Hey Daffy,

I have a question for you as well, if you don't mind. Given that scientists have been badly misled by the evidence in the past (e.g., all evidence before about 10 years ago favored the view that the expansion of the universe is slowly decelerating), How would you rate the level of your confidence that nothing bad will happen?

1. you are confident that the preponderance of evidence favors safety
2. you are confident beyond a reasonable doubt that nothing bad will happen
3. you are confident to a reasonable certainty that nothing bad will happen
4. you are absolutely certain that nothing bad will happen

"Reasonable certainty" means the same as confident beyond all unreasonable doubts

Warren, overall, I am sympathetic to the idea of some kind of protocol being developed to address these concerns, which I think will be needed further down the road. However, in principal, I object to answering "leading" questions such as this...it's a technique I have always objected to regardless of one's position on any issue.

In other words, to answer your question, you are requiring that I first accept your premise included in the question without any sort of discussion. Sorry; can't do that.

This is impossible to achieve; unreasonable doubts are infinit.
This standard is nonsense and only invented to prevent something you find dangerous and nothing could convince you otherwise.
If you are waiting for mass protests in europe against the LHC your chance is the same as a snowball in hell.
Your single beam doesn't produce anything, and adjusting the LHC with known experiments is a given. They don't switch from zero to 100 percent.

If we have multiple dimensions, and M-theory is correct, then gravity exhibits not an inverse square law but an inverse 8th power law. This makes
gravity a lot stronger at short ranges.

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“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever”
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"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence - and then success is sure." - Mark Twain.

Is there any evidence m-theory is correct?
Can gravity compete with the strong nuclear force, and if at what distances?

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Can you give me one good ref that says they are going to 'crank up the power levels to maximum warp ASAP???' or that it was ever their intention?

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Here is the reference:

http://www.stardrive.org/Jack/hyperspace1.pdf

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“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever”
Chinese proverb
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence - and then success is sure." - Mark Twain.

Thanks for the constructive criticism, worldcruiser. I realize I need to rephrase. There are crazy unreasonable doubts, I'll grant you; but then there are doubts that would be unreasonable in most other contexts (e.g., a capital murder case), but then become reasonable when the fate of the World is at stake. These are doubts about whether Hawking radiation will turn out to be real, or whether neutron stars really aren't superfluid on their inside.

These are not crazy doubts, though they might seem to be unreasonable doubts (it would be unreasonable for a journal editor to reject a paper on Hawking radiation even if he harbored doubts about its reality). Both Hawking radiation and neutron star fluidity have not been empirically ruled in nor ruled out. Yet we are gambling the Planet on such theoretical constructs. Since such constructs are theoretical, and have not been ruled in empirically, we cannot be reasonably certain that the LHC will not destroy our Mother. On the other hand, we can be reasonably certain that a microwave oven will not destroy the Earth; however, we cannot be absolutely certain that a microwave will not destroy the Earth because of the existence of weird quantum tunneling.

If weird quantum tunneling were the only "pinch point" at the LHC, I would be all for it.Similarly, if the LHC were only run in single-beam mode, I would be all for it. So please don't say that there is nothing that would convince me that the LHC would be 99.999...% safe (i.e., safe enough to try out.)

We'll see about that . . . .
Huh?

BTW, since you're from Austria, you can tell me what "fehlleistung" means in English.

