FP: LHC doom among 10 worst predictions of 2008

Foreign Policy has posted their list of the 10 worst predictions of 2008. Among them was the claim by Walter Wagner and others that the Large Hadron Collider would destroy the Earth:

“There is a real possibility of creating destructive theoretical anomalies such as miniature black holes, strangelets and deSitter space transitions. These events have the potential to fundamentally alter matter and destroy our planet.” —Walter Wagner, LHCDefense.org

Scientist Walter Wagner, the driving force behind Citizens Against the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), is making his bid to be the 21st century’s version of Chicken Little for his opposition to the world’s largest particle accelerator. Warning that the experiment might end humanity as we know it, he filed a lawsuit in Hawaii’s U.S. District Court against the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which built the LHC, demanding that researchers not turn the machine on until it was proved safe. The LHC was turned on in September, and it appears that we are still here.

Ah, yes -- tee hee, it "appears that we're still here." And such is the peril of predicting human extinction: no one will ever be there after the fact to pat you on the back and say, "Dude, you totally called that one." So-called Chicken Littles will always look silly by virtue of the fact that a post-doom state cannot be observed; we can only reflect and marvel at our ongoing survival -- no matter how improbable.

Now, I'm not suggesting that the LHC was or is a legitimate threat. I just want to make the point that we need to be careful about chastising those who warn of such dangers. Existential risks are real risks. And more are on the way.

As for Walter Wagner's prediction, for all we know he was absolutely right, and we are now branching out into a freakishly unlikely and implausible set of all possible Many Worlds. In other words, doom may have been more likely than not -- we just happen to be observing the small set of surviving universes.

Again, I think this highly unlikely; I'm just sayin'.