I´d point out that, regardless of their generally good quality, Arxiv papers are not necessarily peer-reviewed.

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What brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart

All right, Jim. Point taken.

Let's all take a step back shall we. I'd like to keep this discussion moving forward. You are correct Argos that not all ArXiv papers are peer reviewed. However, Giddings and Mangano (2008) has been accepted to Physical Review Letters, and has thus been peer reviewed, presumably. In any case, the LSAG safety review is primarily based on Giddings and Mangano (G&M). Thus, in order to keep from going in circles, I propose that we limit our discussion to the Giddings and Mangano paper--they are the experts, and it's what the LSAG report is based on, so let's critically read what they have to say.

so I trust we can lay to rest the argument that mBH's must be harmless because the Earth is still here. As I pointed out in last night, G&M's calculations show that cosmic ray produced mBH's probably go right through both the Earth and the Sun. And Gidding's calculations show that mBH's are probably not produced at RHIC because the energy there isn't high enough. Maybe it's the case that a few from cosmic rays or RHIC get stuck in the Earth. But we can't say that for sure. G&M are trying to be conservative--as is proper according to the Precautionary Principle. In other words, since we can't say for sure that mBH's are trapped within Earth, we can't say with a reasonable certainty that mBH's that could get trapped by the Earth in the future are not harmless.

We can discuss this more, if you all want, but I'd rather move on to stopping lengths within white dwarfs. If there is an mBH showstopper that can guarantee the safety of the LHC, it is to be found G&M's argument from white dwarfs. That is, even if it's the case that CR induced mBH's are not trapped by the Earth, G&M argue that they would get trapped by white dwarfs, and since we see lots of white dwarfs, then we may safely assume that any 5- or 6-D stable black holes do not in fact grow fast enough to be a danger--or alternatively, we may safely assume that the universe actually exists in 7 or more dimensions. I actually have not yet taken a close look at that part of M&G. I will point out now, however, that Plaga's section 5 criticized M&G for not taking the worst case assumption when it comes to stopping lengths in white dwarfs; that is, Plaga said that M&G's calculations depend on whether it is valid to extrapolate the "semiclassical approximation" to the the "deep quantum gravitational regime." Moreover, Plaga's section 5 was not directly addressed by M&G's rebuttal to Plaga's paper. So that would seem to be fertile ground for a productive discussion. I promise to keep an open mind if you all do as well. I have learned much by participating in this thread so far, and I hope you all are as well.

Ok; I lost track of all the quotes, and cites, and everything here, but I did catch the following...
(rebolded)
I thought there was a scientific consensus that harm will not ensue.
It seems to me that it's a small minority of scientific types, and many, non-scientist who are claiming possible harm.

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Well, I'm just trying to figure it all out for myself. Nothing wrong with that, I trust. I'm an environmental ethicist by training, and so this whole issue is of academic interest to me.

That's not how I read it when I went over that paper, trying to make sense of it. My take on "problematic" was not that in a 5 or 6 dimension universe the block holes would create immediate problems for us, but those solutions are problematic for the paper, since the accretion rates cannot be dismissed as easily as the other solutions. IIRC "world disrupting on short time scales" was taken to be 'shorter than solar system lifetime', but still a huge amount of time, incomprehensible to humans. This human anyway.

Yet (still assuming I understand the paper) these solutions would cause problems for white dwarf stars, in such a way that old white dwarfs could not exist. Yet they do.

That seems wrong to me. "The escape velocity of a white dwarf is of some twenty million km/h, five hundred times higher than the Earth but still fifty times slower than the speed of light." (source, yes i just googled to get a figure, I stand ready to be corrected). That makes a much, much bigger "resulting speed" bracket in which mBH's will be captured. But I'm no physicist.

I can only see the first page of that paper, removing the ?page=1 from the url gave me an error. Is the full version available? Not that I would be able to validate it.. just curiosity. Anyway, the first page mentioned some tests wrt GRBs. This paper was before SWIFT was launched, and I'd be curious what its results would mean to it. Maybe one of the physicists here can speak to the status of that paper, I really have no clue what to search for to check.

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Why can we lay this to rest? because it suits your argument? I don't see where this was resolved in your favour at all.

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Hi slang,

Certainly, "problematic" would extend to G&M's paper, the purpose of which is to guarantee the safety of the LHC. And you're right that by "problematic" they did not intend that world destruction would be immanent as in the next four years: their lower bound was 3 x 10⁵ years (eq. 4.52, p. 26). That's a little too close for comfort, as G&M point out on p. 27.

