Multiple Higgs and a pantheon of gods?

Let's hope the AMS goes in orbit. It should count cosmic rays above the atmosphere for the first time.
Tullio

quote]I get the impression that the high energy physics people are caught in a recursive/interpretative loop. By that I mean : the meaning of such 'deep findings' depends sensitively upon the validity of understandings at a more superficial level. So one has to calculate the meaning of more basic/smaller phenomena while relying on human level/scale measurements. Reductionist questions breed reductionist answers. I don't know where, but I think a wrong turn has been made - probably within quantum mechanics and that entanglement puzzle - that has led to aspects of the current cognitive framework that could be misleading us. Then again it might just be that the world is built that way : it could well be an endless series of resonances of some fundamentally unknowable stuff that can never be completely defined from within the construct. Maybe it is 'turtles all the way down', or we are trapped like Astfgl with matters (in)conveniently arranged to perpetually delude ..... :-)

The Culprit 'Decartes' :-)

I think I worked for Astfgl at one time:-)

'I think therefore I am is the most boneheaded assertion there every was..

Has anyone read Bart Kosko's "Fuzzy Logic"? Clever guy who re-jigged probability statements : instead of saying "over N measurements the probability of some quality/event/outcome is some fraction p ...." he says "the object exists as having the quality/event/outcome to some pth degree ..... ". Any duality is attributed to the object's base composition rather than floating through a succession of states which is then sampled upon measurement. The math is unchanged. This has a close parallel with the Feynman sum-over-histories approach - all roads are taken to some degree which one then summates to a weighted amalgam which is what is perceived.

Thus my fuzzy washing machine, apparently, sees my dirty clothing load as having all qualities ( to some proportion ) from utterly clean right across to absolute filth. Whereas QM would assign probabilities to states which have distinct observables and a selection/collapse occurs at measurement time. A subtle point for sure as the statistical expectations are the same with either program observed over a series of 'repeated' samples. Indeed that is probably why fuzzy logic was poorly received as it made no new predictions, thus the existing paradigm holds sway.

However it does highlight/contrast the concept of 'repeatable'. Does the probability idea merely amortize the unobservable/unknowable/unpredictable parameters - like a sideshow spinning wheel that we blindly interrupt on occasions to catch the prize of the moment - or does fuzziness truly rule and we just see different facets of a unified unchanging thing? Perhaps word play. Maybe not.

Cheers, Mike.

( edit ) There is possible semantic blathering here. Instead of an 8 horse race with prior probabilities of a given single horse winning and the most likely one actualizing in the result, we have 8 horses whom have all won the race to some degree .... so 'winningness' is not bestowed at the moment of race completion but held forever by each nag.

( edit ) The difference b/w these approaches becomes acute when the favourite doesn't come in, with the dark horse in the field launching forward. What to say now? Bad prior probability assessments, meaning faulty assessment of 'form'? Statistical variation ie. 'bad' luck or Murphy's Law? A true change in underlying 'winningness' - a horse was nobbled, say. Would Fuzzy Logic stand it's ground then? What would Bayes say? Hmmmm .....

( edit ) I do commend Astfgl for his treatment of Prometheus ( eternally punished for stealing fire from the gods ). Instead of his liver getting picked over by a vulture every day - only to regrow each night - he had to listen to the bird describe it's haemorrhoid surgery. :-) :-)