If CERN were a member of BAUT I would have clicked on the little red triangle. As it is, I find that all rather insulting and offered without any evidence.

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

No, I'm not going to answer your questions, I'm done with your little games. I've participated in this thread because there are some people out there who are concerned about this issue because of the nonsense in the press (like the 2012 nonsense) I've tried to do my part in easing their fears. But I have no interest in a continued debate with you.

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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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...d_weasel_words

Weasel words are words or phrases that seemingly support statements without attributing opinions to verifiable sources. Weasel words give the force of authority to a statement without letting the reader decide if the source of the opinion is reliable. If a statement can't stand on its own without weasel words, it lacks neutral point of view; either a source for the statement should be found, or the statement should be removed. If a statement can stand without weasel words, they may be undermining its neutrality and the statement may be better off standing without them.

For example, "Montreal is the nicest city in the world," is a biased or normative statement. Application of a weasel word can give the illusion of neutral point of view: "Some people say Montreal is the nicest city in the world."

Although this is an improvement, since it no longer states the opinion as fact, it remains uninformative:

* Who says that? You?
* When did they say it? Now?
* How many people think that?
* How many is some?
* How many is most?
* What kind of people think that? Where are they?
* What kind of bias might they have?
* Why is this of any significance?

Weasel words don't really give a neutral point of view; they just spread hearsay, or couch personal opinion in vague, indirect syntax. It is better to put a name and a face on an opinion than to assign an opinion to an anonymous source.

I wasn't trying to insult anybody, I was merely making an objective assessment of the writing that comes from CERN and its boosters. E.g., G&M's abstract: "there is no risk of any significance whatsoever from such black holes." It's stated as if it were an objective fact. But they don't say there is "no risk" as if it were absolute zero. Instead they qualify "no risk" with "any significance whatsoever". But who decides the significance? CERN, apparently. They could have provided a quantitative estimate of p_catastrophe, (because it was done for RHIC), and then let the reader judge for themselves just how significant the risk is. But they chose not to.

And as for the court cases, it's no secret that CERN has attacked the credentials of those bringing suit against them instead of arguing against what they have to say in court. Excuse me while I dig up a link.

That is insulting. I've taken a lot of time and tried to understand the primary literature on this subject to the best of my ability to provide thoughtful, free content for this site. And instead of responding to my arguments themselves--which I take utterly seriously--you instead can only call my reasoned arguments "little games." If that's the best you can do, I must be on to something. Thanks for the pat on the back.

Those people who happen to disagree with you have taken a hard look at the physics and have applied ordinary standards of risk analysis to the LHC. They are not in the same camp as those who are worried about the Mayan calender running out. But yes, if you would like to put me on your ignore list, that's OK with me.

Yes, but what about particle physics in particular? Do you really understand the paper by Giddings and Mangano that you using as support for your argument? I don't think that it supports your argument at all, something I hope I can get into in a later post when I have time.
And we see just how much good it is doing in the worlds of politics and economics!
Suddenly I'm not so sure I want to see a dentist ever again ...
Computer ethics? What computer ethics? Windows Vista. Need I say more?
Nope. No courses in ethics were ever required in my undergraduate and graduate schooling. The only philosophy course I ever took was a course in symbolic logic, which is (as I'm sure you're aware) a course intended to weed out the wannabe philosophers.

I'm very disappointed that you are pursuing this argument against the LHC so vehemently. You are the only poster here ever to defend an ATM theory well enough that I could accept it as a possibility. (The possibility that we are only seeing the top of the GRS of Jupiter and that it really is a low-pressure storm, not a high-pressure one. I don't accept it stretching all the way down to the core, however.) I think if you understood particle physics as well as you do teleology (uggh!) you would understand that the LHC poses no more risk of creating black-holes than nuclear weapons did of setting the atmosphere on fire or of strangelets (another particle accelerator doomsday scenario) gobbling up the Earth.

