I was kinda hoping you wouldn’t ask that. This whole thing came up because I said it was “reasonable” to worry about the LHC, and I stick to that. But the whole thing seems like a Pascal’s Mugging to me, and I don’t have a perfect answer to that class of problem.
I don’t think it should be switched off now, because its failure to destroy the world so far is even better evidence than the cosmic ray argument that it won’t destroy the world the next time it’s used. But if you’d asked before it was turned on? I guess I would agree with Aleksei Riikonen’s point in one of the other LW threads that this is really the sort of thing that could be done just as well after the Singularity.
But I also agree with Eliezer (I could have avoided this entire discussion if I’d just been able to find that post the first time I looked for it when you asked for a citation!) that in reality I wouldn’t lose sleep over it. Basically, I notice I am confused, and my only objection to you was the suggestion that reasonable people couldn’t worry about it, not that I have any great idea how to address the issue myself.
You mean, asking the whole actual real-life question at hand: whether the LHC is too risky to run.
“Is it reasonable to think X?” is only a useful question to consider in relation to X as part of the actual discussion of X. It’s not a useful sort of question in itself until it’s applied to something. Without considering the X itself, it’s a question about philosophy, not about the X. If you’re going to claim something about the LHC, I expect you to be saying something useful about the LHC itself.
Given you appear to regard application as a question you’d rather not have asked, what expected usefulness should I now assign to going through your comments on the subject in close detail, trying to understand them?
(I really am going WHAT? WHAT THE HELL WAS THE ACTUAL POINT OF ALL THAT, THAT WAS WORTH BOTHERING WITH? If you’re going to claim something about the LHC, I expect you to be saying something useful about the LHC itself.)
Yvain was, I suspect, trying to illustrate failures in your thought, rather than in your conclusion.
If you see someone arguing that dogs are mammals because they have tongues, you may choose to correct them, despite agreeing with their conclusion. Especially if you’re on a board related to rationality.
You don’t think an argument that something which you thought was certain is actually confusing is valuable? If an agnostic convinced a fundamentalist that God’s existence was less cut-and-dried obvious than the fundamentalist had always thought, but admitted ey wasn’t really sure about the God question emself, wouldn’t that still be a useful service?
This reads to me as an admission that you were not, nor were you intending to, at any point say anything useful or interesting about the LHC. This suggests that if you want people not to feel like you’re wasting their time and leading them on a merry dance rather than talking about the apparent topic of discussion (which is how I feel now—well and properly trolled. Well done.) then you may want to pick examples where you don’t have to hope no-one ever asks “so what is the point of all this bloviating?”
You asked for a citation for my mention that worrying about the LHC was “reasonable”. I interpreted “reasonable” to mean “there are good arguments for not turning it on”. I am not sure whether I fully believe those arguments and I am confused about how to deal with them, but I do believe there are good arguments and I presented them to you because you asked for them. I didn’t enjoy spending a few hours defending an assertion I made that was tangential to my main point either.
Aside from the whole “ability to think critically about probabilities of existential risk will probably determine the fate of humankind and all other sapient species” thing, no, it doesn’t have any practical implications. But this is a thread about philosophy on a philosophy site, and you asked a philosophical question to a former philosophy student, so I don’t think it’s fair to expect me to anticipate that you wanted to avoid discussions that were purely philosophical.
Seriously, and minus the snark, it’s possible I don’t understand your objections. I promise I was not trying to troll you and I’m sorry if you feel like this has wasted your time.
I was kinda hoping you wouldn’t ask that. This whole thing came up because I said it was “reasonable” to worry about the LHC, and I stick to that. But the whole thing seems like a Pascal’s Mugging to me, and I don’t have a perfect answer to that class of problem.
I don’t think it should be switched off now, because its failure to destroy the world so far is even better evidence than the cosmic ray argument that it won’t destroy the world the next time it’s used. But if you’d asked before it was turned on? I guess I would agree with Aleksei Riikonen’s point in one of the other LW threads that this is really the sort of thing that could be done just as well after the Singularity.
But I also agree with Eliezer (I could have avoided this entire discussion if I’d just been able to find that post the first time I looked for it when you asked for a citation!) that in reality I wouldn’t lose sleep over it. Basically, I notice I am confused, and my only objection to you was the suggestion that reasonable people couldn’t worry about it, not that I have any great idea how to address the issue myself.
You mean, asking the whole actual real-life question at hand: whether the LHC is too risky to run.
“Is it reasonable to think X?” is only a useful question to consider in relation to X as part of the actual discussion of X. It’s not a useful sort of question in itself until it’s applied to something. Without considering the X itself, it’s a question about philosophy, not about the X. If you’re going to claim something about the LHC, I expect you to be saying something useful about the LHC itself.
Given you appear to regard application as a question you’d rather not have asked, what expected usefulness should I now assign to going through your comments on the subject in close detail, trying to understand them?
(I really am going WHAT? WHAT THE HELL WAS THE ACTUAL POINT OF ALL THAT, THAT WAS WORTH BOTHERING WITH? If you’re going to claim something about the LHC, I expect you to be saying something useful about the LHC itself.)
Yvain was, I suspect, trying to illustrate failures in your thought, rather than in your conclusion.
If you see someone arguing that dogs are mammals because they have tongues, you may choose to correct them, despite agreeing with their conclusion. Especially if you’re on a board related to rationality.
You don’t think an argument that something which you thought was certain is actually confusing is valuable? If an agnostic convinced a fundamentalist that God’s existence was less cut-and-dried obvious than the fundamentalist had always thought, but admitted ey wasn’t really sure about the God question emself, wouldn’t that still be a useful service?
This reads to me as an admission that you were not, nor were you intending to, at any point say anything useful or interesting about the LHC. This suggests that if you want people not to feel like you’re wasting their time and leading them on a merry dance rather than talking about the apparent topic of discussion (which is how I feel now—well and properly trolled. Well done.) then you may want to pick examples where you don’t have to hope no-one ever asks “so what is the point of all this bloviating?”
You asked for a citation for my mention that worrying about the LHC was “reasonable”. I interpreted “reasonable” to mean “there are good arguments for not turning it on”. I am not sure whether I fully believe those arguments and I am confused about how to deal with them, but I do believe there are good arguments and I presented them to you because you asked for them. I didn’t enjoy spending a few hours defending an assertion I made that was tangential to my main point either.
Aside from the whole “ability to think critically about probabilities of existential risk will probably determine the fate of humankind and all other sapient species” thing, no, it doesn’t have any practical implications. But this is a thread about philosophy on a philosophy site, and you asked a philosophical question to a former philosophy student, so I don’t think it’s fair to expect me to anticipate that you wanted to avoid discussions that were purely philosophical.
Seriously, and minus the snark, it’s possible I don’t understand your objections. I promise I was not trying to troll you and I’m sorry if you feel like this has wasted your time.