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(Obligatory LHC turn on day post)
The folks in Oxford Ethics have had lots to say of late on the LHC experiment. Their argument is not that the machine will is likely to destroy the earth, but rather
1. The 'probabilities' quoted by scientists involved of a globally destructive event are misleading, because they are based on the assumption that the model underlying them is correct, something of which they are by no means sure.
2. The decision to make an action carrying a possibility of a globally destructive event is not theirs to make. The expected risk is small in probability but enormous in magnitude, which means the expected benefit has to be surprisingly large to be worth it on a purely consequentialist analysis. It's unclear that such a benefit is promised.
http://www.practicalethicsnews.com/practicalethics/2008/09/anyone-who-thin.html#more
The folks in Oxford Ethics have had lots to say of late on the LHC experiment. Their argument is not that the machine will is likely to destroy the earth, but rather
1. The 'probabilities' quoted by scientists involved of a globally destructive event are misleading, because they are based on the assumption that the model underlying them is correct, something of which they are by no means sure.
2. The decision to make an action carrying a possibility of a globally destructive event is not theirs to make. The expected risk is small in probability but enormous in magnitude, which means the expected benefit has to be surprisingly large to be worth it on a purely consequentialist analysis. It's unclear that such a benefit is promised.
http://www.practicalethicsnews.com/practicalethics/2008/09/anyone-who-thin.html#more