The LHC and Me

So the LHC is The Large Hadron Collider which most of us will have heard about (http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/lhc-interesting-facts.htm) It is part of scientists ongoing quest to find a unifying theory for the various forces they observe in the universe. It is a massive undertaking in terms of size, money and time and of uncertain benefit in terms of putting food into the mouths of the hungry etc and the inevitable question will be why bother? The simple answer is “because you don’t know what you don’t know” Sticking with what you know only gets you what you already have.


However this is not in support of The LHC (it is big enough to look after itself) but an observation on a desire to have a unifying theory in the first place. As humans we seem to prefer this approach and have great difficulty dealing with messy unpredictable things. I presume it goes back to the way our brains work where to avoid information overload we just focus on difference and ignore the standard things. This gives us a lot less information to process and is why something new in your living space keeps catching your attention for a while till your brain categories it as “standard”. Or why travelling is so tiring, because there is no standard so your brain is on alert the whole time.

Recently Fruitcake at http://scuzei.blogspot.com commented on what she thought was my world view through the lens of these posts. This surprised me at a number of levels but the big challenge to me was that I could be categorised into a single box which is not how I saw myself. This of course posed the question what was my world view or the lens that I applied to the challenges I see around me. Am I a conservative or a liberal what level of state intervention am I comfortable with in my life, do I believe in private charity or social welfare, am I a social Darwinist as Dina suggested once (I denied that one).

When I came to try and categorise myself I didn’t find a unifying theory unless you consider evidence driven pragmatism a unifying theory but there is no real hint of what my view might be on any given subject contained in that phrase.

There are two parts to this though. My thought process tends to be given a desired outcome of X what do we need to do to achieve this. So the evidence driven pragmatism is easy for the “what do we need to do” bit although I am constantly surprised that the choices people make do not follow this. The harder part is agreeing what the desired outcome is. To that end I guess I am a Utilitarian – The greatest good for the greatest number. This seems the only sensible position to adopt for a society, however we also have the Tyranny of the Majority to look out for. Eg taking “white” farms and giving them to “black” farmers in Zimbabwe might pass the greatest good test but seems inappropriate from other stand points.

So just like the scientists I seem destined to keep searching for a unifying theory for my points of view. I am comforted that for the last hundred years or so (the period of the surge in scientific endeavour) Science has happily operated with no unifying theory and it hasn’t stopped them making significant progress in the various scientific disciplines along the way. They also remain open to the idea of sharing information and adopting learning’s in one area to inform seemingly unrelated areas.

So while searching for the perfect unifying theory of everything in the world let’s remember that you political opponent may sometimes have a better answer than you in some areas. Of course this isn’t always true a political party of many years ago now since gone from the local political landscape called Values was the butt of a bumper sticker joke that said “I am voting Values cause I’m pissed” this pretty much summed up the worth of their policies. A bit like these guys but less fun http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGillicuddy_Serious_Party