WTF

After reading this, I think I lost my faith in science. So, what they are basically suggesting is that we should play a game of cards as an experiment to determine, whether it is a good idea to power up a particle accelerator. That’s just fucking swell.

The moment we stop burning red-haired people as witches, people with different ideas as heretics, and putting people who claim the earth be round on the stake, we go off drawing cards to figure out what we should do. Well, at least we are learning from past mistakes, since drawing cards did work out pretty well in the past, didn’t it? There was no room for doubting back in the good old days, when we were still into the card game.

Of course, I do understand them worrying about being blown to bits, because of a petty experiment – oh wait, didn’t we already do that with those two Japanese cities a while back? - but drawing cards? Get a grip, man.

I may be missing some point here, but what they’re saying – correct me if I’m wrong – is that time traveler could come back and tamper with the tarot cards, so as to prevent the building of the particle from happening, right? Or that if the using of the machine were to be harmful to the world somehow in the future, the cards would tell us to “STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING, RIGHT FUCKING NOW, OR YOU’LL BLOW YOUR BRAINS OUT!” or something along those lines, correct? I don’t have a background in physics, but I’ve studied a bit of philosophy here and there, and I can’t help seeing a few holes in the plan laid out above.

First of all, so what if the world were to end the moment they fire up the machine? What, would the cards tell us, not to build the machine? Why? Do you honestly believe there to be some God-like force out there, who simply has nothing better to do than to keep us from blowing ourselves up, who would stop us from killing ourselves – like he has done so many times before. If so, are you sure you’ve found your right calling as a scientist? I’m sure the 700 club has some vacancies if you wish to reconsider. Or how about trying Creationist Science? A branch of science that hasn’t received the recognition it needs, and always in need of gullible pseudo-scientists.

Secondly, if we can pretty much rule out the possibility of there being a supernatural being – something I wouldn’t be willing to count on – willing to take on the task of acting as our guardian – something I wouldn’t want to inflict on anyone. Then how can we, for sure, know that the cards wouldn’t lie? Usually, when we draw cards there’s always a real chance of the pieces of inanimate cardboard paper,being wrong, but in this case it is as if such an option has miraculously made itself disappear completely. Maybe some time traveler would come back and tamper with the cards? A-ha, I didn’t know there’d be that much to devote for time exploration, while being pursued by numerous mini-blackholes, but I guess I’m wrong.

Thirdly. Have you ever thought about the possibility of our existence simply not amounting to any importance? Seriously, do you think a deck of cards could care less about some ape-hybrid exploding itself, or there being some magnificent reason for our us being in being, which would keep us from killing ourselves? Yeah right.

Any way you look at it, there’s a real chance of being sucked into a black hole, and there is a chance of us stumbling upon a new age in science. But thinking that a game of cards will help us decide is like playing Russian roulette, while thinking that something would stop you from biting the bullet before pulling the trigger, a manifestation of existential anxiety taken to whole new extremes.

Ok, so we can’t kill ourselves with atom bombs either if we follow the same train of thought, can we? Something would have stopped us from figuring out how to make such devices, if they could lead to the world being a lifeless rock, right? Or didn’t we just go through the proper channels when we were inventing the atom bomb? After all, I do think we forgot the ever so important drawing of cards procedure. What would science be without it?

To quote one Dylan Moran, from the Black Books:

I don’t know, it’s an impossible choice… I just have to hope that when I flip the coin it somehow explodes and kills me.