Regarding the white dwarf section, I'm still trying to digest it, but at one point they attempt to assess the sensitivity of their stopping length estimate: "From (5.33) we easily find less than 25% variation in the resulting bound on δ_NR as long as

So for the case 5-D mBH's (D=5), wouldn't that make the whole denominator equal to zero, hence driving the whole equation to infinity (which is presumably larger than c_sc (the column density, I think). In which case, their stopping lengths for 5-D mBH's would in fact be poorly constrained. Probably, there is something wrong with my reasoning here. I'm fully willing to acknowledge an mistakes you can point out.

As for the Dereshev et al. paper, they want $32 USD for the privilege to read the rest of it. A desultory attack on the Springerlink website resulted in total failure. . . .

I am merely pointing out that Giddings and Mangano's own (admittedly conservative) analysis (upon which the LSAG safety report is based) could not rule out the likelihood that CR produced mBH's are never stopped by the Earth (or the Sun or other planets).

In other words, "the Earth is still here argument" is not supported by Giddings and Mangano.

Warren, we seem to have another "language" problem. You keep saying "problematic" wrt the G&M paper. However,

You even emphasized the qualifier you now ignore... potentially... and simply state that things are "problematic" when assessing the dangers.

That's similar to saying a woman is "potentially pregnant" and then dropping the "potentially" in subsequent discussion. There is a difference.

__________________
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

Correction, there's potentially a difference.


Sorry, I couldn't help myself. I'll be good, I swear.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

You keep saying that despite it being explained many times that you are misinterpreting their use of the word "conservative".

Rubbish. The "or" was there to emphasis that by "conservative" they meant "worst case" Dropping the "or" makes it sound like there were several options for the "worst case" scenario of which they chose the most conservative ones (then using the opposite sense of "conservative" to that which they originally meant.). Clearly they were misquoted in a way that could cause one to misinterpret what they originally meant, and you are one such. So clearly they were right to point this out in their response.

There's no point even thinking about anything else you claim when you continue to defend such an obvious and trivial twisting of their words to suit your claims.

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There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand ternary, those who don't, and those waiting for a bus.
If logic doesn't work, then surely it does.

That's a valid point, Jim. I don't want to convey that I think the LHC will for sure lead to a global catastrophe. It probably won't, I'm the first to admit. Your pregnancy example is a good analogy. If a birth control method had a 10% failure rate, that wouldn't be problematic in itself. It would only be potentially problematic.

Perhaps I wasn't very clear above: I think that "conservative" in the context of mBH stopping distances within the Earth means that G&M were attempting to err on the side of overestimating stopping lengths in order to avoid inadvertently underestimating mBH stopping lengths. As is proper when following the Precautionary Principle. That's because the danger of underestimating stopping lengths (that is, assuming stable CR produced mBH's are trapped by Earth's gravity when in reality they never are) would give a false sense of security.

Could you please at least try to be polite.

I'm sorry, I don't understand how there can be many "worst case" assumptions. "Worst" usually implies the most worse. And why do you suppose G&M enclosed ""worst case"" in scare quotes? I am forced to wonder what that's supposed to mean. Is a "worst case" assumption the same as a worst case assumption? Can we at least agree that the sentence from the footnote in question is not the most clearly written sentence ever written in the English language? It's not that important of an issue. We should more interested in whether G&M actually used worst case assumptions than whether a poorly worded sentence says they did or not.

I'm sorry if you feel that way, worzel.

For further reading:

Two Brazilian physicists weigh in on Hawking radiation (or lack thereof):

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/...808.2631v1.pdf

And here is the paper from the ArXiv on catastrophic risk analysis that makes the point I've been trying to make all along much better than me:

A critical look at risk assessments for global catastrophes

Someone was asking where I was when they first lit off RHIC. Actually I was drawing a paycheck at the time from the Department of Physics at CSU (they wanted a philosopher of science to help TA an undergraduate class). One of the philosophers, Dan Lyons was freaked out by Rees' estimate that there was a 1 in 50,000,000 chance that RHIC would destroy the world, and so Dan wrote letters to Brookhaven (I have a copy of the letter they sent him somewhere). And so naturally, RHIC came up for discussion with my boss, physicist Marty Gelfand. Marty didn't seem to think a 1 in 50,000,000 chance was a big deal because it was such a small probability that it was not worth worrying about. Nothing I could say would convince him otherwise.

