Your probability estimate of the LHC destroying the world is too small. Given that at least some phycisists have come up with vaguely plausible mechanisms for stable micro black hole creation, you should think about outrageous or outspoken claims made in the past by a small minority of scientists. How often has the majority view been overturned? I suspect that something like 1/1000 is a good rough guess for the probability of the LHC destroying us. This seems roughly consistent with the number of LHC failures that I would tolerate before I joined a pressure group to shut the thing down; e.g. 10 failures in a row, each occuring with probability 50%.
I suspect you just don’t want to admit to yourself that the experiment is that risky: we’d be talking about an expected death toll of 6 million this spring. Yikes!
your probability for the majority being overturned seems vastly too high to me, we tend to remember the instances where the majority was overturned, but across all fields on all subjects over the course of science they must represent a tiny minority of cases. It is clearly difficult to come up with specific numbers but personally, given the option of betting for or against a scientific consensuses given no other information, I suspect I would guess something on the order of 10^-4 to 10^-5, not 10^-3.
Your probability estimate of the LHC destroying the world is too small. Given that at least some phycisists have come up with vaguely plausible mechanisms for stable micro black hole creation, you should think about outrageous or outspoken claims made in the past by a small minority of scientists. How often has the majority view been overturned? I suspect that something like 1/1000 is a good rough guess for the probability of the LHC destroying us. This seems roughly consistent with the number of LHC failures that I would tolerate before I joined a pressure group to shut the thing down; e.g. 10 failures in a row, each occuring with probability 50%.
I suspect you just don’t want to admit to yourself that the experiment is that risky: we’d be talking about an expected death toll of 6 million this spring. Yikes!
your probability for the majority being overturned seems vastly too high to me, we tend to remember the instances where the majority was overturned, but across all fields on all subjects over the course of science they must represent a tiny minority of cases. It is clearly difficult to come up with specific numbers but personally, given the option of betting for or against a scientific consensuses given no other information, I suspect I would guess something on the order of 10^-4 to 10^-5, not 10^-3.