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Feb 26, 2015

Science becomes Misosophy

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

Most of physical science is nice and non-fraudulent. But cosmologists and particle physicists have lost contact to reality and defend superstition in a criminal fashion.

This was my friend Benoit Mandelbrot’s experience in 2000, because he had explained the Kepler-Olbers paradox (“Why is the night sky dark?”) in a non-expansionist way. Before him, Fritz Zwicky had become ostracized for making such a proposal.

The Zwicky-Mandelbrot result has since been proved and explained with publications starting in 2003. But there is no response to the two independent proofs offered (a statistical mechanics of mutually attractive particles; a demonstration that Einstein’s constant c in the vacuum is a global and not just a local constant of nature everywhere).

So the standard cosmology as defined in any school text is based, not on ignorance but on lies? One could go so far as say so, although of course most of the worshipers of the disproved gospel never heard of its demise since the leading journals and media suppress the dogma-defying results.

This could be a nice anecdote for future historians of science. But it also has a non-humoristic side to it: The “Big-Bang experiment” – designed to re-create the conditions of the Big Bang down on earth – refuses to update its 7 years old Safety Report before doubling its world-record collision energies for protons in a few weeks’ time from now. Conditions that never existed before in the history of the universe are thus being tried to be created down on earth – with blue eyedness. Putin’s self-assurance is nothing by comparison.

This is a relapse into the darkest times of the middle ages – in the year 2015. And the media are disallowed to report. It would be nice to learn who is legally responsible for the fraudulent curfew. Stockholm – because they would lose their reputation?

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Comments — comments are now closed.


  1. bill johnson says:

    Mr. Rössler

    I know you have stated this in the past but for sake of clarification could you generally describe the range of probability that the LHC would create an extinction level event at its past energy and the range of probability that the LHC would create an extinction level event with the new energy level. Is it a simple doubling or is the range of probability more than a simple doubling of what it was before?

    Putting numbers, even if rough, to the question makes it far less abstract.

  2. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Thank you, you are absolutely right, but this is not easy to answer.
    We do not know how large the risk is when conditions that never existed before in the universe are created down on earth. These conditions can create almost anything — the farther you are away from the regular or previously existing.
    So a “thinking pause” before doing something “absolutely unprecedented” can never be a bad advice.
    This is all I am advocating: a brainstorm.
    Rather than showing indolence and brute force. To do this would be beyond the dignity of responsible scientists, especially so if more than ten thousand of them jointly share in the responsibility.

  3. bill johnson says:

    Well the LHC has ben shut down for 2 years, so if a thinking pause is what we need we are just wrapping up a long one. How much potential there was in that pause is of course up for question but the pause was there.

    But in any event I understand and appreciate the difficulty with putting forward a probability range for a potential extinction level event but a the same time if a rough estimate cant be made how certain can we be that this risk is worth taking further action on? Obviously you think the risk is greater then Zero, otherwise this wouldn’t have been of sustained interest to you, and obviously you think the risk is less then 100, otherwise there would be no point in further concern as our fate would already be set after the first run. So over 0 and under 100….that’s still quite a range. I remember you generated rough number for the risk probability under the first run, the comment was made on one of your posts here, although I didn’t keep a record of it. Do you perhaps remember what was or are you now of the opinion that making such an estimate is impossible? Thanks.

  4. Otto E. Rossler says:

    It is not helpful to say to someone who is aiming at you with a gun that the probability that it is not loaded is 94 percent sharp, even if that is about what you have reason to think it is.
    My strategy here is to ask for your and everyone else’s solidarity in our begging the other side to, please, CHECK before shooting.

    The fact you mention that there was a pause actually points the other way: The pause was NOT used for a re-assessment!

    But let me return to my main point: If you wake up in a new forest, as we all do in the wake of the new no-big-bang physics:
    Do you really advocate not to review an experimental decision made before the new forest structure was discovered?
    I humbly apologize for having found something new that is nowhere criticized by the community. But anyone who decides to ignore it has a duty to give a reason before contuing to bet the globe on the belief that “new published results are unlikely to be true especially when they go uncriticized in the literature for years.”

    I need here the support of the young generation who still believe that innovation is possible and that non-grey countries have a right to live too.
    You won’t believe me how much fun it is to seek novelty. It is much more fun than reciting old melodies. And sometimes you even get a belated “thank you” — for example, from one of the innumerable mothers of young children on earth. I am working for them alone.

    And I apologize if I sound panicky. The ship’s boy also sounded panicky — which probably was the reason no one listened to him.

    Maybe you have the balanced voice people would listen to? There must be one gifted translator with a heavenly voice somewhere: Is it you?
    I am a very religious person. My hero is Martin Buber. Maybe I should not have told this secret, but I recently attended the funeral of his late pupil, Eleonore Beck. I had not even known we lived in the same town. Only her publicized death alerted me to her no longer tangible presence. She was a pupil of Fridolin Stier’s, Buber’s friend and my father’s friend. The world is small. My biggest discovery is smile theory. Forgive me for being so talkative.