But the paper above by Kent makes the case clear. I've been criticized for trying to tote up the value of the world in USD. Well, Kent merely uses human lives. Thus each life has a unit value of 1. Thus if the population is 6 billion, then the value of the Earth is 6 billion (neglecting of course nonhuman values as well as the value of future lives). Thus "the expectation value of the number of deaths" for RHIC (using Rees's estimate of 5 x 10^-7) was 3,000 deaths.

(Now one could say that since we lit off RHIC and nothing happened, then that shows that the risk was justified. But I think that would be the wrong way to look at it. Imagine you were a passenger in a car I was driving and I said "Watch this!" while I drove around a blind corner in the wrong lane. We survive--and you're mad as hell. "But," I say, "nothing happened!")

Well, what would be a reasonable maximum risk of global catastrophe that we should accept? Kent answers that question by looking at risk regulation in other areas like radiation risk management. If radiation minimization standards were to apply to potential existential threats, then the probability of catastrophe (p_catastrophe) must be less than 10^-15--and that's not taking into account the value of nonhuman nature and future generations. And according to John Rawl's veil of ignorance, our generation ought to be no more privileged than any future generation, and that therefore, we ought not to discount the future.

How many more orders of magnitude should we add? That is a question I wish you all would address. Given that Homo sapiens as a species is about 100,000 years old, (the average lifetime of a mammalian species is about 2 million years), I would say we have a responsibility to think at least 100,000 years into the future (i.e., our ancestors for the past 100,000 years never did anything rash enough to cause our extinction, therefore we should not do anything rash enough to cause future extinctions at least 100,000 years into the future.) So if we take an average life expectancy of 100 years, then that's at least 3 more orders of magnitude that one should add; thus, the acceptable p_catastrophe should be less than 10^-18. If we really want to look 1 billion years into the future, as cjameshuff occasionally likes to, then we would have to add seven orders of magnitude such that p_catastrophe would have to be less than 10^-22--lower than Neverfly's estimate of p_catastrophe at 10^-21. But I could accept p_catastrophe's of less than 10^-18 as counting as "reasonable certainty" that nothing catastrophic will happen.

However, I must say that my own estimates of p_catastrophe are much greater than 10^-18. What is the CERN estimate of p_catastrophe? The fact is we don't know. It wouldn't surprise me if some CERN scientists have in fact calculated p_catastrophe. Physicists make such bets all the time. Steven Hawking recently bet $100 USD that the Higg's boson will not be found at the LHC. That is, he figures p_~HB = 50%. So I wouldn't be surprised if some CERN scientists have calculated a p_catastrophe for the LHC. But if so, such estimates have not been made public. And why should CERN choose to make public a quantitative estimate of p_catastrophe? After all, they're not required to. As a result, we the public have to make do with p_catastrophe = "really, really low".

If there is a lesson in this whole LHC saga, I think that it is that government environmental regulations for dealing with small probability, but potentially catastrophic, global risks are inadequate because such regulations do not exist. As Kent says, we need to reach a general agreement on what probabilities of global catastrophe are acceptable. These should be determined ahead of time, and projects such as the LHC should be required to provide a quantitative estimates of p_catastrophe, and these estimates should be verified by government scientists who are not personally invested in the project. If the developers of the project cannot demonstrate the p_catastrophe for the proposed project is not less than the maximum acceptable p_catastrophe, then the project should not be permitted.

So, is this whole debate an academic exercise for you, or are you truely concerned that the LHC could destroy the Earth? I'm fine with you all working through an academic exercise, but have no personal interest in participating in it.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Round the world and home again
That's the sailor's way
Faster faster, faster faster

There's no earthly way of knowing
Which direction we are going
There's no knowing where we're rowing
Or which way the river's flowing

Is it raining, is it snowing
Is a hurricane a-blowing

Not a speck of light is showing
So the danger must be growing
Are the fires of Hell a-glowing
Is the grisly reaper mowing

Yes, the danger must be growing
For the rowers keep on rowing
And they're certainly not showing
Any signs that they are slowing

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

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Chocolate factories do not produce micro black holes.. or do they!

Warren, if you try to make sense of the G&M paper but get stuck in one part, why not try to ask in Q&A specific questions about specific parts, without frontloading the post such that it would end up in another LHC slugfest? That's what I was thinking of doing, but I'm afraid I've decided I'm too lazy to do so, plus I'm not even sure what I'd be asking. I considered asking because I fear that most people capable of providing insight are avoiding this thread.

