Analog SFF, March 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “The Clicks claim to bestow immortality with the worm,” Claybourne said. “But that's just an illusion, a nasty illusion.”

  “Yes. Ramex and Margery have ceased to be alive. Death by any other name is still death. I'm sorry.”

  It pleased Claybourne that Sally's voice carried a convincing intonation of sympathy.

  Copyright © 2008 Jerry Craven

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  Reader's Department: THE ALTERNATE VIEW: HUMANS AND ESTIMATING PROBABILITY

  by John G. Cramer

  We human beings have evolved with brains that have amazing capabilities for rational thought, pattern recognition, judgment, creativity, and imagination, none of which can be readily duplicated by the best computer simulations. However, there is one area in which the human brain is sadly lacking: the ability to accurately assess probabilities and act on these assessments. The success of lotteries, Las Vegas, and tribal casinos provide ample evidence that when it comes to estimating the odds and acting accordingly, we humans as a species are really deficient. We think that “winning streaks” are real, that slot machines are “overdue” for a jackpot, that the past pattern of random events somehow influences the odds for the next event.

  One example of this deficiency in probability understanding was provided recently when CERN's Large Hadronic Collider (LHC) began preliminary operation near Geneva, Switzerland. In the physics literature there had been some rather strained speculations that if certain theories involving extra dimensions were valid, then the proton-proton collisions at the LHC might produce tiny black holes with masses of a few trillion electron volts (TeV). (See my May 2003 AV column, “The CERN LHC: A Black Hole Factory?") The same theories that tentatively predicted such black hole production also predicted that, if created, the tiny black holes would be super-hot objects that would dissipate themselves almost instantaneously into a thermal cloud of lighter particles, primarily electrons, positron, and photons.

  Not surprisingly, many individuals seized on the idea that the LHC might produce black holes and imagined a scenario in which the black hole would not instantaneously dissipate, but instead would began to suck in nearby matter, grow larger, and devour the Earth. Lawsuits were filed to stop the LHC from beginning operation. A joke web site (www. cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html) even appeared that purported to show real time web-cam shots of a black hole devouring the CMS experiment at the LHC.

  Physicists working with the LHC were asked to estimate the probability that such a disaster might occur, and they responded by saying that the scenario was “extremely improbable.” The problem is that in such situations a scientist can never say “never” because the variety of theories available, some right and some wrong, provide the capability of analyzing an unlikely scenario and producing the probabilities that are absurdly small (but not zero).

  For example, can you walk through a brick wall? Common sense would say no, but in quantum mechanics there is a process called “tunneling” that allows an object to disappear from one side of a barrier like a brick wall and appear on the other side. This phenomenon literally should allow one to “walk through walls,” but with an extremely low probability of success, say one part in 101000 or less. So if you ask a physicist whether it is possible to walk through walls, he cannot say “no.” He'll have to say “yes, but with an extremely low probability.”

  It is human nature, via the wiring in our brain, to interpret “very improbable” as meaning that such an event is at least possible and should be worried about. Therefore, the big story in the media recently was not that the LHC was beginning operation (and promptly blew out a superconducting magnet for a several month halt), but that it was possible that the Earth was about the be devoured by a black hole.

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  Another close-to-home example of this phenomenon is the recent collapse of AIG, a company that insured investment “vehicles” associated with home mortgages. Insurance companies are in the business of estimating the odds accurately and profiting generously from the unwillingness of most of us to accept risks. In the case of the mortgage-based investments that AIG was insuring, the risk estimates were based on the “independence” assumption, the assumption that the probability P of the default of any given mortgage was unrelated to the default of any other mortgage in the investment package. Under this assumption, the risk of n mortgages in the investment failing is Pn, which is a very low probability, making the insurance premium cheap. The fallacy in this calculation was that mortgage failure probabilities are not independent when a housing bubble is about to burst, and the insurers grossly underestimated the failure probabilities. The moral is that even as professionals in the business of estimating probabilities, we humans frequently get it wrong.

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  Another area where probability estimates are important and sometimes mangled is laboratory safety management. I am an experimental physicist who has worked at many large accelerator facilities, including those at a number of universities and national facilities at Los Alamos, Livermore, Berkeley, Argonne, and CERN. The scientific equipment used in experiments in nuclear and high-energy physics employ high voltages, ultra-cold gases, potentially explosive gas combinations, and gases at high pressures. The experiments create nuclear reactions that can produce potentially lethal radiation exposures to gamma rays, neutrons, and charged particles. Considering all this, there are surprisingly few injuries and accidents among experimentalists. In part, this is because a few highly trained individuals are charged with the responsibility of identifying potential problems, assessing their probabilities, and instituting safety procedures. This usually works well, but there are a few exceptions.

