LESSWRONG
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All of Greg2's Comments + Replies

How Many LHC Failures Is Too Many?
Greg2150

Another thought. Suppose a functioning LHC does in fact produce world-destroying scenarios. Would we see: A) an LHC with mechanical failures? or B) an LHC where all collisions happen except world-destroying ones? If B, would the LHC be giving us biased experimental results?

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How Many LHC Failures Is Too Many?
Greg2180

Perhaps the question could also be asked this way: How many times does the LHC have to inexplicably fail before we take it as scientific confirmation that world-destroying black holes and/or strange particles are indeed produced by LHC-level collisions? Would we treat such a scenario as a successful experimental result for the LHC?

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3AlexanderRM
I wouldn't describe a result that eliminated the species conducting the experiment in the majority of world-branches as "successful", although I suppose the use of LHCs could be seen as an effective use of quantum suicide (two species which want the same resources meet, flip a coin loser kills themselves- might have problems with enforcement) if every species invariably experiments with them before leaving their home planet. On the post as a whole: I was going to say that since humans in real life don't use the anthropic principle in decision theory, that seems to indicate that applying it isn't optimal (if your goal is to maximize the number of world-branches with good outcomes), but realized that humans are able to observe other humans and what sort of things tend to kill them, along with hearing about those things from other humans when we grow up, so we're almost never having close calls with death frequently enough to need to apply the anthropic principle. If a human were exploring an unknown environment with unknown dangers by themselves, and tried to consider the anthropic principle... that would be pretty terrifying.
Fake Reductionism
Greg250

"The man should have investigated the rainbow scientifically and then feel wonder when he understood the physics behind it."

But surely a sense of wonder doesn't necessarily have to come from scientific understanding? But I'd agree that if a scientific understanding destroyed Keats's sense of wonder, then that was a bug in Keats, not a bug in scientific understanding.

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3bigjeff5
I wonder that he didn't stop to wonder how amazing it was that light reflecting through a bunch of water droplets could create such a beautiful image in your mind. That's roughly what I think when I see a rainbow. Same with things like sun dogs, or a gorgeous blood-orange sunset. Just because I understand what is happening doesn't mean I find them any less beautiful. And besides, suppose I'm watching such a scene with someone who doesn't understand what they are seeing? I get to explain how such a thing can be, and in some cases how easy they are to reproduce. I dunno, I find that pretty awesome myself. I honestly don't think Keats could have actually understood how rainbows formed and still feel cheated.