__________________
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin
"Your right to hold an opinion is not being contested. Your expectation that it be taken seriously is." -- Jason Thompson
Meet the OOONG TOE.

Yep, I'm not

__________________
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand ternary, those who don't, and those waiting for a bus.
If logic doesn't work, then surely it does.

I was just thinking today about how this LHC/RHIC deal would make a good section for the neverending thesis. My thesis argues that not only nonhuman, but nonbiological nature as well has an objective, intrinsic value that ought to be taken into account by humans. Thus, the value of the Earth itself--not counting humans--should be taken into account within a risk analysis of projects that could potentially cause global, existential catastrophes. So, yes, this is of academic interest to myself, and thanks to all for helping me out with your many comments.

But yeah, I am truly concerned that the LHC could destroy the Earth. I remember you earlier asked me what would make me change my mind about lighting off the LHC. I dodged your question, as you pointed out, by suggesting that the LHC be replaced by a 14 TeV single-beam collider. But now, after much more consideration of the issues, I am prepared to directly answer you, and that is I would consider the LHC to be reasonably safe if the p_catastrophe could be shown to be << 10^-18. And that's a nonconservative p_catastrophe since it only extends 100,000 years into the future, and only includes human values. And I just don't see that.

Let's go through the equation again:

1. Probability that we exist in a dangerous dimension: it seems that it's the 5th dimensional mBH's that are the really dangerous ones, and since there's basically 20 options and little a priori reason at this point to choose one over the others, I'll go with 5%.

2. Probability that 5-D mBH's produced at the LHC would get captured by the Earth's gravity: G&M said that the typical LHC produced mBH would not get trapped by Earth's gravity, they did say there was a finite probability that some would. So, I'm going to go with 95%.

3. Probability that Hawking radiation will fail and mBH's will be stable: I'll go with the median of the poll of physicists, 2%

4. Probability that the mBH will grow fast enough to be potentially problematic: this is complicated. I've already limited my analysis to just 5-D mBH's. And we've got to take into account the astrophysical evidence of numerous white dwarfs. In order for there to be a danger, it would have to be the case that CR produced mBH's pass through white dwarfs as well as Earth. Moreover, G&M argue that 5-D mBH's would be the most easily stopped mBH's. However, according to G&M's analysis of mBH stopping lengths in white dwarfs, their equation 5.34 (p. 35) that is supposed to constrain the sensitivity of their stopping length estimates contains (D-5) in the denominator. Thus, apparently, as far as I can tell, it is the 5-D stopping length estimates that are the most uncertain. (People please feel free to point out the flaws in my reasoning.) So what to choose as a probability? The Precautionary Principle says to be conservative. So, how about 1%. It's less than the probability that we are in 5 dimensions and less than the probability that Hawking radiation will fail.

Thus we have:


Very unlikely in other words. Yet the expected value of the number of deaths is 10^-5 x 6 x 10⁹ = 60,000. This is coincidently about what the worst case (most conservative) expected value in number of deaths that BJSW that Kent listed in the abstract of his paper above for BJSW's worst case p_catastrophe for RHIC.

Yes, I apparently pulled these numbers out of thin air. But what else can I do? Arguably, the 5% figure I used for the chance we live in 5 dimensions is much too high in light of the white dwarf data. That is, the probability that we live in 5 dimensions just is the probability that 5-D aren't captured by white dwarfs. But as it is, I'm multiplying the two probabilities, thus my subjective probability that we live in 5 dimensions is actually 0.05%.

Also, if CR-produced 5-D mBH's can in fact pass through white dwarfs harmlessly, that will make it much harder for a low velocity LHC-produced 5-D mBH to be captured by the Earth. On the other hand, if we live in 5 dimensions, the LHC will be a virtual black hole factory that will produce millions of mBH's over the course of it's useful life time. So I can change the 0.95 to 0.001 if you want, but that still leaves an expected value of number of deaths of 60. If the LHC were a nuclear reactor and fell under standard radiation risk minimization standards, that would be totally unacceptable--and that's not counting the value of future generations at all.

I would appreciate some help from the CERN scientists in determining the p_catastrophe for the LHC. However, the physicists are keeping their cards close to their chest this time around. In marked contrast to the earlier RHIC controversy, none of the CERN scientists have offered a quantitative estimate of p_catastrophe. At least after weeks of scouring the internet, I have not been able to find a quantitative estimate of p_catastrophe for the LHC from CERN. We're just told to trust them that p_catastrophe is really, really low.

