Hansen's MagNET

If every adult American played a different string of numbers, only one would win.

Do you know how little the chance of winning the Mega Millions lotto is? It’s tiny. Less than 1 in 200 million. In other words: if every adult American played a different string of numbers, only one would win. This low probability can be hard to grasp, and many people misunderstand such probabilities. Many would – referring to the chance of winning the Mega Million lotto – say something like this: that only happens once every 200 million times. This, of course, is not true. It’s not impossible for a certain string of numbers to be the winning numbers two, or even three, times in a row. The probability is extremely little, but it can happen. So, saying that a string of numbers happens once every 200 million times is – obviously – incorrect.

Yes, of course you could – if you were extremely lucky!

Having said that, let me now ask: how many times do you have to play the Mega Million lotto to win? It’s a trick question. Please think about it, before you read any further. If your answer was “200 million times”, you were wrong. If you answer was “a billion billion times,” you were wrong as well. If your answer was “I cannot say for sure,” you were right. Now let me ask you another question: knowing that the chance of winning the Mega Million is less than 1 in 200 million, could you win the Mega Million by playing just once in your life? Yes, of course you could – if you were extremely lucky!

What the Mega Million lotto and CERN’s LHC lotto have in common is that it’s a game of chance.

Now, did you know that CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on the French-Swiss border is kind of like the Mega Million lotto – in the sense that it’s a gamble? In the LHC, particles are smashed together at close to the speed of light. When this happens there is a chance a black hole will be created, and there is a chance this black hole will grow and – sooner or later – swallow earth. Ending it all. What the Mega Million lotto and CERN’s LHC lotto have in common is that it’s a game of chance. The difference between the Mega Million lotto and CERN’s LHC lotto is that in the Mega Million you can be lucky to win, in CERN’s LHC lotto we might all be unlucky and lose. All and everything.

But when it comes to CERN’s LHC lotto, we all risk something – our lives – and we cannot opt out on our own initiative.

The Mega Million lotto and CERN’s LHC lotto also differs in another way. You risk nothing if you do not play the Mega Million, only people who voluntarily choose to gamble risk losing. But when it comes to CERN’s LHC lotto, we all risk something – our lives – and we cannot opt out on our own initiative. As long as the physicists at CERN keeps spinning their particles, we’re all hanging in a thin thread. Is that alright? Is it alright that a couple of thousand people gamble with the lives of others? I don’t think so, and I don’t think any sane human being would disagree.

The only way to stop this madness is by spreading the message, in the hope that people in power will listen. I therefore urge you to do just that. Thank you.

“Adults take care of irresponsible children. Übermensch take care of irresponsible adults. I have no choice.” – Anonymous

This is not an article about how CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) caused the mega-earthquake in Japan. It’s about something far more important, namely what the Sendai earthquake can teach us about low probability events happening, despite scientists in the field – before the event – agreeing it couldn’t happen. This can hopefully teach us a lesson: not trusting the scientific consensus blindly. Scientists, no matter how they are portrayed, are human beings, and – naturally – fallible. And that goes for all scientists, including the ones working at CERN.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not favoring an anti-science position – far from it. I’m an advocate of science, but true science, that is; science build on evidence – not dogma or unfortunate over-generalizations, like: an earthquake of magnitude 9.0 can never occur on the east side of Japan, or a black hole can never be created in the Large Hadron Collider.

Still, I now allow myself to direct your attention some 10,000 kilometers west of Sendai, to the heart of Europe, where CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is pulsing at the French-Swiss border. Why? Because this machine might be the end of us. All of us.

What happened in Japan some few days ago was horrible. Thousands of people died, many are still missing, and thanks to the compromised Fukushima nuclear power plant it’s not over yet. Still, I now allow myself to direct your attention some 10,000 kilometers west of Sendai, to the heart of Europe, where CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is pulsing at the French-Swiss border. Why? Because this machine might be the end of us. All of us. And no, it’s not a lack of understanding of particle physics that makes me say this. No matter what the particle physics establishment would like you to believe. Not because they are evil, and intentionally wants to mislead you, but simply because they are too confident about their hypotheses and theories. The particle physicists cannot predict what’s going to happen inside the Large Hadron Collider. This is obvious if you think about it. If they could predict what would happen with certainty, they wouldn’t build a billion-dollar machine in the first place. Unfortunately – for all of us – they think they can, which makes them see their critics as fools. Maybe they should take some lessons in modesty from the seismic scientists, who in general are less arrogant about their knowledge, and lack of knowledge.