Nevertheless the (now trivial) prediction of an infinite “emerging time“ because of an infinite distance to be covered from the horizon, is what gave the above paper its worldwide attention. For this prediction implies that microscopic black holes generated on earth cannot evaporate in finite time – and hence put the planet at risk if earth-bound. In this way, an ethical dimension got suddenly attached to a pure-physics result. This dimension was, interestingly, not seen at the time of writing the paper but was the merit of a relativist colleague who when recommending publication jokingly wondered whether there could not be repercussions on the “LHC“ experiment. Although I had never heard of the latter, the remark eventually triggered a vain attempt at defusing the joke. When it failed, a more serious attempt followed so it almost became a sport to hunt for a more sophisticated argument in order to defuse the joke. Each floundered for a different reason so that a vague hunch of a danger-conserving principle being at work formed – that all the uncanny failures may be non-coincidental. The suspicion turned tangible when the final unsuccessful attempt at giving the all clear had been communicated to CERN in May and published in July [32]: neutron stars seem to possess a special quantum protection against natural, cosmic ray-borne, very fast analogs to any miniblack holes potentially created on earth superfluidity was the likely culprit). Eventually the idea of a joke played by nature on humankind – that the artificial slowness of human-made analogs could be a curse – befell the whole planet on September 10 when more than 500 newspapers across the globe referred to it in one way or the other. The joke still waits to be defused. Thinking twice (by no longer opposing the safety conference publicly demanded on April 18 [33]) remains an option to date following the felicitous fehlleistung that occurred at CERN on September 20. The whole globe is grateful for the second chance at falsification granted to it. Letting an idea die is always the less costly option according to Karl Popper.

Rossler's latest

fehlleistung -> misperformance

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“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever”
Chinese proverb
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence - and then success is sure." - Mark Twain.

I'm pretty sure they wanted to take it up to full power within the first couple of weeks. There's probably some references in the LHC News thread.
Perhaps connoting an element of schadenfreude as well?

I'm not trying to lead you anywhere. I just want to know how you classify your level of confidence. It's pretty much the consensus here (and I agree), that there is no such thing as absolute certainty.

Still, I think there's a level of confidence between absolute certainty, and beyond a reasonable doubt. As any judge will instruct you, you do not have to be certain to be confident beyond a reaonsable doubt. Yet, we still harbor a practical certainty about some things (e.g., that snow is white, the sun will rise tomorrow, a microwave oven won't destroy the Earth) that goes far beyond reasonable doubt. That is, we know beyond unreasonable doubts that some sentences are true (though not beyond crazy, certifiably insane doubts--e.g., a genie will prevent the Sun from rising tomorrow, weird quantum tunneling is going to destroy the planet the next time I heat up a burrito in the microwave).

And so if the premise in my question you're referring to is the platitudinous truism that scientists have been known to be wrong in the past, "evidence" notwithstanding, then just leave that part out. So my question still stands: How would you rate your confidence that nothing bad will happen? If you don't like my multiple choice options, feel free to answer any way you like.

Schadenfreude. Defined as taking joy in others' misfortunes.

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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.

I knew that--when a word makes Dilbert, it's a regular part of the English language! My spelling was a fehlleistung though. . . . Thanks for setting me straight!

Well, he does seem to have some strange ideas...

However, how about this?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1391714/posts

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“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever”
Chinese proverb
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence - and then success is sure." - Mark Twain.

My honest answer is I don't know. At what point does the possible danger outweigh the value of the experiment? Dunno...we are in agreement that some sort of plan to evaluate to risks/benefits should be in place, internationally. But what that is, and what the guidelines would be I honestly do not know.

Based on what I currently know, I personally do not think that the LHC is dangerous. However, I do want to try to dispassionately understand all sides of the question, even if it means at times assuming the role of devil's advocate.

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______________________________________________
“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever”
Chinese proverb
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence - and then success is sure." - Mark Twain.

Have to try and see both sides...

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______________________________________________
“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever”
Chinese proverb
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence - and then success is sure." - Mark Twain.

Some of my favorite DVD's are Raymond Burr's "Perry Mason" from the mid-50's...

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“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever”
Chinese proverb
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence - and then success is sure." - Mark Twain.

I think about that too. The problem with international agreements, though, is enforceability. We could draft some Uber Treaty On Particle Intensive Accelerators; but what if the countries involved don't become states parties to the agreement? We could play the sanctions game, but history has shown how effective that is. No, it would be best if the European Union came up with its own set of environmental regulations to deal with (potential) threats from physics experiments run amok.

Ideally, the regulations would be along the US Endangered Species Act, arguably the toughest environmental regulation ever passed by any country. Under the ESA, there is no plan for evaluating the risks/benefits/costs of species preservation. (Well, there is the so-called "God Squad", but never mind that.) That is, species are to be preserved. Period. At all costs. There's no morally rancid attempts to assess the dollar value of a created species. Similarly, there should be no trying to assess the dollar value of the Planet either--as if it were even possible.