That's what bugs me the most about this whole thing. How undemocratic this process has been. Physicists with no special expertise in risk analysis and who have a vested interest in seeing the LHC go through are deciding on an ad hoc basis what is an acceptable risk for the rest of us. I don't think that's fair. At the very least, they should lay their cards on the table and tell us what their best quantitative, worst case estimate for p_catastrophe for the LHC is, as well as a detailed breakdown of how they arrived at that estimate. But it doesn't look like that's going to happen. . . .

Then why are you arguing the point endlessly here on BAUT? Though go ahead, don't let me stop your fun.

If I personally thought that something was a threat to the Earth, I would probably bring it up here, particularly something that related to science. But it seems obvious to me that no one here is going to convince you that it is safe (with your p< 10^-18), and you're not going to convince anyone here. If I were truely concerned I would take it up with the people that might do something about it. It is possible the President of France, or some big cheese in CERN is a member of BAUT, but I doubt it.

I don't see any point to this endless debate.

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Uh, I never mentioned birth control. You seem to have the exasperating quality of reading something that isn't there and then incorporating it into your argument.

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Warren, good to see your still banging the drum buddy. Sadly life is not a very democratic process. As a child of the Cold War I suspect you must be feeling the same as the rest of the world when the USA and USSR were threatening the entire world with annihilation and not just each other. Hello! don't I get a vote on this? The difference for me has always been the willingness of these scientists to be at "ground zero", A far cry from the President in his nuclear proof bunker pushing the button.
I do support your quest for more honesty though. When I was 5 living in West Germany in 1972-1973, American school kids were being taught "duck and cover". I was told, "turn to the left and hug that person, you won't have time to turn back to the right". It gave me nightmares not knowing whether I would be awake in the morning, but as I got older I learned to appreciate the honesty of it, instead of the absurdity of false hope "duck and cover".

Astrophysical implications of hypothetical stable TeV-scale black holes

Authors: Steven B. Giddings, Michelangelo M. Mangano

(Submitted on 20 Jun 2008)

Abstract: We analyze macroscopic effects of TeV-scale black holes, such as could possibly be produced at the LHC, in what is regarded as an extremely hypothetical scenario in which they are stable and, if trapped inside Earth, begin to accrete matter.

We examine a wide variety of TeV-scale gravity scenarios, basing the resulting accretion models on first-principles, basic, and well-tested physical laws. These scenarios fall into two classes, depending on whether accretion could have any macroscopic effect on the Earth at times shorter than the Sun's natural lifetime.

We argue that cases with such effect at shorter times than the solar lifetime are ruled out, since in these scenarios black holes produced by cosmic rays impinging on much denser white dwarfs and neutron stars would then catalyze their decay on timescales incompatible with their known lifetimes. We also comment on relevant lifetimes for astronomical objects that capture primordial black holes.

In short, this study finds no basis for concerns that TeV-scale black holes from the LHC could pose a risk to Earth on time scales shorter than the Earth's natural lifetime. Indeed, conservative arguments based on detailed calculations and the best-available scientific knowledge, including solid astronomical data, conclude, from multiple perspectives, that there is no risk of any significance whatsoever from such black holes.

Subjects: High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph); Astrophysics (astro-ph); General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc); High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex); High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)

Report number: CERN-PH-TH/2008-025

Cite as: arXiv:0806.3381v1 [hep-ph]

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That's the abstract of the paper whose body I've been treating in depth since post #1314. Notice that there is no quantitative estimate of the probability of catastrophe. We are merely told there is no risk--of any significance. In other words, they admit that there is a small risk--exactly what they won't say--we are just told that the risk is so small that it should be considered insignificant.

In other words, we are not told what the risk actually is, nor are we told what they think a significant risk would be. We are just supposed to trust them--physicists with no special expertise on anything outside of their narrow bailiwick.

Indeed, it could be argued that CERN scientists have exhibited a willful ignorance regarding elementary risk analysis. From Kent:

Although the observations made in this section are elementary, it is worth noting that the CERN panel did not acknowledge their validity. The response of Alvaro de Rujula, the panel leader, is accurately summarised by his opinion, quoted in New Scientist [15], that it is “absurd” to take the risk bound probability and multiply it by the global population. I recommend contemplation of this comment to anyone inclined to automatic faith in the risk analysis expertise of scientists chosen by institutions to argue for the safety of their experiments. (p. 7, my emphasis)

Maybe they should have said "incalculably small".

