Mass Distributions in the Social Imagination

There are already mass distributions in the social imagination which are visible in social reality. However, some people require certainty... or at least a certain amount of it. That is why at CERN the Large Hadron Collider has been up and running some pretty interesting operations lately. Especially, in regards to the Higgs boson particle or God particle. During the Higgs boson search, the most important data that scientists were looking was what they call mass distributions. These distributions are a good way of testing the hypothesis that a new particle has been produced somewhere in a collision. They look at the particles that are actually measured in the detector, and we ask the question

If these particles came from the decay of a new, to-date undiscovered particle, what would its mass be?

They say like this ...this question can be answered - with a bit of relativistic kinematics, the mass can be reconstructed. If there is no new particle, the distribution of reconstructed masses won’t show any special features. But if a new particle is being produced, and produced often enough, there will be a concentration of data with reconstructed masses close to the mass of the new particle - a bump. At least some at CERN were honest enough to say that it was only the hint of a bump. Which in quantum physics means that no new particle was  there until it was observed. In this case, it was naively observed and called justly a hint of a bump because there was not and is still not total agreement about what was actually observed which is necessary to make it completely real. Remember in the social imagination which is the house for social reality, which encompasses all potentiality, requires agreement for anything to be real or part of social reality. 
It is ironic then that CERN scientists think that a measure of data does constitute evidence for a new particle. However, they do use the word “naively”. And, here we are again back to where I said we were. Physicists at the LHC at CERN are simultaneously studying thousands of distributions, and if you study enough of them, very likely some of them will show rare fluctuations like this. So how should we evaluate the strength of the evidence? That is the question. The answer is in another question - What exactly are we looking for?

No one seems to know exactly what it is they want to find or maybe they do and are not sharing their deepest desires. Thankfully, they have a way forward, according to CERN scientists that

is to look again or look elsewhere for evidence of a new particle. Funny, they just don't seem to get it. If they found a new particle, that would mean that something newer than that is creating it. You see, they cannot imagine that out of what was and always will be comes what is.

With a new view or take on analysis, they consider evaluating the probability of a bump showing up anywhere in the mass distribution spectrum. As expected, the probability threshold is usually applied to the local significance, before the look-elsewhere effect is accounted for.

The justification is that the mass distribution is just one of many distributions they’re studying, looking for anomalies. At least they are aware that if you took them all into account you could reduce the significance further. In the end (to the annoyance of many) it is impossible to remove an element of judgement, of subjectivity. In Bayesian language, something like a prior assumption.This is what brings us back to the question - What are they looking for and what do they want to see... when they observe it. Once they do, who will be in agreement because if there is no social agreement, there won't be any agreed upon data, and no social reality in the social imagination.




After all, there is nothing new under the sun  ~ Ecc. 1:9 !
Only things from things unseen that come things which are ~ Hebrew 11:3

Source ~ http://www.theguardian.com/science/life-and-physics/2015/jun/27/something-to-watch-for-in-the-new-data-from-the-large-hadron-collider

Particle Physics ~ The Standard Model in the Social Imagination

If you haven't already read... You can read it here.

Based on much activity in Geneva Switzerland, namely at CERN, we have been informed that the standard model of particle physics, which describes every particle we know of and how they interact, was given much credence when the Higgs boson was discovered in 2012. Currently, measurements of rare particle physic decay at the Large Hadron Collider offer further support for the model – but also hints at ways to find out what lies beyond it.

The standard model is cherished by physicists because it can explain most of the fundamental phenomena in nature by referencing just a handful of elementary particles..

These particles include quarks (one of the components of an atom) and electron-like particles called leptons – along with their so-called antiparticles which are identical but have opposite charge. The model also includes the particles that carry forces between them (photons, gluons, W and Z bosons) and the Higgs.

The picture this model provides is remarkably complete and precise – given its (relative) simplicity and the huge variety of very different phenomena which it can explain with amazing accuracy.

But the standard model is far from perfect. For starters, it does not include gravity. Also, the elementary particles it describes so successfully make up just 4% of the matter in the universe. The rest is a mysterious substance dubbed "dark matter" whose composition we still don't know. This is one of the reasons why scientists doubt that the standard model can be the true theory of everything. 

