View down a vacuum tube made to house the twin beam pipes for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator. Estimates of the LHC creating a “dangerous event” included 1 in a billion per year or much smaller (Image: CERN / SPL)
Read our related article: Doomy thinking
IF OUR impressive capacity for conscious reasoning is what most clearly sets us humans apart from other species, our capacity for self-deception over the significance of its conclusions must come a close second.
In the real world, this can be serious. To take a topical example, until recently, people who are supposed…
