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Dear Sweet CERN – The World Knows About Your Good Intentions

Posted in existential risks, particle physics

but now you question Einstein’s whole theory while continuing to refuse a scientific safety conference that could save the planet if he was right.

Were it not for the latter dark cloud, everyone would find this childish behavior cute — an ingenious plot.

Time is ripe to admit the long requested Einstein conference before the LHC can go on.

Everyone feels so now.

7 Comments so far

  1. Sweet Caroline ohhhohooo — Good times never seem so good

    “Everyone feels so now.”

    Call on young scientists of the world: find another famous song with “sweet”!

    Will you answer any of our scientific questions of your last blog entries? (especially the Telemachos-problem and the TeChFat-theorem)

    “Everyone feels so now.”

    Sincerely,
    The Pinky & the Brain

  2. In two large internet polls (AOL and BBC), a majority voted to forbid CERN’s collider from operating at all. The subsidiary issue of whether safety should even be discussed in a conference would certainly bring a virtual unanimity of the public, apart from self-serving particle physicists.

    An organization such as CERN which thumbs its nose at safety issues should not be allowed to operate a mouse farm, much less a high-tech nuclear research faciilty. Environental and planetary safety should be an ongoing priority, for which safety conferences would be regularly held.

  3. What a logical peak performance, Mr. Houston!

    Oh yes, most certainly internet polls are very legitimate & very effective methods to clarify such questions.

    Because there are areas in the US bible-belt, where a majority would like to see LGBT-people be killed, it would be legitimate or at least a “proper decision”?

    Our personal internet poll some minutes ago had the following result: “the majority do not want any more useless internet polls by AOL or Radio Vatikan”.

    This time maybe too serious,
    The Pinky & the Brain

  4. Pinky may be having fun chortling over Dr Rossler’s ambition to warn the 7 billions humans on this planet we are heading for the edge of the precipice, but let’s remember that CERN is being completely irresponsible in not responding to the public interest here, however small its members may think the chances of disaster are.

    What basis do they have for assuming that the risk is low? Since we all admit no one knows what will happen as the LHC escalates — maybe nothing, maybe things we cannot yet concieve — there is no rational means of estimating the risk. It is a matter of how people “feel”.

    This kind of gut response is not firm enough a foundation to base hugely consequential public policy upon.

    In fact, it exemplifies a faith which is more religious than anything rational. CERN’s bunch of superannuated kids have faith in the outcome as something we don’t have to worry about as a danger or catastrophe.

    This faith is based on the same elements as religion — group think, group empathy, group security, group cohesion, group interests — and its judgment is just as irrational, scientifically speaking.

    The public on this planet should not be held to ransom by a cult, which is what CERN is, if we are to be clear sighted and observe it for what it is.

    The high priests of this cult/religion should remember what field they are in — physics — and act accordingly, and stop serving up what may well be planetary Kool Aid.
    \
    Even if you don’t agree with Professor Rossler’s mathematics or his intuition, the facts of the matter dictate that all rational scientists must support his plea for responsible outside review of what the adult children of CERN are up to.

    If they set light to the living room curtains the house may be reduced to a cinder despite their confidence that Mummy Nature will not be so mean as to wipe out the only human intelligence we know of.

    Even if Professor Rossler’s anxiety is taken as the perceptions of a deluded visionary, let us remember that such perceptions have often proved correct in the past, where the assumptions of the placid unimaginative normal individual and his group have turned out to be ill founded.

    Quantum physics as a whole is but one example.

  5. Well said, Anthony. Bravo!

    P & B: I was responding to Dr. Rossler’s statement, which you repeated: “Everyone feels so now.” The AOL and BBC Internet polls, each with over 250,000 voters, are the available public opinion data. Since a majority voted to block the LHC experiments, nearly everyone surely would wish that safety issues be discussed in a conference — that is, everyone outside of the confines of CERN and insane asylums.

    By the way, the English spelling is “Telemachus”. The terminal “us” (not “os”) represents the potential meals for a hungry black hole.

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