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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Open Thread: November 2009 - Less Wrong
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I will take up the bet on the Higgs field, with a couple of caveats:
You use the phrase "the Higgs boson", when several theories predict more than one. If more than one are found, I want that to count as a win for me.
If the LHC doesn't run, the bet is off.
Time limit: I suggest that if observation of the Higgs does not appear in the 2014 edition of "Review of Particle Physics", I've lost. "Observation" should be a five-sigma signal, as is standard, either in one channel or smaller observations in several channels.
25 dollars, even odds.
As a side note, this is more of a hedge position than a belief in the Higgs: I'm a particle physicist, and if we don't find the Higgs that will be very interesting and well worth the trivial pain of 25 dollars and even the not-so-trivial pain of losing a public bet. (I'm not a theorist, so strictly speaking it's not my theory on the chopping block.) While if we do find it, I will (assuming Eliezer takes up this offer) have the consolation of having demonstrated the superior understanding and status of my field against outsiders. (It's one thing for me to say "Death to theorists" and laugh at their heads-in-the-clouds attitude and incomprehensible math. It's quite another for one who has not done the apprenticeship to do so.) And 25 dollars, of course.
I was hoping to make some more money on this :) in a shorter time and hence greater implied interest rate :) but sure, it's a bet.
Sorry, graduate students can't afford to be flinging around the big bucks. :) If I get the postdoc I'm hoping for, we can up the stakes, if you like.
This is a side issue but I'm curious as to what people's reactions are: I'm kind-of hoping that dark matter turns out to be massive neutrinos. Of the various candidates, it seems like the most familiar and comforting. We've even seen neutrinos interact in particle detectors, which is way more than you can say for most of the other alternatives... Compared to axions or supersymmetric particles, or WIMPs, massive neutrinos have have more of the comfort of home. Anyone feel similarly?
As I understand it, there is a known upper bound on neutrino mass that is large enough to allow them to account for some of the dark matter, but too small to allow them to account for all or most of it.
That is correct as far as the known neutrinos go. If there is a fourth generation of matter, however, all bets are off. (I'm too lazy to look up the limits on that search at the moment.) On the other hand, since neutrinos oscillate and the sun flux is one-third what we expect rather than one-fourth, you need some mechanism to explain why this fourth generation doesn't show up in the oscillations. A large mass is probably helpful for that, though, if I remember correctly.
Point of order! A massive neutrino is a WIMP. "Weakly Interacting" - that's neutrino to you - "Massive Particle".
Well, but “massive” in WIMP usually means very massive (i.e. non-relativistic at T = 2.7 K). As far as gravitational effects, particles with non-zero mass but ultrarelativistic speeds behave very much like photons AFAIK.
Thanks, point taken - I'd been thinking of more exotic WIMPs