After the multiverse, the… multiworse?

Are we chasing 'pipe dreams' by extending the power of the LHC? If that's the case, then how do we justify the huge amounts of money needed? Supersymmetry has more or less died with the current LHC results. Until such time as there is some evidence that some new particle will appear at even higher energies, I think we should 'keep our powder dry.' As an apt aside, the move forward in QFT (quantum field theory) that led to the "electro-weak" theory and QCD (quantum chromodynamics, so named because within nucleons [neutrons and protons] there is "color" charge instead of electric charge) came from condensed matter physics. In today's world, these physicists are the ones who are doing the real fundamental research, and I expect that particle physics will only advance when condensed matter physicists finally arrive at very precise measurements. And I think we're on our way. BTW, these experiments pale in cost compared to the LHC. What's needed in the meantime---and it, too is happening, is a rethinking of the fundamentals of already accepted and verified theory. I think this is what Sabine is arguing for. PaV

The Anthropic Principle: Chapter 13 of materialistic cosmology. LocalMinimum

Although Hossenfelder is a convinced evolutionist herself, she offers a telling inside in what today's physicists want and don't want:

I must have sat through hundreds of seminars in which naturalness arguments were repeated. Let me just flash you a representative slide from a 2007 talk by Michelangelo L. Mangano (full pdf here), so you get the idea. The punchline is at the very top: “new particles must appear” in an energy range of about a TeV (ie accessible at the LHC) “to avoid finetuning.” … This was the argument why the LHC should see something new: To avoid finetuning and to preserve naturalness. I explained many times previously why the conclusions based on naturalness were not predictions, but merely pleas for the laws of nature to be pretty. Luckily I no longer have to repeat these warnings, because the data agree that naturalness isn’t a good argument.

“Pretty” as in ‘not-fine-tuned’?

My disbelief in naturalness used to be a fringe opinion and it’s gotten me funny looks on more than one occasion. But the world refused to be as particle physicists expected, naturalness rapidly loses popularity, and now it’s my turn to practice funny looks. The cube, it’s balancing on a tip and nobody knows why. In desparation they throw up their hands and say “anthropic principle”. Then they continue to produce scatter plots. … The naturalness arguments are eventually based on the idea that whatever a fundamental theory looks like, it does conform to this ideal: There's one or only a few parameters. They are neither fine-tuned nor appear in unreasonably large ratios. We, the stuff we are made of, and our universe, is somehow "natural," "average" or "mediocre." However, if you continue to ask "why" at this point you'll notice how the scientific basis crumbles away under your feet. Why should this be? Because very small parameters make you feel uneasy? Because you don't find many parameters a satisfactory explanation? Because it's not pretty? Because it smells like intelligent design?

Origenes

Despising the greater beauty you have yet to conceive of for the perceived loss of the cheaper beauty you never possessed. LocalMinimum