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There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand ternary, those who don't, and those waiting for a bus.
If logic doesn't work, then surely it does.

This from a philosopher with no special expertise on anything outside of his narrow bailiwick.

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Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

Hi Pippin,

Glad to see you survived!

Like I said above, what I'm most upset about is the undemocratic nature of this process. CERN has been less than totally forthcoming. Their PR is rich in weasel words, and light on quantitative risk analysis. They've been using every legal trick in the book to make sure that their opponents are denied standing in court. What are they afraid of? That their project might actually be judged by a judge instead of one of their own?

I haven't taken my kid out of school in order to spend some quality time with her before the end of the world. My studies of the issue have considerably eased my worries. My worst case estimate of p_catastrophe has been lowered from 1/8 to somewhere between 10^-5 and 10^-8--risk bounds that straddle the death risk per flight on commercial airliners (~10^-7 for developed nation domestic flights; ~10^-6 for flights in developing nations). And so I've subjected my daughter to such risks numerous times in the past. We'll probably come out all right. But when the entire world's population and the entire future of humanity and nature is on the line, I think that's an unacceptable risk.

Where are the quantitative risk estimates from CERN? Several were put out during the RHIC controversy. It can be done. One is forced to conclude that they can't lower the risk estimate much lower than mine. This is not surprising considering the broad sweep of the history of science not to mention the disagreements among the physicists themselves. Prof. Cox thinks the most uncertain element in the risk analysis is the multidimensional aspect, whereas Prof. Giddings eagerly looks forward for such evidence and predicts that the LHC will mark the end of "short-distance" physics. That is, there will be no point in building a more powerful collider after the LHC because you'll only produce more black holes, the interiors of which there is little information to be gleaned. Then there's the poll of 15 PhD physicists on the reality of Hawking radiation. Their bets ranged from 0 to 0.5, with a median estimate of 2% and average estimate of 9%. Then there's Hawking himself who apparently thinks there's at least a 50% chance that the Higgs boson won't found; and now of course, Higgs is mad at Hawking and saying that Hawking has got it all wrong. And we look at the arguments by Giddings and Mangano regarding the astrophysical implications on LHC mBH's; yet it apparently turns out the estimates of stopping lengths within white dwarfs of the most dangerous mBH's (5-D) are also the most uncertain. And so, it's hard to see how CERN could come up with an estimate of p_catastrophe that would be in compliance with the minimal safety standards that are routinely applied to nuclear waste dumps. So, that's probably why we haven't seen any quantitative estimates.

That's not exactly true. There is a certain brand of philosopher who turns to philosophy at a young age in a self-conscious rejection of that which would kill in order to dissect. Then there are philosophers like me who wind up in philosophy in a roundabout way. I have purposefully chosen a wide ranging scientific education. I've taken classes in everything from physics to astrophysics to geophysics to geology to meteorology to biology to wildlife biology to evolutionary biology to immunology to chemistry to organic chemistry to biochemistry to biogeochemistry. Moreover, I have had advanced training in ethics--unlike the vast majority of physicists, if I may be allowed to hazard a guess. If you want to go to law school, you have to take ethics your first year. If you want to go to business school you have to take ethics. Cripes, even dental students have to take an ethics class. Indeed, CSU required computer science majors to take computer ethics! But if physics graduate students are required to take ethics, that's news to me. Maybe I'm wrong there.

You're right, of course. I guess the credit for the birth control analogy belongs to me. So being pregnant is like the end of the world, and CERN is like a company selling a contraceptive. Only the company won't say what the quantitative risk of failure is. They just tell you not to worry because the risk is really, really low.

Actually, the debate's been moving along nicely. I've learned a lot, anyway. The criticisms of my position seem to be evolving as well. Not too many people are repeatedly insisting anymore that the fact that the Earth is here proves that mBH's are harmless, if they do indeed exist. And as for politics, when my book comes out, I'm sure it will sell at least 50,000 copies and make quite a stir within policy circles.

Anyway, I've tried to answer in good faith all the questions you've posed to me so far, Swift. So now it's my turn to ask you a few questions.

1. Do you think that p_catastrophe for the LHC is greater than 10^-18?

2. Do you think that ordinary risk analysis procedures should be applied to the LHC?

3. Do you think that requiring p_catastrophe to be less than 10^-18 is unreasonable?

4. Do you think that CERN and the LHC should be held to lower safety standards than the nuclear industry?

5. Do you think the value of future generations should be taken into account when conducting a risk analysis that involves the possibility of human extinction?