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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.

Why would a Judge be qualified to pronounce on Partical Physics?

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Thanks for the complement re: the GRS (I think, ) (BTW, my theory is that it only extends to the PPT, a mere fraction of the total radius--but let's not talk about that too much, I don't want to get scooped again! )

My main point here is not that the probability of a global catastrophe is not tiny. I've worked out to my own satisfaction that the p_catastrophe is on the order of the risk of death from taking a single flight on a commercial airliner. Moreover my estimate is in line with quantitative estimates that were calculated for RHIC. And given that the LHC is an order of magnitude more powerful than RHIC, I don't see how the LHC p_catastrophe can be much lower than the p_catastrophe estimates for RHIC.

And so my point is that people underestimate the true cost of accepting tiny probabilities when immense values are at risk. If we extend the ordinary techniques of risk analysis to the LHC, there is cause for concern. And there are practicable alternatives, like building a single-beam collider; no one has yet said that a 14 TeV single-beam collider is ruled out by the laws of physics; it sounds like it's more a matter of engineering and $$$. Alternatively, CERN could take modern risk analysis seriously and conclusively demonstrate (with evidence) that the risk is much less than 10^-18. I've mainly been trying to draw people more into a debate about what is the acceptable, avoidable, maximum risk that we should accept when the very existence of Mother Earth is on the line. If the maximum, acceptable p_catastrophe is not 10^-18, then what should it be? Arguably, 10^-18 is too high. That's a question that is relevant to all of Earth's citizens, and you don't have to be a particle physicist to weigh in on that subject.

And yes, I have no special expertise in particle physics. The cursory introduction I received was not very impressive; I did not find quarks to be very charming.

For the same reasons that judges pronounce on all sorts of subjects in which they are not experts. They do it everyday.

Hear Hear, none of you are required to reply to this thread, none of you are required to even read it. The option of putting someone on ignore is readily available. For my own part I will provide a qualitative answer to Warren's question. Being the fan of analogies that I am I will go with what I recently mentioned.
The USA and USSR both came to the conclusion that the risk of global catastrophe out weighed the rewards of winning any nuclear wars.
I personally feel that the scientific rewards out weigh the risks known or unknown of the experiments that will be performed. Is there a risk? certainly. There is a possibility that Hawkings' radiation theory is wrong, there is a possibility that a human error could occur, there is a possibility that mechanical failure from poor construction or maintanance could occur. I acknowledge these risks and accept them. I do not however "explain away" these risks as "insignificant" or "unimportant".
Were the people living near Chernobyl or Three Mile Island provided with accurate risk assessments? No they weren't. Were they given a vote on allowing the projects to go forward? No they weren't. Should we build Nuclear Power plants and Colliders? In my opinion, yes we should. But... Should we mislead the public with "Evacuation Routes" knowing they will never have time to evacuate? "Duck and Cover!" These go to the heart of Warren's arguments I believe.

How about 10 years (or whatever time since the last calculation) of experimentation, refinement and new understanding of what the RHIC has actually produced.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Well, there was that "fireball". If anything, that indicates that RHIC was getting pretty darn close to the energy levels required to produce mBH's. Since LHC will be an order of magnitude more powerful than RHIC, the risk of producing mBH's in the first place will be greater.

But; the risk of producing one is only a small part of the equation. In fact, I thought the intent was to make one and learn from it. I thought what was at issue here is the behavior and results of one.
Besides, didn't the RHIC event help reinforce current theories?

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

As far as I can tell, the main idea that Giddings and Mangano (2008) took from RHIC was the idea to use astrophysical data in order to constrain their qualitative risk estimates. According to Giddings' multidimensional theory, mBH's only start showing up at the TeV scale. So RHIC can't answer whether that happens or not because RHIC is not TeV capable. As to the subsequent evolution of TeV mBH's, there is much theory that says they should decay via Hawking radiation. And there is the astrophysical data that highly constrains what stable black mBHs would have to be like, but Hawking radiation has never been observed in nature, and experimental evidence of the behavior of mBH's is zero because they have never been observed in the lab yet.