I urge you to trust your own judgement, don’t take my word for it. Reflect.

My argument is not based on particle physics (which I admittedly know little about), but as you will see; an understanding of particle physics is not needed. What is needed is a dissection of CERN’s own words, an appreciation of history, combined with an anti-gullible and anti-dogmatic attitude. With that, when you come to the last dot in this article you will – hopefully – have a little less faith in what is called scientific consensus – although scientific dogma sometimes is a more appropriate term. I urge you to trust your own judgement, don’t take my word for it. Reflect. Read everything as if you didn’t know who wrote it, evaluate what is said based on the strength of the arguments given, not on who said it. Also, be en garde when it comes to hyperbole and rhetorics. And with that introduction, let’s get down to business.

First, consider this statement regarding the Sendai earthquake: “Japanese geologists have long forecast a huge earthquake along a major plate boundary southwest of Tokyo. But the grinding plates of the earth move in mysterious ways, and Friday the largest recorded earthquake in Japan’s history hit about 230 miles northeast of Tokyo,” from The Washington Post. What does it tell us? In short: nature is unpredictable, and too much certainty can be devastating, especially when we are in unknown territory. And at CERN they are in unknown territory, as they say themselves in their safety document: “The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) can achieve an energy that no other particle accelerators have reached before.” Still, CERN stubbornly claims that their Large Hadron Collider is perfectly safe.

You just need not to be gullible, and remember that what we call scientific breakthroughs (like Einstein’s relativity) are exactly what kicks a previous, well-established, theory of the throne.

In The Safety of the LHC, CERN writes: “According to the well-established properties of gravity, described by Einstein’s relativity, it is impossible for microscopic black holes to be produced at the LHC.” But is this reference to Einstein more than empty rhetorics? The short answer is no, and – again – you don’t need to be a particle physicists to understand why. You just need not to be gullible, and remember that what we call scientific breakthroughs (like Einstein’s relativity) are exactly what kicks a previous, well-established, theory of the throne. Like Einstein’s theory of relativity did with Newton’s theory of gravity. So, maybe Einstein – and therefore CERN – might be wrong. In a sense, scientists better hope Einstein can be shown to be wrong, so we can take the next step forward in our understanding of the world. And just like we cannot know for sure if a magnitude 7.6 earthquake will hit New York City in a month from now, we cannot know for sure if a black hole will be created in the LHC in the days to come. The probabilities might be close to zero, but they do not equal zero.

As reported in Science Magazine on 22 January 2010, colliding particles can make black holes – no matter what CERN’s safety document claims.

If all these might’s and maybe’s doesn’t convince you the LHC at the French-Swiss border must be stopped, maybe this will: it has been shown that black holes can be produced in the LHC, and CERN is now admitting they are looking for them. As reported in Science Magazine on 22 January 2010, colliding particles can make black holes – no matter what CERN’s safety document claims. As said in the article: “Curiously, though, nobody had ever shown that the prevailing theory of gravity, Einstein’s theory of general relativity, actually predicts that a black hole can be made this way. Now a computer model shows conclusively for the first time that a particle collision really can make a black hole.” Wait a minute. Doesn’t this contradict (from CERN’s safety document): “According to the well-established properties of gravity, described by Einstein’s relativity, it is impossible for microscopic black holes to be produced at the LHC”? It certainly does. If CERN’s claims about black holes are wrong, what else did they get wrong? I wonder, and I hope you do to.

Further, CERN is now publicly contradicting themselves.

Further, CERN is now publicly contradicting themselves. In the innocently titled Reuters story CERN particle collisions resume, from a week ago (14 March 2011), a leading physicist at CERN, Oliver Buchmueller, said: “top priority in 2011 and 2012 would be finding evidence of super-symmetry, extra dimensions, dark matter, black hole production and the elusive Higgs boson.” Yes, among their top priorities is black hole production. How can that be a top priority, if – as their safety document claims – black holes cannot be produced in the LHC? Searching for something they “know” cannot be produced sounds like a waste of tax money. So now the question is: should we all place our faith, and the faith of all future generations, in the hands of people so confused and inconsistent? I’d rather not, what about you?

