You misunderstand Goedel. Any sufficiently expressive formal languag can formulate statements that IT cannot decide the truth of, but we can always formulate another language with which to discuss that system and the truth of the statements it cannot decide. We wouldn’t even be able to state Goedel’s theorem if that were not the case.
Your religious analogy is flawed in that you're talking about people claiming that some particular book defines reality, and then freely and unabashedly modifying that book to fit reality; whereas what I'm talking about is more like saying "there is some possible book that could be written that would perfectly describe the rules of reality. Whatever rules would be written in that book, those rules define reality." It's pretty much a tautology.
There is some rigorous formal (i.e. mathematical) system that would be a perfect description of reality. Whatever the rules of that system are, those are the rules of reality, because that system is defined as whichever one has the rules of reality as its rules.
What the author of the paper in question here is saying that if this math regarding octonions is part of the mathematical system that perfectly describes reality, then no further explanation for the discrete values of electrical charges is needed, because that phenomenon is just an automatic consequence of integers having discrete values, in such a system.
It's like saying that if the geometric structures called ellipses describe the motion of the planets, and the Earth is a planet whose motion is described by that structure, then no further explanation for the apparent retrograde movement of the other planets in the sky is necessary, because that relative apparent motion is just an automatic consequence of the geometry of elliptical motion.
The map is not the territory, true. Unless you have a perfectly detailed map at 1:1 scale, in which case you have just replicated the territory.
Mathematics models reality in that we don't know exactly what reality is like and we're trying to make a map of it. But whatever model it is that would perfectly map reality in every detail, would be identical to reality itself. We just don't know what model that is.
So is it like Bill Clinton said, "depends on what the meaning of "is" is?
Hah, I like making that joke/reference in this context myself.:-)
Another fun one: the field of mereology studies the relationships between parts and wholes, and the difference between continuous stuff that has no proper parts and is infinitely divisible, and discrete things that are made of other discrete things down to some atomic (indivisible) level. In that context, "stuff" and "things" are technical terms referring to those continuous and discrete kinds of beings. So what do mereologists study? Oh, you know... things, and stuff.
Bad form to reply to myself, but can't edit posts on Slashdot:
In the most restricted sense, one could say "only what I am experiencing right here right now exists": complete solipsism. Everything else is some degree of inference and abstraction. Part of what I'm experiencing right now is memory, from which I infer (intuitively, without thinking about it) the existence of other times, including projected future times. In that "movie" of my past, present, and future experiences now inferred, I seem to move around different places, so I infer (again, just intuitively; we all do this stuff without thinking about it) that other places exist too, besides just the here that I am experiencing now. Other possible worlds help to make sense of the larger world of space and time now inferred, so we can infer their existence too. Other mathematical structures help to make sense of that multiverse now inferred, so we can infer their existence too. All in more and more broad and general senses of the word "exist", true, but you're going to concede to a broader reality than just your own present experience anyway, why not go all the way?
Ontology does ask "what is?", but a possible answer to that question is "everything that could possibly be".
Even given that answer to that unqualified question, we can (and usually implicitly mean to) ask a more restricted version of it, like "What concretely exists?", "What actually exists?", or even "What presently exists?" In philosophy of time people argue about presentism vs eternalism, and one proposed resolution to that argument is just to note different senses of the word "exist", one in the present tense and one tenseless: only the present presently exists, now, but other times exist in a tenseless sense of the word "exist". Other possible worlds and other mathematical structures may likewise "exist" in increasingly broader sense of the term than the one that means "right now, in the actual configuration of this reality".
So... you're telling me that reality is defined by an abstract algebra concept? I thought we were using abstract algebras to *model reality*--not the other way around.
Yes. Reality will be defined by some mathematical structure or another. We can invent mathematical structures to describe any possible way that reality might be. Whatever way it turns out that reality is, whichever mathematical structure accurately describes it defines its properties.
One might even say (as Max Tegmark more or less does) that concrete existence, the kind of existence that applies to rocks and trees and such, is just a special case of abstract existence, the kind that applies to mathematical structures like numbers and triangles. All mathematical structures "exist" in that abstract sense, and the things that "exist" in a more concrete sense are just the things that are part of the same mathematical structure of which we are a part, i.e. of our physical reality.
Similar to how, as David Lewis puts it, "'actual' is indexical", i.e. in a multiverse of possible worlds (which, NB, would all be part of the concrete world we're talking about above), the "actual world" is just the one that we happen to be part of, and not ontologically different from any of the other possible worlds. We might likewise say that "'concrete' is indexical"; concrete reality is just the abstract structure of which we are a part, and not ontologically different from any other abstract structures.
It's still an empirical question to figure out which possible world (configuration) of which abstract structure we are a part of. But whatever the answer will turn out to be, there's some possible math that will describe it.
You seem really intend on harming on that meme about people seeming intent on people knowing they don't have TV, in a thread explicitly about how many people these days don't have TV.
I'm not calling attention to the fact that I, like the rest of those 33 million people under discussion, don't have TV. I'm calling attention to the fact that I, and maybe many of those others, didn't "get rid of" TV, but just never bothered to get it in the first place.
This "cord cutting" idea reminds me of the RIAA counting declining music sales as "losses". No, industry associations, not getting as many sales are you hoped for is not the same thing as losing something. People deciding not to buy TV is not the same as some mass exodus from TV-land. You can't exodus from somewhere you never were, and more and more people deciding not to go there does not a mass exodus make.