I would not attach too much meaning to that observation Warren, since some who have been arguing that exact point have indicated that they don't care to repeat basically the same argument over and over again.

On the other hand, the look I had into some of the science, limited as I am in my abilities, was fun. It's too bad that those who might have offered some understanding to the physics and math have mostly bowed out of this thread. Or at least it seems so to me.

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"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.

Be careful what you wish for...

They bowed out because they had already put in the hard scientific data and made the irrefutable arguments showing that the LHC is harmless.

There is no way to "win" an argument with Warren Platts because he is arguing from a philosophical position, not a scientific one.

It's like arguing the finer points of the Big Bang with a hard-core creationist who thinks that it never happened.

You * can * do it, but why would you want the headache?

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And who might that be?

If you haven't noticed in 47 pages of arguments, I reckon little fairies have covered your eyes every time they've been talking.

Hey, it's a nonzero chance too. There could be magic fairies, and they could be distracting you from the real science.

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Dr. Rainer Plaga has added an appendix to his paper On the potential catastrophic risk from metastable quantum-black holes produced at particle colliders that responds to Giddings and Mangano's rebuttal of August 29, 2008, Comments on claimed risk of metastable black holes.

1. It turns out that Giddings and Mangano (G&M) were barking up the wrong tree when they thought they had uncovered a 10²³ mathematical error on Plaga's part:

They “find a negligible power output [from a black hole with the properties described in section 3 of the present manuscript] of the size 0.1 µW, differing by a factor of 10²³ from [my] claim.”

My reply: G & M employ their eq.(1) to calculate the power output of a 5-dimensional microscopic black hole with a radius of 10⁻⁷ m within the canonical thermodynamic description of microscopic black holes. They correctly find it to be 23 orders of magnitude smaller than the power output calculated in section 3 of my paper for a black hole of the same size and conclude that my result is erroneous. They claim that I mistakenly applied their eq.(1) “written in terms of the mass using the four-dimensional relationship between radius and mass”.

However, I never employ their eq.(1) or my eq.(2) i.e. the thermodynamic,
canonical description to calculate the power output of the black hole in my
section 3. Rather, following Casadio & Harms, I exclusively employ my
eq.(1) (eq. (28) in [7]) which is qualitatively different. Following Casadio &
Harms [7] (sentence after their eq.(28)), my eq.(2) was only used to normalize the luminosity eq.(1) at the mass M_N to the classical expression eq.(2). M_N by far exceeds the maximal mass of the black hole discussed in section 3. This objection criticises something I did not do and did not intend to do. Therefore it does not apply to my paper.

2. So Plaga continues to argue that Hawking radiation itself from an Eddington limited medium sized black hole could wreck havoc on Earth:

As already pointed out in the 4th sentence after my eq.(6) all results on Eddington limited accretion of G&M were derived for their scenario with “switched off” Hawking radiation and therefore do not apply for the case “Hawking-radiation limited” accretion at the Eddington limit, considered in my section 3.

3. On the uncertainty of black hole evaporation:

They feel that a “serious dierence between the microcanonical picture and the usual Hawking calculation appears implausible in the large black hole region” I considered (following Casadio & Harms).

I reply: No reason for this evaluation is given by G & M so I need to wait for their promised “further comments” to take a position.

In light of our poor understanding of black-hole evaporation in general (see
quote below) I feel that in any case it will be diffcult to rule out such a serious difference with reasonable certainty.

4. Plaga restores the notorious or in his revised manuscript!

G & M rightly point out that in my quote: “...at each point where we encountered an uncertainty, we have replaced it by a conservative or “worst case” assumption”. The bold “or” was missing. I corrected this oversight in the revised version.