Michio Kaku is a physicist in the field of string theory, who has been expressing his opinion about the safely of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in the media. In an article by Alan Boyle, Michio Kaku was quoted for saying: “But let me let you in on a secret: we physicist are not driven to do this because of better color television. That’s a spin-off. We do this because we want to understand our role and our place in the universe.”

Okay, that’s not really a secret, but it could be a problem; when the scientists becomes so absorbed in their quest to understand that they lose sight of the bigger picture. I am not blaming them. I can certainly relate to it, and I think most people can. Haven’t we all been so absorbed in something, or so driven towards something, that we became blind to other things? The obvious example is when we are newly in love, and everything else but him or her is suddenly secondary. This is very human, maybe all too human.

When an individual falls in love, or becomes absorbed in something for other reasons, they might – thanks to their narrow-minded focus – forget to call their mom on her birthday, not see the old friend waving from across the street, or deliberately ignore the messages on the answering machine. Or they might forget, not see, or ignore, even more important matters. But that is – in the larger context – okay. After all, it’s their life, and what is at stakes is – again in the larger context – negligible. Even when they don’t pay attention to the red light and rams into a mother with a baby carriage.

But things are different when what is at stakes isn’t just the life of the person himself, and the people unfortunate enough to be in his vicinity, but all and everything. And that is what might be the case when we are talking about CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, and scientists so doped by their ambition to find the Higgs boson that they have lost sight of their fellow human responsibility. Metaphorically we could say they have fallen so hardly in love with the seductive Higgs boson, they are willing to jeopardize humanity to get a glimpse of this elusive particle. Again, I can relate to this, so I’m not blaming them. Rather I feel pity for them, and for all of us.

Imagine if the critics are right (and we cannot rule this out), if a black hole is created in the LHC, slowly imploding earth to the size of a hazelnut – within something like five years. Then the eureka following the discovery of the Higgs boson (if we discover it) will soon be drowned in an inferno of crying babies and cracking tectonic plates. We better hope Einstein was right, or we might all die to the echo of the critics silent whisper “I told you so.”

CERN might be jeopardizing humanity, by smashing particles together in their Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on the border between France and Switzerland. According to critics of CERN’s LHC experiment there is a chance that a black hole might be created, and that this black hole could swallow Earth. CERN dismisses this with these words “According to the well-established properties of gravity, described by Einstein’s relativity, it is impossible for microscopic black holes to be produced at the LHC” (from The safety of the LHC). Unfortunately plenty of people are swayed by a statement like this, and all too often it’s enough to convince them there is no need to worry. But there might be, and you don’t need to be a physicist to understand why. You just have to escape the dogmatic belief in the authority of science we have been taught to accept. It might not be the easiest thing to do, but I hope you’ll try.

I’ll get back to CERN’s statement in a bit, but first let me give you a quote from The curvature of spacetime: Newton, Einstein and gravitation by Fritzsch and Heusch: “In the late nineteenth century, classical physics was seen as the very model for the natural sciences. It was dominated by Isaac Newton’s classical mechanics. The laws of mechanics were interpreted as unshakable laws of nature; their validity was unquestioned irrespective of whether an investigation concerned the motion of rigid bodies on Earth or the orbits of planets and stars in the universe.”

Please notice how this quote began; “In the late nineteenth century,” in other words two hundred years after the publication of Newton’s 1687 masterpiece Principia. And still these well-established laws were shown, by Einstein, to be far from unshakable, about a quarter of a century later. Before Einstein, Newton’s laws had ruled, and physicists pedestaled them – just as CERN now have pedestaled Einstein’s theory of relativity. Seemingly they have forgotton how history, again and again, have show what was considered unquestionable to be questionable – or indeed plain wrong. Newton’s laws is just one of many examples. And with that said, now back to CERN’s statement.

It read: “According to the well-established properties of gravity, described by Einstein’s relativity, it is impossible for microscopic black holes to be produced at the LHC,” but – with our awareness of how Newton’s unshakable and unquestionable laws were later replaced by Einstein’s theory – might we not (with good reason) wonder how CERN can be so sure? Couldn’t it be that Einstein’s relativity is wrong?

