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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 (9437 previous messages)

rshow55 - 05:16pm Mar 4, 2003 EST (# 9438 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.

The idea of the Golden Rule is very old, but very basic - and Details and the Golden Rule http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md01000s/DetailNGR.htm includes this:

------------------------------

rshowalter - 02:16pm Jun 1, 2001 BST

Professor Harry J. Gensler has great references, to a great deal of careful thought, in http://www.jcu.edu/philosophy/gensler/goldrule.htm

I liked this -- but how much detail is needed to meet what is said!

" To apply the golden rule adequately, we need knowledge and imagination. We need to know what effect our actions have on the lives of others. And we need to be able to imagine ourselves, vividly and accurately, in the other person's place on the receiving end of the action. With knowledge, imagination, and the golden rule, we can progress far in our moral thinking. .

" The golden rule is best seen as a consistency principle. It doesn't replace regular moral norms. It isn't an infallible guide on which actions are right or wrong; it doesn't give all the answers. It only prescribes consistency - that we not have our actions (toward another) be out of harmony with our desires (toward a reversed situation action). It tests our moral coherence. If we violate the golden rule, then we're violating the spirit of fairness and concern that lie at the heart of morality. .

" The golden rule, with roots in a wide range of world cultures, is well suited to be a standard to which different cultures could appeal in resolving conflicts. As the world becomes more and more a single interacting global community, the need for such a common standard is becoming more urgent."

A key issue, that I think is underappreciated, is deception . We are all in need of correct information, for fundamental reasons -- and we need it in such a complex world that we cannot predict what facts that we have not checked we will have to rely on.

Lies, taken as correct, can and often do have very bad consequences.

An essential requirement, to make the Golden Rule more operational, is to find ways to increase the incidence of factually correct information, and reduce the amount that is deceptive.

Checking is a moral issue, as well as a practical one, right here.

The idea that checking must be morally forcing is still very much outside the mainstream.

But it is a crucial idea, if we are to get beyond a "culture of lying" to a culture permitting more complicated, just, productive cooperation - and the idea that checking is obligatory in politics is becoming more discussable.

Since we all depend on cooperation for most of what makes life good and possible, this is an important point of hope.

Lies terminate the possibilities of cooperation and peace, much too often.

Lies believed to be true - because of acceptance of false information, are because of self deception, are no better - and can be more dangerous, because they are both harder to see, and harder to change.

How much better the world would be, how much less agony there would now be, if lies and self deception about AIDS could have been less, and discipline in the common good could have been greater?

See an admirable NYT Special AIDS at 20 -- http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/aids/aids-index.html

and especially a stunning graphic THE SIZE OF AIDS ON A (NATIONAL AND GLOBAL) SCALE http://www.nytimes.com/images/2001/06/05/science/sci_AIDS_010605_01.pdf

More millions of people than most people could reliably count (just in millions) are dead, or certain to die of Aids - because of human deception, self deception, and moral weakness.

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