5. G&M criticized Plaga for citing an outdated version of Unruh's latest thoughts on black hole evaporation, saying "[Plaga] cites Unruh and Schutzhold’s work raising questions about Hawking radiation, without providing the more recent citation to Unruh’s work, that was given in [2] and reflects more up-to-date comments by Unruh on the support of his work for Hawking radiation."

So Plaga quotes from Unruh's latest:

“...Black Hole evaporation is one of the most puzzling features of gravity and quantum theory. The derivation by Hawking is nonsense, in that it uses features of the theory in regimes where we know the theory is wrong. Analog models of gravity have given us a clue that despite the shaky derivation, the eect is almost certainly right. Where then are the particles in black hole evaporation really created?...”

From these quotes I conclude: theories with extra dimensions robustly predict the existence of microscopic collider-producible black holes and Hawking radiation. But the detailed decay properties presently remain very uncertain. It then seems important to study alternatives to the standard thermodynamical treatment of Hawking radiation on the safety issue. This is the aim of my paper.

6. And, as I've repeatedly pointed out in this thread, Plaga notes that G&M's rebuttal completely ignored Plaga's point in his section 5:

Finally G & M’s comment did not address section 5 of the present manuscript in which I argue that their exclusion of dangerous mBHs is not completely definite for a general, simple reason, completely independent of the above arguments [[that G&M's] demonstration is based on an assumed validity of the semiclassical approximation. mBHs deep in the “quantum gravity” regime (violating eq.(7)) might have smaller scattering cross section than expected in the semiclassically and escape white dwarfs, just as they could escape ordinary stars. This would void G & M’s exclusion of the existence of potentially “dangerous” black holes.]

I stand to my general conclusion that there is a residual catastrophic risk from metastable microscopic black holes produced at particle colliders.

Bonus link to Plaga's latest article on cosmic rays: Nature 453: 48-49.

Twisting facts beyond any resemblance to reality to support your argument, as usual. The RHIC "fireballs" are only analogous to a black hole in that they exhibit phenomena that could be described using similar mathematics...IIRC, extending to a phenomenon analogous to Hawking radiation. The only reason to even discuss it was that despite not involving gravity, they could allow some ideas about quantum gravity to be tested. That they were not black holes, or anything close to being black holes was so widely reported that I do not believe you could have missed it.


Part of it is that Warren's arguments have simply gotten too ridiculous to take seriously...all he does is make up some numbers that suit his needs, multiply them together, and call it a Bayesian analysis. There's no content there to argue...it's no better than a crayon drawing of Geneva being consumed by a black hole. What little substance there is has already been covered quite thoroughly. There's also his habit of taking what his opponents say and deliberately misinterpreting it, making elaborate justifications for doing so and ignoring attempts at correction, or outright fabricating things...why spend time to carefully assemble a counterargument if it'll either be ignored or mangled beyond recognition?

So, no, I don't pay much attention to Warren any more. If you've got questions, I'm still open to discussion, though.

I didn't.
Instead of calling my work ridiculous and disingenuous and comparable to a grade schooler's crayon drawing, why don't you address my Bayesian analysis of p_catastrophe itself? The value I arrived at is comparable to the quantitative estimates produced by RHIC defenders earlier in this century. Were their estimates comparable to crayon drawings as well? I'd like to see you do a better job at estimating p_catastrophe--if you can, please be my guest.

That's pretty vague, james.

I have not deliberately misinterpreted anything anybody has had to say here, nor I have fabricated anything.

I don't believe I've ignored anybody's argument here so far. If I have, please point them out so that I may address their concerns.

Meanwhile, I notice you completely ignore Dr. Plaga's rejoinder to Profs. Giddings and Mangano. . . .

Please point out where I mentioned "birth control."

