One reason I dislike many precautionary arguments is that they seem to undervalue what we learn by doing things. Very often in science, when we have chased down a new phenomenon, we detect it by relatively small effects before the effects get big enough to be dangerous. For potentially dangerous phenomena, what we learn by exploring around the edges of the pit can easily be more valuable than the risk we faced of inadvertently landing in the pit in some early step before we knew it was there. Among other things, what we learn from poking around the edges of the pit may protect us from stuff there that we didn’t know about that was dangerous even if we didn’t poke around the pit.
There would definitely be benefit to be had in working out what things cause universe destructions. For example, if someone created a form of engine that relied on high energy particles. If such a device had a component, the failure of which allowed universe destroying consequences to occur, the outcome would be quite significant. We would find that in practice the component never failed, ever. Yet, in the course of just years the Everett branches in which we lived would become sparse indeed!
How many LHC catastrophe’s would be worth enduring for that sort of knowledge? I’ll leave it to someone far more experienced than I to make that judgement.
William makes a good point!
One reason I dislike many precautionary arguments is that they seem to undervalue what we learn by doing things. Very often in science, when we have chased down a new phenomenon, we detect it by relatively small effects before the effects get big enough to be dangerous. For potentially dangerous phenomena, what we learn by exploring around the edges of the pit can easily be more valuable than the risk we faced of inadvertently landing in the pit in some early step before we knew it was there. Among other things, what we learn from poking around the edges of the pit may protect us from stuff there that we didn’t know about that was dangerous even if we didn’t poke around the pit.
There would definitely be benefit to be had in working out what things cause universe destructions. For example, if someone created a form of engine that relied on high energy particles. If such a device had a component, the failure of which allowed universe destroying consequences to occur, the outcome would be quite significant. We would find that in practice the component never failed, ever. Yet, in the course of just years the Everett branches in which we lived would become sparse indeed!
How many LHC catastrophe’s would be worth enduring for that sort of knowledge? I’ll leave it to someone far more experienced than I to make that judgement.