Imagine a sentence like this, “According to the well-established properties of gravity, described by Newton’s theory, it is impossible for x (something, your choice) to be produced at the French-Switz border,” written sometime between Newton and Einstein. Let’s say 1 January 1801, just to have something concrete in this little piece of writing. Such a statement would most likely have convinced the majority, thanks to the clever use of pompous hyperbole and a reference to someone perceived to be infallible. But now we know better. A statement based to Newton’s theory would – rightfully – be looked upon with lifted eyebrows. Especially, if humankind was on the line.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, the statement concerning Newton was borrowed from CERN’s safety document, simply substituting Einstein with Newton. This was to show how we – obviously – cannot, and should not, take something on face value. If Newton was wrong – and he was – then Einstein might be wrong as well. If he is, CERN’s safely argument falls to the ground with a loud bang. “Luckily” we might not hear it, cause we might not be here anymore.

In conclusion: please don’t allow rhetorics and hyperbole to sway you, especially in matters of this magnitude. We all have a responsibility here. A responsibility to stop the experiments at CERN – at least until they come up with something more convincing than their current trust-the-dogma-argument.

If you want to know more, you can read my mathematical proof showing why CERN’s LHC must be stopped. It’s simple to understand. You can also read about one of CERN’s major critics, Otto Rössler, and sane risk management at CERN.

Based on data from U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) a magnitude 7.6 earthquake will hit New York, with a 90-100 per cent probability. When exactly the earthquake will strike isn’t known with certainty, but it could happen in the next few weeks.

Using USGS’s Earthquake Probability Mapping, it has been calculated that a magnitude 7.6 (or higher) earthquake is to hit New York once every 4 million years. That is indeed a rare event. However, modern instrumental recordings began just 130 years ago (according to USGS), so although a once-in-4-million-year-event is a rare event, we currently have no way of knowing if the 7.6 magnitude earthquake will hit New York City in 4 days, or in 4 million years, for now. As earthquake expert Ronald Hamburger, senior principal at Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, puts it: “the [once in] 10,000 year earthquake is as likely to occur today or tomorrow, as it is 1,000 years from now.” The same is true for the once-in-4-million-year-earthquake that – according to the map shown below – is expected to hit New York City.

Source: USGS

Ronald Hamburger further explains how stress is relieved in the tectonic plates after a large-magnitude earthquake, which makes it less likely for a large-magnitude earthquake to happen in the same location again. So, if we know when the last magnitude 7.6 hit New York, we could count forward 3-4 million years, until the point in time when an earthquake of the same magnitude is most likely to occur again. But we don’t have data more than 130 years back, so not expecting such an earthquake in the next couple of weeks is unfortunately based on nothing but a misunderstanding of probability.

If someone proposed to build a nuclear power plant somewhere and said the plant would be able to withstand a once-in-100-year-earthquake, people would object. But if people where told the plant would be able to withstand a once-in-10,000-year-earthquake, they would be much easier to convince. However, in reality – although one sounds better than the other – both power plants could be compromised by a large-magnitude earthquake on the first day of operation. So, what sounds better in a black-on-write safety report, doesn’t help us in our colorful everyday life.

In conclusion, people in New York City have good reasons to prepare for a magnitude 7.6 earthquake, and – maybe more importantly – demand city planning that is robust, even to highly unpredictable, but highly consequential, events. Such events are sometimes referred to as Black Swans (a term coined by Nassim Taleb), and even if it seems counter-intuitive to prepare for such rare events, it makes perfect sense, when the veil of ignorance about probabilities is removed from ones eyes.

When it comes to earthquakes, there might be only one way to prevent severe consequences in New York City (and elsewhere), and that is to build cities able to withstand an earthquake similar in strength to the one near Temuco, Chile, on 22 May 1960. This was the strongest earthquake ever registered, at magnitude 9.5, leaving 2 million people homeless. Building cities to withstand a magnitude 9.5 earthquake is a smart solution – not because magnitude 9.5 is the highest ever registered, but because magnitude 9.5 is believed to be the theoretical maximum, as stated by Natural Resources Canada: “Since the tectonic plates have finite dimensions, the magnitude must therefore also reach a maximum. It is believed that the greatest earthquakes can reach magnitude 9.5, which corresponds to the magnitude of the Chilean earthquake.” Only by building to withstand the theoretical maximum can we prevent a catastrophe, like the one currently killing the people of Japan,  from happening in New York City – tomorrow or whenever it might hit.