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

The "birth control" controversy arose in the context of the "potentially problematic" controversy. In post #1314, I quoted Giddings and Mangano (2008, 28)

As we saw, certain warped scenarios [that predict metastable mBH growth rates shorter than the expected lifetime of the solar system] are also similarly potentially problematic. Therefore, in order to constrain these scenarios we turn to their consequences for other astronomical bodies, particularly white dwarfs and neutron stars. (my emphasis)

This came up again in post #1347, when I wrote that M&G concluded that "5- and 6-D mBH's might just indeed be 'problematic'", where I qualified "problematic" with "might just indeed be" instead of with "potentially".

I then discussed my interpretation of "problematic" in the same post, saying "'problematic' means the same as 'world disrupting on short time scales'." Thus, my point was that when M&G wrote "potentially problematic", that's an oblique way of saying "might just indeed be world disrupting on short time scales."

Then in post #1355, slang quoted my "might just indeed be 'problematic'" and then suggested that "problematic" referred to M&G's paper itself, rather than for the denizens of Planet Earth:

My take on "problematic" was not that in a 5 or 6 dimension universe the black 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.

I then acknowledged slang's point regarding the word "problematic" in post #1357. But since slang had not specifically focused on the qualifier "potentially" in "potentially problematic", I also did not mention the word "potentially" in my acknowledgement.

Then in post #1359, you, Jim, made the following point:

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.

So here, you drew an analogy: the end of the world and pregnancy are both types of dangers (at least in some minds), but just as being pregnant is not problematic unless it actually happens, similarly, the end of the world is not problematic until it actually happens. That is, the end of the world and pregnancy are only potentially problematic.

I thought that was a good analogy, but in my own mind, I took it one step further: the end of the world is like pregnancy, and so Giddings and Mangano's paper is like a paper that described a new birth control method that should work in theory but has never been tried before. And so when I wrote the following, I substituted "birth control" for "pregnancy" in my description of your analogy.

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 birth control 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.

Now, you can call that a misrepresentation if you want. But it was certainly not a deliberate attempt to "twist" your words. I thought I was merely expanding upon the same point in a slightly different vocabulary. And in any case, I retracted my attribution of the birth control analogy to you in post #1379, when I wrote:

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.

Sorry about that.

I thought that was a good analogy, but in my own mind, I took it one step further...

Now, you can call that a misrepresentation if you want. But it was certainly not a deliberate attempt to "twist" your words. I thought I was merely expanding upon the same point in a slightly different vocabulary.

Had you explained what you were doing, it would have been obvious. The way you chose to do it left the impression that you were elaborating on my point.

Except, I never made or even hinted at that point.

You read my post, deliberately created a strawman, and used that strawman for your own purposes while giving everyone the impression that it was not your construct but my original analogy.

I do consider that both a misrepresentation and a twisting of the original message.

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

Earlier I estimated p_catastrophe (the probability of a global catastrophe resulting from the LHC) to be something on the order of 10^-5 to 10^-8--roughly comparable to the risk of death from taking a commercial airline flight.

Note, however, that the odds of death on an airplane are based on past flight statistics--my subjective probability, on the other hand, were rough guesses as to the likelihood that each key point in the argument that the LHC is safe would turn out to be wrong. Thus, my p_catastrophe is a subjective probability, more akin to my guessing the point spread on a football game than a true statistical probability based on past history, like the probability of death from riding in an airplane.

So is there a way to put p_catastrophe on a more statistical basis? Well, according to philosopher Toby Ord, there is. In a paper he recently presented at a conference on global catastrophes at Oxford University, Ord argued that

When an expert provides a calculation of the probability of an outcome, they are really providing the probability of the outcome occurring, given that their argument is watertight. However, their argument may fail for a number of reasons such as a flaw in the underlying theory, a flaw in their modeling of the problem, or a mistake in their calculations.

Then Ord attempted to quantify the probability of scientific mistakes by looking at the percentage of articles that are retracted from high-impact scientific journals, and it turns out that articles are rejected at rates ranging from 1 out of a hundred to 1 out of a thousand (10^-2 to 10^-3).