  I know of a radiation safety officer employed by a large defense contractor who insisted on assessing acceptable radiation exposure based on the “lowest possible exposure” rather than the “lowest reasonable exposure.” That doesn't sound like much of a difference, but it added huge costs to the operation. The reason is that we do not live in a radiation-free world. Our annual exposure to cosmic rays from space and to environmental radiation from granite, radon, potassium-40, etc. is fairly large, perhaps 0.25% of a mean lethal dose of radiation. Is it reasonable to make sure that a radiation worker receives a radiation dose from his work that is less than 1/10 of the radiation dose he receives from the outside world? Most safety officers would say no, but this particular individual, who seemed to have a particular problem in understanding the estimation and use of probabilities, insisted on very expensive additional shielding in an attempt to reduce the radiation exposure from the facility to zero. Not long after, the project was cancelled due to cost overruns.

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  In another case at Brookhaven National Laboratory, one of the safety officers developed the peculiar conviction that helium was a deadly gas, presumably because a person placed in a room filled with helium would die of suffocation. Brookhaven's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) Facility, which was then being designed, would contain lots of liquid helium that would cool the superconducting magnets used for bending and focusing the heavy ion beams to be accelerated. When such superconducting magnets are in operation, occasionally they “quench,” meaning that the superconductivity goes away, the stored magnetic field energy heats the magnet coils, the system temperature rises, the liquid helium boils, and a great deal of helium gas is produced and must be dealt with. Normally, the magnet system includes a “blow-off stack” to deal with this problem, a long pipe leading up through the ceiling that blows off the excess helium at roof level.

  However, the safety official in question decreed that this could not be done, because helium was a deadly gas that might suffocate people in the event of such a magnet quench and blow-off. Instead, it was required that the RHIC facility must have vacuum vessels designed to completely contain the many atmospheres of pressurized helium that would be produced in a quench event. The RHIC component magnets were designed in this way, at substantial extra cost
. RHIC was completed and scheduled to go into operation in 1999. The full RHIC ring of superconducting dipole bending magnets and quadrupole focusing magnets, interspersed with a few lengths of pipe as “placeholders” for possible future expansions, was assembled.

  The problem was that, since the RHIC machine was designed to withstand many of atmospheres of helium in its vacuum system, this had to be tested before the initial operation could begin. The system was sealed and the pressure test was duly done in early 1999, and then the vacuum system was pumped out, the magnets were cooled to liquid helium temperature and tested at high fields, a beam of gold ions was injected into the machine, and initial operational tests began.

  Beam transport problems were soon encountered. The gold beam went through a few magnets, then hit something. The accelerator physicists did some gymnastics with steering magnets to get past the unexpected obstacle, and the beam was able to go through a few more magnets, but was again stopped by another unexpected obstacle. This pattern of failures was repeated all during the summer of 1999, while many of us who had come to Brookhaven for the initial RHIC operation waited impatiently for the machine to deliver gold-gold collisions to our detectors, STAR, PHENIX, PHOBOS, and BRAHMS, which we had spent the last decade constructing.

  Finally, in September of 1999, the accelerator physicists gave up their attempts to get the beam through the machine. They warmed up the magnets and opened up the vacuum system to see what the beams had been hitting. There they discovered distorted “bellows” vacuum fitting and “RF fingers” that had been damaged during the high-pressure helium tests and were sticking into the beam path. It was realized that while all of the magnets had been carefully designed to withstand the high pressures, no one had worried about the expansion of the placeholder pipe sections in the ring, and these had expanded during the pressure tests and damaged the vacuum fittings. It took much effort and cost many millions of dollars to fix this damage, and in 2000 the RHIC facility was able to begin what has become a very successful string of operating periods.

  Because helium had been declared a deadly gas by the safety officer, a full year of operation of the RHIC facility was lost, millions of dollars in extra costs were incurred, and an army of physicists like me spent frustrating months at Brookhaven waiting for the beams that did not come. Interestingly, the training that we RHIC experimentalists had to take in 1999, teaching us the actions to take in the event of a magnet quench that filled the accelerator vault with deadly helium, curiously disappeared from the safety training in subsequent years. I feel that the inability of the human brain to accurately estimate probabilities and act on them played a key role in this fiasco.

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  Why are we wired this way? Wouldn't it be a strong evolutionary advantage to be able to “see” probabilities and act accordingly? I am not sure I know the answer to this puzzle, but let me try to answer with a parable.

  Many millennia ago, when we were first emerging from the trees and beginning to function as humans, there was a river separating two hostile tribes that constituted most of humanity. On the north side of the river lived the Prob Tribe, a group that had the ability to easily see probabilities and act accordingly. On the other side of the river lived the Numbskull Tribe, a group more like modern humans who believed in luck and winning streaks and other such fantasies. The vigorous male Probs hated the Numbskulls and wanted to rush across the river and kill them, but their enhanced abilities showed them that it was far safer to stay on their side of the river and not engage in combat. The Numbskulls felt no such compunctions. On a night when the moon was dark, they stole across the river and killed all of the Probs, to a man, woman, and child. Thus, we are all descended from the Numbskulls.

  Copyright © 2008 John G. Cramer

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  AV Columns Online: Electronic reprints of about 140 “The Alternate View” columns by John G. Cramer, previously published in Analog, are available online at: www.npl.washington.edu/av.

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  Probability Zero: WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS

  By H.G. Stratmann & Henry Stratmann III

  Humanity woke up one morning and found that the Earth was turning into Paradise.

