go slightly mad. It isn't wise to be advised
by anyone slightly mad.
Casey and I talked about this, because it was clear
that, subject to conditions and promises, I was going to have
to keep secrets - for a long time. I've done so, and kept
faith.
And tried hard to keep my head straight.
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