Ord then went on to discuss a few high profile examples of radical scientific mistakes, like Lord Kelvin's estimate of the age of the Earth at only 100 million years and the "Castle Bravo" atomic test that was more than twice as powerful as predicted because of an overlooked fusion method:

The Shrimp device tested in Bravo was a 15 Mt two stage thermonuclear surface burst. This was the first "dry" or solid fuel (lithium deuteride fueled) H-Bomb tested by the U.S., and the first solid fuel Teller-Ulam device ever tested. It was the largest bomb ever tested by the U.S. although this was by accident. The yield of Bravo dramatically exceeded predictions, being about 2.5 times higher than the best guess and almost double the estimated maximum possible yield (6 Mt predicted, estimated yield range 4-8 Mt). . . .

The reason for the unexpectedly high yield was due to the "tritium bonus" provided by the lithium-7 isotope which made up most of the lithium. This isotope was expected to be essentially inert, but in fact it had a substantial reaction cross section with the high energy neutrons produced by tritium-deuterium fusion.

Such examples of radical scientific mistakes can be multiplied. My favorite example, (because I lived through it) was the idea that the expansion of the universe is decelerating. In the 1980's the idea that the opposite was true was just inconceivable. There was no way that astrophysics could be that wrong. Yet it was so.

So what are the odds that Giddings and Mangano (2008) is so radically wrong that it will have to be retracted from Physical Review Letters? Apparently, no better than 1 in 1,000. Of course, it could be the case that Giddings and Mangano (2008) could be radically wrong, yet the world will not end because of the LHC for reasons utterly unrelated to Giddings and Mangano's arguments. But what is the probability of that?

Um, ordinarily people create strawmen in order knock them down. I actually agreed with you. Like I said, you may consider what I wrote a misrepresentation, but it was more of a typographical error really. "Birth control" was on my mind, so I typed "birth control" rather than "pregnancy". I'm not perfect. I make mistakes. But at least I own up to them, as I have in this case for the third time now. There is a famous quotation by Isaac Asimov that is relevant to the present situation:


ETA: I redacted my post number #1362 so that it reads "Your pregnancy example is a good analogy."

I'm reminded of another thread ...

"Astronomers! Stop shouting out to the Universe" in which the OP argued that in the off chance that a hostile alien overheard a message beamed into space...


Warren Platts, that is not the only case of you doing it. I wonder if you would be willing to own up to it being a habit.
Like how you misrepresented (your word) Giddings and Mangano.

BTW, you can call me Warren.

ETA: Did you get a chance to check out Plaga's rejoinder to Giddings and Mangano?

You misrepresented the stance taken by Giddings and Mangano's paper in regards to "problematic." This misrepresentation later led to your misrepresentation of Jim's post.
It's a recurring theme. As long as your argument still can make sense to You...

Very well.
You may call me Master

It's a Moot Point. I don't agree with Plaga anymore than you agree with Giddings.

OMG! Give me a break! Let it go, please! All I did was reiterate that G&M's calculations indicate that metastable 5- and 6-D mBH's, (if they exist at all--a big if, I'll grant) might be "potentially problematic" as in might could be Earth-swallowing on time scales measured in thousands or millions of years rather than in billions of years. If you think that's a misrepresentation, then OK fine: can we at least agree that "potentially problematic" pretty much means "potentially not good", and leave it at that? And as for me misquoting Jim by writing "birth control" rather than "pregnancy"--let me say it again: I apologize for misquoting you Jim! The revised version of the post is fixed. What else do you all want me to do? Would you be happy if I spanked myself?


Wow! You're no longer a journeyman baiter! Allow me to be the first to congratulate you, Master!


Yeah, all that physics stuff is boring anyway. So how about Toby Ord's philosophical point that 1 in 100 to 1 in 1,000 articles are retracted by high-impact science journals?