The problem isn't getting overweight, it's getting off center weight distribution.
With an average error of 250 lbs per pallet you can easily get above where you can easily compensate for a bad trim.

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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.

Good thinking. That backs up my point more. Thanks for the reminder.

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

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

I'm stepping out of Mod Mode now... and may regret getting dragged into this, but...

(1) Why 50/50? This assumption on your part immediately gives your calculation a larger value than it may deserve. What are the true odds that string theory may be right? And what are the true odds that it may be right in just the way you need it to be?

You repeatedly claim that theories are wrong a lot. What did you say? That 1 in 1,000 make it to publication? Wouldn't that be a better value to use for string theory?

(2) And now you simply accept G&M as right, even thiough you argue against them earlier. Wouldn't 1 in 1,000 be a better value here, too?

(3) And you assume that 2 dimensions are unsafe, so you "conservatively" use 3. Why not 1? Or 6? Also, you use 3/7 when it should be 3/11.

So, your calculation should be 0.001 x 0.001 x 0.273 = 0.000000273 +/- 0.000000091.

(1) 15 out of how many? How were they selected? Are any of them unethical geeks?

(2) How many scenarios? Out of how many possible scenarios?

(3) Ditto #1.

With nothing to validate these data, all this becomes anecdotal and should not be used at all.

But, let's use it anyway.

Take the mean, not the average, and use 2%.
I don't see a 5% chance that Hawking radiation could be a danger, but we'll use it.
I'd put the likelihood of a mini-blackhole camping out at the center of the earth at 1 in a million; let's use 0.0001.
These should be multiplicative, not additive, so
0.02 x 0.05 x 0.001 = 0.0000001

Previously considered. We should not double-dip. But, if you must, it should be 66.7% of 3/11 = 0.182

Previously considered. I disagree with your number, but we'll just drop it out.

I get 0.001 x 0.001 x 0.273 x 0.0000001 x 0.182 = 0.00000000000000496 +/- 0.00000000000000331.

This is the likelihood that "something bad" will happen. It ignores the possibility that a mini-blackhole (the size of perhaps two protons) will be capable of doing any damage at all within the lifetime of the earth.

I would put that as highly unlikely - blackholes don't seek out other masses, the distance between particles is (on their scale) immense, this blackhole is extremely small and would grow extremely slowly if at all - say 1 in 1 billion, to be conservative. So we're now down to (heck, let's go scientific) 5E^-24.

You want to include the severity. That might hold true in a real risk-benefit calculation, but this isn't one. All it does here is allow you to inflate the number.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
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Are you really saying that it is necessary to take a class on ethics before one can actually be ethical?

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

(1) Why 50/50? This assumption on your part immediately gives your calculation a larger value than it may deserve. What are the true odds that string theory may be right? And what are the true odds that it may be right in just the way you need it to be?
Eh, if you can find your way back to the first few pages of posts in this thread, you'll see another of Warren's "calculations" where these types of assumptions were made. I don't think they're purposely done to support his opinion; rather I think it's a great case for why statistics is it's own branch of math.

Warren: Lets examine this statment. "I'm either blonde or I'm not." So me being blonde is either true or false. That's two options, and one of them is correct. So 50/50 chance, right?

But not so fast. Blonde is a recessive trait; also many races do not carry a blonde gene. In short, the ratio of blonde hair to other colors is not 1:1. And the chace of me being "Blonde" versus me being "Other" is therefore not 50/50.

You can't just pose a question as a true/false operator then assume the chance of one of the results is 50/50.

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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."

... rather I think it's a great case for why statistics is it's own branch of math.

"There are three types of lies... lies, damnable lies, and statistics."

Some years back, we got a new TV weatherman on one of our stations. The mayor of Houston came on the news to welcome him, and do the weather for him. Quoth Hizzoner, "Now, it says here that there's an 80% chance of rain tomorrow. Well, in my official capacity as mayor, I'm changing that to 50%. The way I see it, either it's gonna rain or it's not."

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

Hi guys,

Sorry I haven't had a chance to get back sooner. I'm on my way to a new job in the oil patch to drill Mother Earth. And sorry for calling John Ellis a "geek", Jim. I will say, however, that the language that Prof. Ellis and Brian Cox have used to describe their opponents (e.g., me) is unprintable on this forum at least.

Basically, there are four "showstoppers" that are supposed to guarantee the safety of the LHC:

1. it's unlikely that mBH's will form in the first place
2. it's unlikely that any mBH's that are formed will be metastable
3. it's unlikely that any metastable mBH's will grow fast enough to be problematic because of their tiny size
4. this last point is reinforced the existence of white dwarfs and neutron stars (i.e., if cosmic rays are producing mBH's, they are not probably of dangerous 5 or 6-D variety)

So, for the LHC to be potentially problematic, all four of the above get tossed out the window. If we just go by scientific retraction (not rejection) rates, the equivalent of four papers would have to get retracted. So the range would be 10^-2^4 = 10^-8 (about what Lord Rees came up with for RHIC) to 10^-3^4 = 10^-12.