I can tell you that we as social creatures can only know the universe through social interaction. Math is part of that interaction. It is our interaction with number, but the meaning of those numbers is socially based. We tend not to look for anything that is not socially interesting for us. In fact, we don't. So, what are we or CERN scientists looking for if we consider that they are looking for things that have meaning for them/us?

Are they looking for the beginning of the universe or the end? Are they looking for a prime mover, or God - the Creator of all things seen and unseen?
 

Certainly someone greater than man is behind the scenes of everything we think we see and or imagine. 

What about gravity? Isn't that what holds everything together? What is it anyway? How do we 'feel' it? and shouldn't we be asking why do we feel it or why is it necessary that we do? Those are different kinds of questions. Perhaps just too difficult to put into equations for 'man'.  If he did, it would only because it means something to him. Why should it mean anything? If it means something only to him, then is he creating it and or everything through social interaction? Yes and No. 

Yes, because he is an avatar of something bigger. No, because he is not bigger than himself. Which means that man too (aside of the universe) is a mystery to himself but not to his creator.

Read more: http://theconversation.com/particle-physics-discovery-raises-hope-for-a-theory-of-everything-41778#ixzz3dBKZED1C

Reality Does Not Exist ~ Until God Call it Into Existence!

Yesterday, Colin Jeffrey published this article. I paste it here. It describes what I have been saying as a sociologist ~ reality is information perceived by the receiver.

Researchers working at the Australian National University (ANU) have conducted an experiment that helps bolster the ever-growing evidence surrounding the weird causal properties inherent in quantum theory. In short, they have shown that reality does not actually exist until it is measured – at atomic scales, at least.
Associate Professor Andrew Truscott and his PhD student, Roman Khakimov, of ANU's Research School of Physics and Engineering conducted a version of John Archibald Wheeler's delayed-choice thought experiment – a variation of the classic double-slit experiment, where light is shown to display characteristics of both waves and particles – where an object moving through open space is provided the opportunity (some would say "a choice") to behave like a particle or a wave.

In this instance, however, the ANU team replicated Wheeler's experiment using multiple atoms, which was much more difficult to do than a test using photons. This extra difficulty is due to the fact that, as they have mass, atoms tend to interfere with each other, which can theoretically influence the results.
"An atom is a much more classical particle," Associate Professor Truscott said. "For the theory to hold with a single atom is significant because it proves that it works for particles with mass."

To carry out the experiment, the ANU team initially trapped a collection of helium atoms in a Bose-Einstein condensate (a medium in which a dilute gas is cooled to temperatures very close to absolute zero), and then forcibly ejected them from their containment until there was only a single atom left behind.
This remaining atom was then released to pass through a pair of counter-propagating laser beams (that is, beams moving in opposite directions), which created a pattern to act as a crossroads for the atom in the same way that a solid diffusion grating would act to scatter light.

After this, another laser-generated grating was randomly added and used to recombine the routes offered to the atom. This second grating then indiscriminately produced either constructive or destructive interference as if the atom had journeyed on both paths. Conversely, when the second light grating was not randomly added, no interference would be introduced, and the atom would behave as if it had followed only one path.
However, and this is the really weird part, the arbitrary number generated to determine if the grating was added or not was only generated after the atom had passed through the crossroads. But, when the atom was measured at the end of its path – before the random number was generated – it already displayed the wave or particle characteristics applied by the grating after it had completed its journey.
According to Truscott, this means that if one chooses to believe that the atom really did take a particular path or paths, then one also has to accept that a future measurement is affecting the atom's past.

"The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence," said Truscott. "It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it.”
From an everyday point of view, our minds perceive that an object should behave like a wave or a particle, quite independently of how it is measured. However, as this experiment supports, quantum physics predicts that it doesn’t seem to matter if a particle or object should show wave-like behavior or particle-like behavior; it all depends on how it is actually measured at the end of its journey.

"Quantum physics' predictions about interference seem odd enough when applied to light, which seems more like a wave, but to have done the experiment with atoms, which are complicated things that have mass and interact with electric fields and so on, adds to the weirdness," said Roman Khakimov.
The first time ever that Wheeler's delayed-choice experiment has been conducted using a single atom, the quantum weirdness represented by this experiment much more closely approaches the macro world in which humans perceive reality, which adds to the significance of the findings.