I'm also tired of playing what the CERN scientists call the "probability game"--trying to quantify p_catastrophe. They don't like doing it because it leads to the outcome they don't like; I don't like the probability game because it's an illusion to think our uncertainty can be quantified in a responsible manner. It's one thing to gamble on the outcome of the Super Bowl; it's another thing to gamble on the outcome of a physics experiment when the cost of losing the bet is not only your own house, but everybody's houses. Such experiments should not be permitted unless it can be shown that there is no existential risk. That is, there must be no region in the possible (defined as not-empirically-excluded) parameter space that can result in catastrophe. Giddings and Mangano to their credit realized this was true: that there are subsets of the parameter space that are "potentially problematic", as they put it. So they tried to empirically exclude such problematic regions of the parameter space with their white dwarf and neutron star argument. But these arguments, in turn, depend on a suite of theoretical assumptions regarding what white dwarfs and neutron stars are like on the inside (and outside). The fact is we don't know very much about either white dwarfs or neutron stars; we certainly don't know what the laws of physics are like within the quantum gravitational regime found deep within neutron stars. So there remains a recalcitrant, residual risk that cannot be ruled out empirically as of yet.

And don't fall into the fallacy that p_catastrophe is a tiny 10^-18 or whatever. The true value of p_catastrophe is either 1 or zero. Anything in the middle is merely a misguided attempt to quantify our uncertainty.

(And everyone else, please don't repeat the hackneyed idea that any action can destroy the planet because of weird quantum tunneling wave function collapse--no one in the doomsayer camp has ever suggested that weird quantum tunneling is the reason the LHC is dangerous.)

To summarize, countries that propose to allow physics experiments on their soil need to be responsible global citizens and propose their own environmental regulations for dealing with potential globally catastrophic effects from such experiments. They should not wait for the United Nations to do this for them. Moreover, such regulations need to be tough and should not subject Planet Earth to cost-benefit analysis.

I haven't been following this thread in some time. Still making this argument, I see.

Interesting.

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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."

Actually, I said I'm tired of making that argument. Rather than trying to quantify the risk, I'm saying we just need to acknowledge its existence, and go from there.

Yet you keep making it. You specifically state that the Cern scientists "don't like to come up with an answer because they don't like the result". This ignores the facts that the safety panel was an independant group of scientists. There is no firm number because the probability for catastrophe lies in theoretical science. In short, there is no firm probablility.

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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."

What I actually said was "[CERN] don't like doing [the probability game] because it leads to the outcome they don't like." Which is true. Face it, the CERN people are advocates. It's their job to see that the LHC is brought to fruition. They will never publish a paper or report that says the LHC is unsafe. That would be like expecting Exxon to volunteer a report that single-hull supertankers are unsafe or Union Carbide to volunteer a report that their Bhopal plant was unsafe.

And speaking of safety reports, how do figure that the so-called "safety panel" was independent? The fact is that the opposition has never been given a fair hearing. Not in court anyways. And their concerns have certainly not been reflected in appropriate regulations for governing potentially out-of-control science experiments.

Thank you Fazor! That was the point I was trying to make, but you put in simple language that anyone can understand. The probability for catastrophe is either 1 or zero, and we don't know which it is.

The probability for catastrophe is either 1 or zero, and we don't know which it is.
No, it's not. That's not how probability works. And we've had that discussion earlier aswell.

I could either live through the day, or die. That doesn't mean I have a 50/50 chance to die today. It's the difference between probability and state. True/False is a state. But the chances of something being true or false depend on a number of variables, and are not necessarily 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."

Unless you can show us a direct quote from a suitably qualified representative of CERN confirming that claim, you are simply drawing a conclusion based on circumstantial evidence. That does not make your conclusion true.

Prove it, or drop it.

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

Right--see my discussion of the distinction between frequentist probabilities versus Bayseian probabilities a page or two back.