So then we do a cost benefit analysis. That depends on the value of the Earth. Judge Posner himself rated the value of the Earth at a mere $600 trillion, based on people's willingness to pay to reduce small risks of death. So the expected cost = $6 x 10¹⁴ * 10^-8 = $6,000,000. So if the LHC can be expected to produce more than $6,000,000 in benefits, then we should do it.

However, Posner remarked that the estimate of the value of the Earth at $600 trillion is arguably too small. Americans, anyway, based on their willingness to pay to reduce small risks of death, value themselves at about $7,000,000 each. Presumably, other Earthlings would value themselves similarly, if they could afford it. Social justice demands that we not discount the dollar value of poor people. So, 6 x 10[sup]9 people times 7 x 10 ⁶ USD ea. = $4.2 x 10¹⁶. Multiplying that value by 10^-8 yields an expected cost of $420,000,000 USD. Not too bad I guess. So really, I should go along with running the LHC--if I accepted those valuations of the Earth. Which I don't. This whole cost-benefit way of looking at the issue bugs me for some reason. For one thing it discounts future generations. I don't think that's fair.

There are other ways. As the Adrian Kent paper argued, if we applied the UK radiation standards (1 in a million chance of causing 5 deaths per year), then p_catastrophe would have to be below 10^-18 if future generations are discounted, and 10^-21 if future generations are counted.

Spotted in BA Blog: Fun LHC article in USA Today:

USA Today: The Great Fear of the Unknown

The children of the world need more of your opinion. Weigh in.

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It's all Warren's fault (kidding Warren)

It's not all Warren's fault...


...just mostly his fault. (kidding aswell).
The internet has some weird way of makeing people get worked up over the littlest things. See NEOWatcher's post in the OTB thread <link> about bloggers who are upset because too many of a particular commercial played during a football game. Not that there were too many commercials, but that the same one was too frequent!

The internet is an easy way for people to voice their grievances, and gain momentum without having to lift much more than your typing fingers. That's the evil side to the internet. And, since Al Gore apparently invented the internet, we should all hold him accountable! Quick! Time to form BloggersAgainstEvilAl.com!!! Riot in the virtual streets! Rah rah rah!!! etc.

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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."

I half-caught US Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean and his Republican counterpart jointly addressing the mumble press club or some such, taking Q&A, and when they were asked about the power of the Internet, one of them -- I think Dean -- praised it as a community, where people communicated, to contrast it with the traditional top-down one-way media well understood by their audience.

He quickly threw in that teachers need to teach critical thinking skills because there are more than a few non-facts available on the Internet. Opposite-party counterpart me-too'd the sentiment. It's unanimous. Thinking is good.

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Lol. Well, regardless of how obvious it is, still makes me smile to hear someone publicly say how important critical thinking is (no matter how ironic the source may be ).

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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."

Does this mean I have to do more? Drat..

That why what Warren do is so great : He is critically thinking !

Why big science should not be criticized ? Why big science should not be accountable ?

Why we ordinary people should not question what they do ? Is the atomic bomb an urban legend ? Some rumor spread thru the internet ? No at this very moment ,you and me, are only minutes from nuclear death , is it not a fact ?

So why to be so trusty , so indifferent when science want to go farther and farther ?

Galacsi

1. No we are not minutes from nuclear death.
2. Science is neutral. What other people do with what science discovers is something different. Science is not accountable for malbehaviour and lacking ethics of those who use scientific discoveries for bad things.

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Of course we are ! Missiles are fast !

I don't think science can escape its responsibility so easily !

And we have every rights to question this LHC thing.

Critical thinking and stubbornly denying the facts are not the same thing. And, while it's true that you can "question this LHC thing", that doesn't automatically make the LHC dangerous. It's not enough to show that you don't trust what "the man" is saying; you have to then show why the LHC is dangerous.

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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."

I don't know. There is the notion of risk. Probability not certitude. I think Warren posted about this.

Is it really clever to tinker with these very high energies ? What we know about these state of matter? Not very much , and it is obviously the reason d'être of the LHC.

As for me I don't believe in black holes , so I don't think the LHC is actually dangerous in this way. But i could be wrong and why take the risk of a disaster when there is so much more usefull things you could do with all the ressources , money ,people invested in this project. I think there are things more urgent than to find a new boso(n) ?

And the (correct) response that was given was that as a general rule, absolute certainty of something being safe is impossible to achieve. The truth is, there are very few things that have been as thoroughly tested by nature as the safety of these collisions. You may as well worry about, say, apples proving to be deadly poison that kills millions tomorrow, the survival of everyone who's eaten them up to this point being a statistical fluke.

