Dear Otto: > On Jan 11, 2017, at 5:05 AM, Otto E. Rossler <oeros...@yahoo.com > <mailto:oeros...@yahoo.com>> wrote: > > But as convincing as this may be, it is still not my main point. My main and > real point is: CERN refuses to update its official safety report LSAG for > exactly as long. > > But there is an even more disturbing point. IF an organization openly refuses > to contradict evidence of committing a crime (even the biggest of history), > it is very very strange in my own eyes at least that no one in the world, > from the media to the profession, from Europe to Africa to America to Asia, > is even able to spot this fact as deserving to be alleviated or at least > publicly discussed. > > Can anyone in this illustrious round offer an excuse or explanation for this > historically unique phenomenon? > (Understanding is sometimes more important than surviving -- right? Forgive > me the pun.) > > I am very grateful for the discussion, > take care, everyone, > Otto
I will offer some opinions that are related to the “public” philosophy of science policy. At the end, I will raise a question about the philosophy of epistemic mathematics as it manifests itself in the epistemology of physical “models” of natural phenomenological events. My personal experience with the interface between “doing” experimental molecular biology and “doing” legally-enforcable public health standards lasted over a decade during my service in the US Public Health Service. The vast gaps between specific experimental evidence and the subsequent emission of a public statements by senior government officials necessarily require a shift from the study of nature to the projections of future social behaviors. The simple example of what I speak is the biological evidence for a physical-chemical structure to cause cancer in animals and the removal of that particular physical-chemical structure from commerce. Vinyl chloride is one of many such examples where the professional communities preformed a “Risk Analysis” that resulted in restricting Vinyl Chloride usage. In the early 1980’s I was one of the founding members of the Society for Risk Analysis which seeks to illuminate the murky areas between scientific information and public policy. see: http://www.sra.org <http://www.sra.org/> Risk analysis is broadly defined to include risk assessment, risk characterization, risk communication, risk management, and policy relating to risk. Our interests include risks to human health and the environment, both built and natural. We consider threats from physical, chemical, and biological agents and from a variety of human activities as well as natural events. We analyze risks of concern to individuals, to public- and private-sector organizations, and to society at various geographic scales. Our membership is multidisciplinary and international. Of course, the biological example is remote from the issues of risk analysis for CERN experiments, but many parallels exist. The SRA journal articles may provide you deeper insights into "what is going on" behind the public facades. With regard to your specific concern > Can anyone in this illustrious round offer an excuse or explanation for this > historically unique phenomenon? I suggest that at least three principle possibilities exist: 1. Senior CERN officials have evaluated you assertions and rejected them as implausible. 2. Senior CERN officials have evaluated your assertions and accepted the mathematical truths but consider the risk to be so minuscule that this risk (and your logic) can be ignored. 3. Senior CERN officials have evaluated your assertions and accepted your conclusions and have no plausible counter-arguments to the calculated levels of risk. Therefore, silence. I would note that as public officials, senior CERN officials are keenly aware of the potential of a detailed risk analysis of experiments could endanger the continued public funding of CERN. The reason the situation is “curious”, as you so adroitly express the current stalemate, is because of the deep, deep, deep traditions of the scientific community to insist upon the free thought, free speech, free discussions on matter of public policy, public risk analysis, … Thus, I see this “curious” behavior as a political problem that can be addressed by seeking a political solution that respects scientific traditions and hence, to motivate senior CERN officials to act honorably in the best interests of all. Now, for a comment about epistemic mathematics. These thoughts are remote from the specific issues regarding the risk of local black holes. These are generic w.r.t. the nature of scientific information its communication through logically distinctive symbol systems. For my research on health risk analysis, I undertook a detailed study of the origin of scientific units of measure. By way of background, economic units of measure are essential to non-local trade. International trade requires common units of measure that can be used to ensure fairness between quantity and price per unit quantity. To this end, the French established (in the late 18 th Century) the “metric system”, based on natural measures, that relate material facts to one-another in an interdependent manner (Distance, volume, density of water, mass, etc.). Subsequently, international committees, cooperatively financed by governments, elaborated standards of measurement. see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units> Modern physical units originated from these economic concerns. Physical phenomenology is quantified in these economic terms, except for the chemical elements which are quantified in terms of the atomic numbers. Thus, the atomic numbers created a new form of epistemic mathematics, fundamentally different from the unit-less nature of pure mathematics. So, the question that has bothered me for some decades is the consistency of the system of units of various cosmological theories. Obviously, my inquiry into this question has left me skeptical about the consistency of cosmological theories - are they more than theories of mathematical convenience? (see the two quotes appended below that address modal logics and the intersection with C S Peirce’s “relational logic".) In order to relate these questions to FIS, one can generalize the question: 1. What is the difference that makes a difference between pure mathematics and epistemic mathematics? 2. Is “information" merely pure mathematical imagination or is “information” epistemic? 3. By extension, is chemical information both epistemic and ontological information? 4. By further extension, can the epistemic and ontological information of the atomic numbers generate the organization of the animate from the inanimate? Well, Otto, this note has strayed widely from your basic concerns. But, thankfully, well-pointed questions have a delightful way of generating the further emergences of well-pointed questions! Thank you for your remarkable posts. Peace. Cheers Jerry C. I. Lewis It is so easy... to get impressive “results” by replacing the vaguer concepts which convey real meaning by virtue of common usage by pseudo precise concepts which are manipulable by “exact” methods — the trouble being that nobody any longer knows whether anything actual or of practical import is being discussed. D. Scott: Formal methods should only be applied when the subject is ready for them, when conceptual clarification is sufficiently advanced... No modal logician really knows what he is talking about in the same sense that we know what mathematical entities are. This is not to say that the work to date in modal logic is all bad or wrong, but I feel that insufficient consideration has been given to questioning appropriateness of results... it is all too tempting to refine methods well beyond the level of applicability.
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