  It started with small wonders. A slice of bread dropped on the floor now always fell jelly-side up. No sock ever vanished in the dryer. There was no storm, hail, or blizzard when the weather forecast predicted a sunny day.

  Next came minor miracles. Oil companies panicked as gas tanks in SUVs and all other vehicles stayed perpetually full no matter how far they were driven. Airline flights were always on time and no baggage was ever lost. Computers never crashed.

  Dumbfounded doctors said foods that tasted good were now actually good for you. A diet rich in doughnuts and desserts gave a woman the face and figure of a supermodel and sculpted a man's physique into one like Arnold Schwarzenegger's in his prime. The grease-gorged, salt-saturated calories in fast-food cheeseburgers and fries now unclogged coronary arteries and lowered high blood pressure.

  Then the truly impossible happened. Lawyers turned honest and sincerely sought justice. Politicians told nothing but the truth and worked for the good of their fellow citizens. People became celebrities only if they actually had talent and were good role models for the young. Teenagers respected and listened to their teachers and other elders. Adults led lives as free of greed, lust, and other vices as the parents in a 1950s TV sitcom. Science fiction magazine editors bought all the stories they received, for every submission was an astounding blend of original ideas and entertainingly thought-provoking prose.

  Each day brought new wonders. Where once there was war and rumors of war, now peace and harmony filled the world. The wolf lay down with the wombat. Tanks were beaten into tractors. Violence, hatred, prejudice, and intolerance vanished like the scented smoke of incense wafting upward into the heights of a great cathedral.

  Earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes never ravaged the land. Famine, disease, and death were no more. Though the old grew young again and no accident ever injured or killed, the world no longer seemed overcrowded. In even the largest cities no traffic jams sullied the streets. Smiling taxi drivers graciously yielded the right of way to pedestrians and road laughter filled the avenues. Elevators were never stuffed with perspiring passengers. Checkout lines at grocery stores were always short.

  Finally came the greatest miracles of all. Man now understood Woman and lovingly validated Her feelings. Woman never nagged or tried to change Man.

  Learned thinkers who'd long pondered the ultimate questions of theodicy and the meaning of life found those riddles no longer needed answers. Even the most skeptical inquirers came to believe that only a Power far greater than human science and ingenuity could be responsible for this amazing metamorphosis. The righteous rejoiced that their faith and prayers had been vindicated. From every land and in every tongue a chorus of thanksgiving ascended to the heavens...

  Somewhere outside time and space a Being beyond human comprehension looked at His work and saw that it was good. Then a sweetly sarcastic voice from the kitchen startled Him.

  “Any luck, Dear?”

  “Yes, it's working fine now. I told you I could figure it out without any help!”

  Okay, so that last part was a fib. But She didn't need to know that He'd finally swallowed His pride and done what She'd been telling Him to do for eons. He'd already wasted over thirteen billion years fiddling with the darn thing. The last thing He needed was an eternity of hearing “I told you so!”

  Hopefully She'd be so pleased the home entertainment system She'd bought on sale finally worked right that there'd be no embarrassing questions about how He'd succeeded. After looking within the thick book in His hands one last time, He stuffed it back into a large box on the living room floor. There, hidden beneath packing material and the shrink-wrap He'd just peeled away from it, She wouldn't see the manual's title.

  “How to Operate Your New Universe.”


  Copyright © 2008 H.G. Stratmann & Henry Stratmann III

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  Reader's Department: IN TIMES TO COME

  Our April issue offers quite a variety of stories, of all shapes, sizes, and flavors. At one extreme is Adam-Troy Castro's “Gunfight On Farside,” a striking case study in why “what everybody knows” isn't necessarily what is. At the other end are a trio of quite different short stories by Eric James Stone, Jerry Oltion, and H. G. Stratmann. In between we have a pair of contrastingly quirky novelettes by Mark Rich and Mary Turzillo, with the contrastingly quirky titles of “Foe” and “Steak Tartare and the Cats of Gari Babakin.”

  In the science fact department, astronomer Kevin Walsh returns with another of his looks at the ever-expanding diversity of planets that we're finally learning exist—or could exist—out there. This time his topic is “Ribbonland,” a kind of world long favored by science fiction writers on which habitability is confined to one or more bands of latitude. Just how habitable would those be, and what surprises might they have up their metaphorical sleeves? Read our April issue and find out....

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  Short Story: LIFESPEED

  by Carl Frederick

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  Illustration by Broeck Steadman

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  New knowledge often makes it hard to apply old rules...

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  Robert Witten grabbed his towel and, for the hundredth time, wiped his face. But after a full day of fencing, the towel merely redistributed rather than absorbed the moisture. He saluted the director, the fencers watching the finals from the sidelines, and his opponent. Then he pulled his mask over his face and stood on guard. Down 4-3, the next touch was critical. He sized up his adversary, Vincent Rapelli. The guy was huge. Robert had fenced him at a meet six months ago and had won. But back then, Vincent hadn't looked like King Kong on steroids. Too bad we don't test for drugs at these circuit events.