Warren, etc. are starting from the assumption of danger, and insisting on an impossible absolute proof of safety, a standard they selectively apply only to the LHC or any other things they have decided are dangerous. It is flat out impossible to satisfy their demands, and the only reason they have to apply them to the LHC is that it's big and highly visible. This is not critical thinking, it's fabrication of a cause.

Of course big and little science should be criticized and held accountable. And the LHC has certainly been criticized and examined. At what point do the questions turn from a critical analysis to just questioning for the sake for questioning and holding up progress (I'm not saying that has happened, I'm just asking)? Is there a point where big science can go "We have addressed your concerns, let's move forward"?

First, please name a human activity that has zero risk? I don't think there is one. So the goal of zero risk is unobtainable. So, all one can do is decide what is high risk and what is low, and what is acceptable and what isn't.

Second, risk analysis is a very difficult business. I'm very unconvinced that the risk analysis shown in this thread is even close to correct.

But that question really has nothing to do with whether the LHC is a danger, just how "we" should spend our money.

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All moderation in purple

Wow, these statements are heavy, members are being treated like little kids in elementary school, with a big and bad teacher always screaming and yealling.
I don't like this.
Too many rules render a Forum unpleasant and a hell to fulfill all of them, it's like a school exam, you never know if there's something wrong, so it's better just to drop off.

Sorry but that's my opinion

Cheers

@ Vallkynn

Personally, I think BAUT has just the right number of rules. You need to be polite, you need to keep it kid friendly, there are certain forbidden topics (religion and politics) and a couple of special rules for Conspiracy Theories and Against the Mainstream ideas.

There are multiple threads in About BAUT to discuss this further.

But, if that doesn't work for you, well, thanks for stopping by. Its a big Internet, I'm sure you'll find your spot.

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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

Quick question(s), if these reactions are happening in the atmosphere, why can they not be used as a means of research instead of the LHC?


And can someone explain why they can't say there is "no chance" of something happening when/if it's flipped on? Like compare it to something else so I can understand it? - I mean, I think I can safely say that there is a 0% chance of me living if I stop myself breathing for a day. That's an absolute ( I think :P ) But if there is a chance of destroying our world in the Spring, why do it?


Sidenote, just wanted to say thanks guys. I really owe this forum a lot for debunking my fears over the 2012 scares. Now I link all my friends that are scarred to those 70 or so topics debunking it haha :P

Because they are unpredictable and happen in the atmosphere, so there's no way to put thousands of tons of measuring equipment around the spot where they are going to happen next.

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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.

And also because it is such an opportunity for big business and big science. And like they say in America , Pork barrel politics.
If you read the press , the discovery of this Higgs boson will be a great marvel , an epiphany , little a new philisophers stone , an so on , and so on . To the point that some scientists , cautious lot , now publicly worry about finding nothing or worse finding it and then nothing come from that !

I would disagree that it is an absolute. I would say that it is just extremely unlikely. Perhaps someone would put you on a heart-lung machine. Perhaps you'd just be dreaming. Perhaps chemistry would take a 24 hour break, just for you. And so on. You can't insist on absolutes for the LHC for the same reason you can't have absolutes in this case: Someone can always conjure up possibilities, no matter how unlikely or unsupported by evidence they are.

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High energy cosmic rays hitting the earth's atmosphere are already being researched, but it's a different kind of physics. In the LHC the collisions are occurring in a near-perfect vacuum, which is incredibly important, so we can observe all the by-products of the reaction in its entirety. Remember there are something like 10^23 atoms per square meter in air; the byproducts of the cosmic rays get absorbed by all this junk, and whilst it produces very pretty radiation showers, the event itself is completely worthless to a physicist trying to study the kind of physics being done at CERN. Here's an interesting fact about these cosmic ray events. The speed of light changes depending on the material it's passing through; we all learnt that in school when we played about with blocks of glass and light. Whilst the speed of light in a vacuum is an absolute limit which nothing can pass, there's no reason why particles can't travel faster than the speed of light in air. This is exactly what happens when one of these high energy particles hits our atmosphere; the resulting radiation produced is so energetic that it moves through our atmosphere faster than light itself. The event only lasts for a few nanoseconds, but if you could record it, you would see the entire event in reverse! (tendrils of light shooting up and recombining into a giant flash). The reaction is so bright that it rivals the full moon in intensity, but because of its short duration our eyes don't register it.

I'd also like to say that putting a probability on the chances of CERN destroying the planet is not only fickle, but completely pointless. When you get down to such microscopic probabilities being discussed here, the margins of error from the assumptions used completely swamp any meaningful statistics.

Hmm, it's late, and I don't have time to read through this whole thread at the moment. I'm actually studying for a master's degree in Physics myself, and should be spending next year as a researcher in CERN, so if anybody has any questions they think I can field, by all means go ahead

[edit]ah, i see I may have inadvertently engaged in some thread necromancy. I saw a link to this topic at the bottom of the page of some other topic and thought 'hey I'm going that black-hole generating engine of destruction next year!', and failed to see the date of the posts. sorry![/edit]

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