  5. bill johnson says:

    Mr. Rossler

    To start with your first point you are certainly correct in pointing out that a low probability of risk does not make it advisable to needlessly face this risk. For this same reason I would advise anyone against playing Russian roulette. Say the gun has a 10 rd cylinder, the individual has a 9/10 chance of not getting shot when they pull the trigger yet I would clearly advice against doing so. In this case if we knew for a fact that the probability of the LHC causing an extinction level event was say 1% that 1% is still worth categorizing as unacceptable high risk given the magnitude of the consequence.

    So to clarify the need to generate a range of probability is not to say “well the probability is low so lets do it anyway” rather the need for the range of probability is to be able to gauge the confidence level you have in your prediction and the related point at which your concern may prove to be wrong.

    Returning to the example of someone playing Russian roulette if I can predict a rough probability range I can provide an accurate warning to the individual who chose to play of the rising risk associated with continuing to play without spinning the cylinder. After they pull the trigger once and they prepare to go again the chance has dropped from 9/10 to 8/10 that they will escape unharmed if they continue and if I can tell them that the warning has meaning. If on the other hand I say that pulling the trigger will harm them and nothing happens when they pull the trigger I have less credibility for my warning even as the probability of harm continues to increase each time.

    Basic level, people want to have some context for potential risk and can easily translate “unknown” risk level with “0” risk level or “risk level not worth considering” I would suggest to you that this point is a major impediment to consideration of your argument and one that you should consider needing to overcome.

  6. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Thank you for the interesting advice.

  7. Otto E. Rossler says:

    I hope this was not the last word, though.

  8. bill johnson says:

    Well to put some context to my comments while I am interested in particle physics I come from a social sciences background, not a physics background. With this in mind I don’t have the background to make much of a contribution as to the validity of the safety argument itself one way or another, what I do have is the background for a conversation about how people respond to proposed risks.

    For one thing humanity tends to downplay the threat of extinction level events. Expanding humanity beyond the earth is necessary to defend against an extinction level event being the end of humanity however this only recently became an option that was even on the radar and even now while we potentially could do it, such an effort would still be very difficult and by no means guarantied success. The newness of this option and challenges towards implementing it mean that it doesn’t get the attention I think it should with the notable exception of SpaceX and their commitment to colonizing Mars. In any event, the fact of the matter is we don’t have an insurance policy against an extinction level event and yet with so many other pressing concerns on people minds these dangers can be given far less consideration then they potentially should be given. This then brings us to the question of quantification.

    Quantification is very important to how people understand the world around them especially when it comes to ranking or prioritizing threats or problems. One reason why we value quantification is the fact that it requires a larger level of commitment on the part of the party making the prediction. I would refer back to my previous Russian roulette example on this point.

    So this explains my interest in the question of quantification when it comes to your argument and I would add that this question is even more important given that this isn’t the first iteration of this point of concern. This is the 2nd run for the LHC so it is even more important to provide a context of potential risk now as compared to potential risk for run #1.

  9. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Thank you for your well-argued contribution.

    I used to say the risk of total annihilation after a delay of several years is in the order of ten percent.
    But these numbers are very hard to make more solid.
    The similarity to the iceberg on the horizon is much more fitting: Spotting it is more important than giving a fixed number for the probability of collision.

    Maybe a third comparable situation is even better-fitting:
    When the thermometer tells the captain one has to reckon with icebergs in the fog, it makes sense to reduce speed to keep the braking distance and the visibility range mutually matched.
    In the present case:
    The demonstrated falsity of the accepted models regarding the properties of homemade black holes, which the ship LHC was designed to produce (as one of its two big aims, the other was the Higgs with its super success), is contradicted by no one in the literature for 7 years. The Safety Report is 7 years old.

    I do not say that I described the greatest or most certain risk. I only say: “Steering blind” with radar that is outdated for 7 years is disadvisable.

    All I ask for is a risk assessment before doubling the cruising speed.

    You tell me that in your opinion, stronger criteria are necessary to justify a risk reassessment after 7 years’ time.

    I find it hard to concur with you on this. Even though I do admit that the way you think and tic must be very close indeed to that of most everyone else on the planet: The UN, the courts, the politicians, the Europeans, the mothers. (One court was on my side but that fact is being kept under the rug.)

    So I need to return to my question to you: Are you sure the globally un-contradicted risk one person found is NOT enough to be taken as a HINT that a Safety Report that is 7 years old should perhaps be renewed? This “Beruhigungs-” philosophy (a term due to Einstein, Beruhigung meaning something like appeasement) is the one adhered to by the whole planet. You gave it a voice and I appreciate that.