In the beginning was the Word and the Word as with God and the Word was God ~ John 1:1.  Every time God spoke, creation took place!  We have yet to embrace what has been engrafted ~ the Word. We tend to think that what reality is ... is out there. But, it is not. The worlds were framed by the Word of God ~ Heb. 11:3. Without words, there would not have been any creation. God's Word is infused into us... the Word made flesh; in other words... the molded flesh is animated by the Word engrafted in us. Therefore, your words create images ~ which are the findings you just read above in the Colin Jeffrey article. Funny how 'hard sciences' take the long road. Moreover, the 'weirdness' they describe can be understood in this way... your words create images, and eventually you will live out the reality of that image.


Sociology is a soft science which is more able to embrace the quantum aspect of reality. Sociologists look at meaning; and meaning is everything. What we see is based on what it means to us.

Georg Rasch wants to Measure the Real World ~ Really?

Really? I would like to ask Georg Rasch what the real world is what? Why? Because, it is obvious he does not understand what it is. The real world is only that which can be called the 'paramount reality'. Alfred Schutz put that phrase forward long before Rasch. What does that mean? The paramount reality is the first social reality we encounter - society as the world of work as in 'doing and being' in a place.

In every society as in culture, this is perceived differently due to religion and geography and the socio-history that is the 'story' of the people in a place and what successes and failures they have experienced in a place and how they see themselves moving forward in that place which again has everything to do with their idea of who they are in the place and also that place within the greater cosmos. Why is any of that important or how does it influence what people do in 'their or a particular' place as pertaining to their moving forward in that place... what we might call 'new' developments in education and technology in a place (not considering yet a 'global' type citizen whose place is the world)?

It is important to talk about place because it has a direct impact on who we are and what we do.  It causes certain meaning to be given to things and to people.  When I talk about place, I do not mean just geography. I mean all social events, cognitive' collective consciousnesses driving such events, that takes place in a certain location that we can notice not taking place anywhere else. As a sociologist, I talk about meaning in a place. This is truly fascinating, it cannot be measured as we like to think it can. Of course, we can come up with probability statistical that will show a tendency but it lacks the depth of meaning. Which of course can be argued by mathematicians that like to reduce society to numbers.  In doing so, they reduce meaning, they reduce social imagination to calculated propensity.

They think that they are seeing something as naturally occurring data. But, they are not. They are seeing what they want to see. What they want to see is part of 'their social imagination'. All things lie in our social imagination. We can imagine a wonderfully creative and meaningful place or a dry cold numbered place that tracks and calculates.

You see, Georg Rasch was of the later. He promoted psychometrics which is a field of study concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement. One part of the field is concerned with the objective measurement of skills and knowledge, abilities, attitudes,personality traits, and educational achievement. He was interested thus in the calculation of social imagination. That sounds witty but it is not wise. Numbers produce results no doubt about that. But, they do not reflect the true nature of the social imagination.

Some psychometric researchers have concerned themselves with the construction and validation of assessment instruments such as questionnaires, tests, raters' judgments, and personality tests to understand the human mind, the human social imagination. Oh, how they deny themselves the true intimate nature and understanding of the workings of the social imagination.

Why would I say that? It is because the key requirement of the Rasch model is embodied within the formal structure. Consequently, the Rasch model is a method of assessment that looks at how the assessment should be changed to meet the requirement of what is being studied. This sets up a false idea of what the naturally occurring data is. It presumes that the data is like 'that' or 'this'. We have to only set up proper assessment in order to see the data we presume to be there or want to achieve.

The model of assessment should be changed so that this requirement is met, in the same way that a weighing scale should be rectified if it gives different comparisons between objects upon separate measurements of the objects. This does not provide true measurement. It supposes what we think we see or want to see. The scale example is a good illustration for this. As I might measure the same and rectify the scale in order to obtain what I want or think it should produce. It is a dangerous kind of social imagination in my opinion.
Because the intention is to make everyone the same, supposing a high level can be met if we assess it properly.

The real world is more like web of intricate patters, some have smaller detail, some have larger spaces and no one pattern is exactly the same. Each 'fractal' though repeating is not the same fractal in everything and in everyone. It may have the same components but the arrangement is different. Ask ...What is the purpose of making them the same? Because, we suppose that it would be better, it would reflect a greater intelligence? or greater social imagination. Can we measure the real world, if we could, how would we ever be able to understand it.... its quantum applications in every situation, every being and in every mind?