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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
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(6829 previous messages)
rshow55
- 09:20am Dec 18, 2002 EST (#
6830 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.
C.P Snow speaks of
“ . . . the prime importance, in any crisis of action,
of being positive, and being able to explain it. It is not so
relevant whether you are right or wrong. That is a
second-order effect. . . " Science and Government ,
Ch 11.
We can learn some things about induction that make the
issue of right and wrong less of a second order effect. Both
practically and morally. The moral and practical senses are
linked. We need judgement - and we need procedures for making
judgements - and judging how much we can trust them. rshow55
8/27/02 12:21pm
An absolutely key thing was beautifully expressed by
Klinkenborg:
. every human activity, serious or
playful, eventually ramifies into a world of its own, a
self-contained cosmos of enormous complexity.
When should we trust what's in the "self-contained
cosmos" of our minds? Most of the time - we're too busy to ask
- and things go well enough that we don't have to. But when
things go wrong - when it matters enough -- we have to ask.
How is it that people can do as well as
they do - knowing how stupid they often are - and how little
they know directly?
That's Plato's problem - something dealt with many times on
this thread, and much connected to the questions raised in
Iraq Makes a Philosophically Flawed Effort to Disprove a
Negative By EMILY EAKIN http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/15/weekinreview/15EAKI.html
Here are links connected to Plato's problem from this
thread:
6208 rshow55
11/23/02 9:38am ... 4822 rshow55
10/12/02 9:30am 4172 rshow55
9/4/02 10:23am ... 4164-66 rshow55
9/4/02 6:45am 4153 rshowalt
9/3/02 9:15am ... 4105 rshow55
9/1/02 5:16pm 4073 rshow55
8/31/02 10:32am ... 4051-54 rshow55
8/31/02 7:17am 4003-4 rshow55
8/29/02 6:01pm ... 3991-2 rshow55
8/26/02 6:44pm 3971-2 rshow55
8/24/02 5:46pm ... 3702-3 rshow55
8/13/02 3:58pm
2345-50 rshow55
5/22/02 1:16pm 2345-50 rshow55
5/22/02 1:16pm 2345-50 rshow55
5/22/02 1:16pm 2345-50 rshow55
5/22/02 1:16pm
2310 rshow55
5/19/02 1:51pm ... 790-93 crossmaster
12/18/02 9:06am
If I didn't believe that we were approaching much clearer,
more usable solutions to Plato's problem, I'd be stripped of
what Commondata calls my "relentless optimism" -
- - but "playing the game" in my head as best I can, it seems
to me that some new and hopeful things - simple things - may
be coming into focus - in a form that many people can use.
A key point, and a central one for me - is this. How can we
get patterns of discourse to converge - and converge on
humanly satisfactory answers - where convergence has typically
failed before?
A big
rshow55
- 09:23am Dec 18, 2002 EST (#
6831 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 big part of the answer, it seems to me is to "keep
talking."
The long and the short of it, I think, is that you need
both long and short. The long, the "enormous complexity"
comes first. Very often, in human experience, good things
converge.
The question - what does convergence take is a question
that often has clear answers - and clear requirements. A
central requirement now - on the BIG problems - is we need
more staffing, more clarity, and more resources than are being
brought to bear now.
The truth can be "somehow, too weak."
If truth - or workable patterns - takes logical effort and
crossmatching - the effort can simply be insufficient. And
consequences can be worse than they'd otherwise have to be.
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