Until five minutes ago, Nassim Taleb was my hero. Not anymore. Let me tell you why. Yesterday, I made two comments on Taleb’s Facebook page, pointing out what I saw as a mistake in something he wrote about the nuclear problem in Japan these days. Taleb deleted my comments, calling them nonsensical. So, I posted a new comment, telling others that Taleb apparently didn’t favor free speech, when his words were questioned. I knew there was a risk he would delete my comment, and he did. He also blocked me from posting further comments, with these word:

“Removed comments (and commenters) that are either nitpicking & diverting from the main argument or lacking in both rigor & elegance.”

I am not surprised, having noticed his previous humbleness dissolve over the last years. This is sad. If a man of Taleb’s magnitude does not accept comments questioning his infallibility, then this world might soon come to an end, no matter how much Taleb and I bang the drum for a robust – or better still, anti-fragile – society. What might be the end of us is our unwillingness to recognize our own mistakes, a most unfortunate trait, a trait the self-proclaimed skeptic Nassim Taleb unfortunately also suffers from.

There is plenty of debate back and forth concerning the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, and the possibility that it might create a black hole that will swallow earth – and end humanity. Most of this debate is rather technical, and impossible for laymen to understand. Luckily, I’ve found a simple mathematical proof rid of technical jargon, with the unquestionable conclusion that CERN’s Large Hadron Collider must be stopped.

To understand my proof, it’s necessary to understand the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning. So, first textbook definitions of these terms, from the widely used textbook “Introduction to Logic” by Irving M. Copi, Carl Cohen and Kenneth McMahon:

• Deduction: “Every deductive argument either does what it claims, or it does not; therefore, every deductive argument is either valid or invalid. If it is valid, it is impossible for its premises to be true without the conclusion also being true.”
• Induction: “In the realm of induction, as we seek new knowledge of facts about the world, nothing is beyond doubt. We must rely on arguments that support their conclusions only as probable, or probably true.”

Further, you should know that empirical science is in the inductive domain. In other words: all scientific claims are – by definition – never true or false, but only more or less likely. And that goes for claims made by CERN, and their critics, as well. So, the idea that a black hole might be created in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider cannot be ruled out, even if the probability might be approaching zero. Notice, it can only approach zero, it cannot be zero – in accordance with the definition of induction above.

Let’s call the probability of a black hole imploding earth p. Then, in mathematical terms, we now know that:

• 0 < p < 1.

Or, in everyday language, p is somewhere between 0 and 1, but neither 0 nor 1. By the way 1 means 100 %. So far, so good.

Next, we need to quantify the potential loss. This is simple. If earth implodes it will be the end of us. It will be game over. We risk losing everything. In mathematical terms, the loss is infinite, written as ∞. Let’s call the potential loss L, and state it mathematically:

• L = ∞.

If you are having trouble with the concept of infinity, I can tell you it’s the number you get no matter what number you divide by zero. If you try it on your calculator, you’ll get an error.

Having defined the probability of the event (p), and the potential loss of the event (L), we can now calculate the risk (R) using the following formula:

• R = L ×  p

Knowing that L is infinite (∞) and p is somewhere between 0 and 1 (0 < p < 1), we can – with mathematical certainty – deduct the following:

• R = ∞

In other words the risk (R) of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider experiment is infinite – no matter how little the probability (p) of a black hole imploding earth is.

Naturally, that makes the conclusion self-evident: the LHC must be stopped, sooner rather than later. For every second the Large Hadron Collider is turned on, the chance of an end-all black hole is increasing, something we – mathematically – have proven cannot be justified.

I have no more to add.