This is totally confused: Yes, you will either live to see another day or you will not. And yes, it would be a mistake to say you have a 50% of surviving. And I guess your point here is that I made that mistake with the LHC. But I have not. I specifically deny that the LHC is in the same category as coin flips or actuarial tables. Casinos and life insurance companies arrive at frequentist probabilities based on the observed behaviors of countless individual events. But the LHC is a one-off historical event. It will either destroy the world or it will not. The only frequentist data we can apply to the LHC is the fact that scientists are so wrong sometimes that their papers get retracted at a rate of between 1% and 0.1%. Sure we can set a value to p_catastrophe between zero and one, but let us be clear that this is not a frequentist probability. It's more like betting on whether the LHC will find the Higgs particle or not. Either the LHC will, or it will not--there's no percentage probability that there will. Stephen Hawking himself is so sure that the Standard Model is so rotten to the core that he was willing to bet an American colleague $100 USD that the LHC will not find the Higgs particle. Unlike a turn of the roulette wheel, however, the outcome is predetermined. If we were British oddsmakers we could start taking bets. We could set the initial odds at 50-50 if we wanted, but then depending on how the bets went we would have to adjust the probability so that when the outcome is finally known, we could pay off all the bets, and still make our 10% vigorish. But that doesn't mean that there is in fact a percentage chance that the Higgs particle will be found by the LHC. The outcome is predetermined. Some people will guess wrong and others will guess correctly. But the fallibility of human guessers has no bearing on the actual fact of the matter. Think about it this way: I just flipped a coin and wrote down the result. Now you could bet other BAUT members what I have already written down. If you were smart, you would take 50% odds, but there is not a 50-50 chance that I've written an "H" instead of a "T". The "chance" that I wrote down an "H" is either 1 or 0. In fact, it is 1 actually, but your ignorance of that fact did not change that fact. Similarly for the LHC, whether it turns out to be potentially problematic or not is predetermined: either the laws of physics are such that the LHC will turn out to be problematic, or the laws of physics are such that the LHC will not turn out to be problematic. And since we are scientists and not psychics, we won't know the outcome until we run the "experiment". For our practical purposes, all we need to know is that potential problematicity has not been empirically excluded yet. To run the experiment before we know the answer is as morally irresponsible as driving in the wrong lane around a blind corner in order to prove that there isn't an oncoming vehicle around the bend.

It's in that John Ellis video toward the end where he says he's no longer in "probability mode" (there's a link to it somewhere in this thread); IIRC he also mentioned that he thought it ridiculous to use ordinary risk analysis, where one estimates p_catastrophe and then multiply that by the population in order to get an "expected" number of deaths.

ETA: Here it is, I cited in post #1413
The part I was referring to takes place at about 1 hour 6 minutes into the lecture.

I see your reasoning; I just totally and whole-heartedly don't agree with it. For starters, they're not going into these experiments totally blind. There are already particle colliders; just not on this scale. They did not just say "Oh, what the hell. Lets smash some stuff together really fast and see what'll happen!"

They're going into these experiments with a pretty good idea of what they think will happen. Are they sure? Of course not; if they were sure, they wouldn't need to run the experiment in the first place.

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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."

A lot of us think that's rediculous. Just because you don't agree doesn't mean we're all in denial because we "don't like the outcome". It means we don't think it's a valid measurement.

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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."

No, what they said was that the best way to put an end to the safety debate was to get the LHC up and running as soon as possible. That's about as morally reprehensible as it gets. If you were riding with me and I wanted to pass a car in a no-passing zone, saying it'll probably be OK, and then ended the safety debate by passing the car anyway, how would you like that? You would in fact be justified in kicking my *** once we stopped.

They think they have a good idea what will happen, and the fact that they totally destroyed a several kilometer length of their tunnel shows they don't understand their own creation.

Now you're really scaring me. . . . I'm sorry, but probably is not good enough--not when Mother Earth is on the line.
Why not? It's used for the risk analysis of nuclear reactors and radioactive waste. I'm not for it, though, for a good reason: I don't think we should subject our Mother to a cost-benefit analysis. If there's one thing in the universe that's infinitely valuable and worth sacrificing everything else for it is Earth!