The average American lives a power-hungry life, running on about 10,000 watts, the equivalent of having one hundred 100 W light bulbs turned on 24 hours a day, every day, 365 days a year. The average European, living as comfortably, runs on about half of that, burning the same power as fifty 100 W light bulbs. To give a little perspective, a human being burns about 100 watts daily, a long-distance runner about 300-400 watts. In other words: Americans are responsible for burning 100 times their own metabolic need for being alive, Europeans 50 times. That is some crazy numbers – time for a vacation.

Many people prefer a low key vacation, kicking back on a beach in Thailand, Spain or maybe Jamaica – as a contrast to our hectic, upbeat American or Europeans lives. For one or two weeks, while on vacation, we essentially live low energy lives, running on something like 1,000 watts – not including the flights to and from our low key paradise. And we enjoy it. By the end of the vacation we want to stay longer. When we are back in our everyday work-TV-sleep-routine we dream about going back. And still, if someone dared to suggests that we cut our power footprint in half – down to a European level – we would shake our heads. “No, no, no, I have to live,” we say, not realizing we would be alive and kicking even on 1 percent of our wattage, and would be able to live a wonderful vacation-like life on one tenth of our typical power consumption.

For some strange reason we tend to think that our power consumption is more or less proportional with our quality of life. Comparing the wattage during everyday American life and the vacation wattage, the opposite seems to be the case. So, why don’t we get out of our uniforms and suits, and kick back with a margarita and some friend in the sun? Deep down, we all know it’s a better life.

There is a post on S C E N A R I O, a magazine by Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies, titled “in 50y“. The post contains a string of short videos with interviews of experts in various fields, from cybernetics to chaos theory. It’s the interview with the chaos theorist Otto Rössler about sustainability and the future that triggered me to write this post.

Otto Rössler talks about the possible dangers of the collisions about to be carried out inside CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). According to Rössler, his calculations show that there is a 50 percent chance that a micro black hole might be created in the Large Hadron Collider, and in about 50 months swallow earth into a black hole the size of a hazelnut. Naturally, that would be the end of us. All of us.

CERN not conCERNed

At CERN they don’t worry about the micro black holes. They say that the safely of the LHC is solid, and that “the fact that the Earth and Sun are still here rules out the possibility that cosmic rays or the LHC could produce dangerous charged microscopic black holes.” Further, CERN writes that Rössler’s argument isn’t valid, and that it has been refuted by professors Nicolai and Giulini. Additionally, CERN lists a string of scientists who support the case that LHC collisions are not dangerous. So, who are we to believe?

Well, we could make the easy choice, and simply believe the majority, the scientific consensus, taking their claim – that the Large Hadron Collider is perfectly safe – on authority. Or, we could do what any responsible skeptic would do: ponder the issue a little further. After doing so, we might end up opposing the CERN collisions. So far, I do, and I think you should as well. Let me explain why.

Odds and consequences

Let’s say I offer you a bet. I’ll roll a dice once, if it shows 1, 2 or 3, I’ll give you $1, if it shows 4, 5, or 6, you’ll give me $1. Would you take the bet? I don’t know, only you know. I now offer you a new bet, this time you win $1 if the dice shows 1, 2, 3 or 4. Only if it shows 5 or 6, you’ll lose your $1. Certainly a better bet, so no matter whether you took the first bet, there’s a higher chance you’ll take this second bet – unless, of course, if you are utterly irrational. And, naturally, if I offered you $1 if the dice showed 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5, and you only would lose if the dice showed a 6, again the chances of you taking the bet increases. Nothing new here. But what’s the point, you might wonder. What does all this have to do with black holes in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider? Well, not much. Not yet, at least. But it soon will. But first a little more talk about dices.

Let’s assume you decided to take the last bet I offered, the one where you would only lose if the dice showed a 6. Most people would. But what would happen if we changed the $1 bet to a bet for $10, $100, $1,000 or $1,000,000? Although your odds of winning remains unchanged, at 83 percent (5/6), you might think twice before accepting the bet. But why not take a bet where the chances of winning a million dollars are 83 percent? Obviously, because the risk – of losing one million dollars – is too high, although there is no more than a 17 percent chance of this happening. It other words: whether or not to take a bet doesn’t depend on the odds only, it also depends on the size of the possible win, and on what is at risk. And that leads us back to the talk about microscopic black holes inside the Large Hadron Collider, and Rössler’s warning that earth might be swallowed.

Odds and consequences related to CERN’s Large Hadron Collider

Now that we are aware that choosing to play not only depends on the odds, but also what we can possible win/lose, let’s consider the collision experiment at CERN. If Rössler is right, then there is a 50 percent chance we will all die in a black hole. That’s the risk, if we lose. If we win – and are not sucked into a black hole – we might have learned something about how it all began. For now, let’s assume Rössler is right. Should we play? Should we carry on with the experiment, knowing there is a 50 percent chance of killing all human beings on earth? I guess all sane people would agree that we shouldn’t carry on, that the risk and the chance of losing is too high. We are not playing with matches here, humanity is on the line, and for what? For the hope that our curiosity about the beginning of the universe will be satisfied. No, thanks.

I admit, I’m curious too. I would like to know what this experiment could tell us, but not when there is a 50 percent chance of jeopardizing humanity. So, the question arises: how slim does the possibility of killing us all need to be to justify this experiment? At it’s core, this is an epistemological question (what’s the value of knowledge?), while also a moral question (what’s the value of human life?) – and there is no easy answer. However, I’ll try, and I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

I assume you, dear reader, is sane. So, I also assume you agree that this experiment shouldn’t be carried out if there really is a 50 percent chance of destroying us all. I also assume you are curious, like most. So, if there were no risk at all, I guess we could agree that the experiment could be carried out. So far, so good. Now it’s “just” a matter of putting a value stamp on knowledge – and on humanity. I will continue this exploration assuming that we cannot know for sure. All science is in the domain of inductive reasoning, where – by definition – there are no certainties, only degrees of probability.

Putting a number on our sanity

The question now is: where do we draw the line? If a 50 percent chance of destruction is unacceptable, and a 0 percent change is acceptable, then what about 25 percent, 10 percent, 1 percent, 0.1 percent, 0.0001 percent and so on? How high a chance of total destruction of humanity will we tolerate to satisfy our curiosity? This is essentially the question we are facing, and in a sense, what we are doing is putting a number on our sanity. The insane would carry out the experiment no matter the consequences, even at a 100 percent chance of killing us all. But what about you, dear reader, where do you draw the line? Is the question the collision experiment might answer really so important that even the slightest chance of destroying all humanity would be acceptable?

What if Rössler was no more likely to be right than anyone else, and if he was the only one on earth saying there is a 50 percent chance of ending it all? With 7 billion people on the planet, the chance that we would all be swallowed by a black hole would then be 1 in 14 billion. That’s a slim chance, but considering the potential consequence – killing us all, and all future generations – isn’t even this chance too high? In other words: would you be willing to gamble the whole of humanity – in the hope of answering a question about the universe – with these odds?

To be or not to be – and to know or not to know

I’ve asked some people this question, and they didn’t think twice: “No, absolutely not!” they said, “No question is that important to answer!” Even if you don’t agree, I would be surprised if you would play this game if the odds were measured in percentages, rather than in millionths of a percentage. And that’s more likely what they are. Unlike most of us – non-scientists – Rössler is a scientist with hundreds of scientific papers to his name, in the fields of mathematics, chemistry and physics. So, he is definitely much more likely to be right than most of us. I therefore suggest that we listen to this gentleman, and ask for a full halt of CERN’s planned collision experiment – before it’s too late.

Flipping through Michael Boulter’s “Extinction: evolution and the end of man”, I came across an interesting section, wherein he writes, on page 5-6, about how the local newspaper in Burren, County Clare, in 2000 said it was “the wettest weather since records began over a hundred years ago, all brought about by global warming.” He tells how there were landslides, floods from broken river embankments and land being covered by storming high tides. And then he makes in interesting comment, saying that “the damage was restricted to modern features of the environment, artificial landscapes out of balance with the whole system. In contrast, the rocks and soil that had been around for millennia remained intact. These mature structures are part of the enormous system that can survive extreme events because they have been developed within the system through long periods of time. Theirs is a natural peace, a balance within complexity.”

Bingo! Now the question is: when will we silly human beings learn from these natural structures, and use them as inspiration for building a robust world, a world wherein we do not need to place our fate in the hands of – mostly incompetent – “experts” of prediction?