I've always disliked the term "cord-cutting", because it presumes that having a cable TV subscription is the normal default state of affairs, and that it's some weird deviance from that norm to not buy a service that you would normally not have if you didn't go out of your way to buy it.
When I first moved out on my own, and had to start paying my own utilities and such, I was really tight for cash and so decided that I didn't need to spend my very limited money just to watch TV. Fast forward a decade or two and I still don't have TV. I never have had TV, at least not since it could rightly be said that *I* did or didn't have it, rather than my parents.
I'm not a cord-cutter, because I never had a cord to cut.
How many of the tallied "cord-cutters" in these figures are like me? Especially younger people, who increasingly see TV as unnecessary, and who are increasingly strapped for cash they are unlikely to waste even starting up service for an unnecessary entertainment package when they could just as well do without.
To clarify the possible source of confusion here, copyright has only been automatic, and registration unnecessary, since the Copyright Act of 1976. Older people may have learned different laws before they changed, and not be aware of the change.
I'm assuming the "non-sexual" part of "certified non-sexual massage therapist" is descriptive, just letting us know that they're not a "happy endings" kind of massage therapist, not that they're certified in something called "non-sexual massage".
But given that this is just an ordinary massage therapist, what is their connection to FOSTA and why are they part of this case?
I think I'm missing how that connects to the prior conversation.
Though I'm kind of one of those people myself, except I never really bought into the hope hype, being more of a wait-and-see type, but I was still unimpressed with what I saw compared to what could've been. More the lack of undoing much if any of the harm done by the Bush administration than the lack of progress beyond the status quo ante. I had thought "hey, maybe things will go back to how they were" at the start, and ended up thinking "well, at least it stopped getting continually worse" by the end.
The last mile problem is the big problem there. Even ignoring the competition-prohibitive costs of just physically running the wiring, you effectively need the government's cooperation to do it, because you need the local government's authority to let you run wire across public land, and eminent domain to run it across a whole lot of private parties' land. And the people of an area aren't going to want a zillion different set of wires crossing their land, which is why networking like this (and roads, and sewers, and natural gas, etc) are natural monopolies. So that last mile is either a public utility, in which case you have the government involved there, or it's a private monopoly, which gets you exactly the problems we're fighting now, unless the government regulates it.
This is basically the exact conundrum that faced telephone service, and the solution to that conundrum was Title II. The internet was built on top of the telephone network and so inherited that last-mile neutrality, and the otherwise free competition between the last miles enforced neutrality there. Now the internet providers are the last-mile owners and because the internet isn't built on top of telephone service anymore (the other way around, in fact; telephone runs on the internet now), the old Title II solution isn't in effect. All the 2015 decision said was to put it back into effect by acknowledging that internet service today is the same type of thing as phone service always was, and so should follow the same rules.
FWIW, way the hell back a decade or two ago there were lots of people here on Slashdot, when the ISPs first started dicking around and new laws were being passed to stop them, saying "Why is this even an issue? Why the hell isn't internet service just regulated as a common carrier like phones are?" Well now they are. Or were, between 2015 and today.
Things were fine without NN regulation in the beginning because of two factors: ISPs didn't own the last mile of telephone wire that they operated on top of, and so competition was much easier, and competition kept the ISPs playing nicely with consumers; and that last mile of telephone wire was sold to consumers as telephone service, and so regulated under Title II as common carriers.
When the phone (and cable) companies became the ISPs, all of that changed. Now the owners of the last mile, who thus had little to no competition, were directly selling something that was not telephone service and so was not regulated under Title II.
Little surprise, in due time they started trying to abuse that unregulated monopoly power. Only then were laws passed trying to curtail that behavior and restore the status quo ante.
Those laws were eventually repealed with the justification that as internet service was not classified under Title II, there was no requirement that it be treated like a common carrier, the way it always had been in the beginning but ISPs no longer wanted it to be.
So in 2015 Obama's FCC classified internet service under Title II, justifying the laws requiring that things be kept the same as they had always been.
What's happened now is that that classification has been repealed, once again overturning the laws that require that ISPs behave the way they always used to, giving them free reign to go ahead and change things for the worse.
This whole decade-plus battle has been a fight to keep things the way that they always were. So far we the consumers have been winning that fight, which is why it wasn't just shit until 2015: the 2015 decision was just the latest victory over those who wanted to turn it to shit.
Now it looks like we the consumers are losing. That means things can turn to shit now, unless this latest attempt is once again defeated somehow.
If congress passes a law overturning this decision, it will be a law ordering the FCC to classify ISPs in a way that requires them to behave the way they always used to. Net Neutrality is not a change to the internet, it's the way it always used to be, that the big monopoly ISPs are trying to change away from, that they have thus far (until perhaps now) been unsuccessful at doing.
Saying that that net neutrality laws are unncessary because the internet wasn't shit before is like saying sending the army to defend from invaders is unnecessary because we haven't been overrun by invaders before. No shit, when you haven't been invaded yet you don't need to send the army to defend yourself. But now that the invaders are at the door, you either send the army to turn them back, or prepare to have your way of life changed.
The internet became ubiquitous WITH net neutrality, which was enforced at the beginning by two factors: the telecoms that owned the last mile were regulated by Title II as common carries for the phone service they provided, and internet piggybacked on that phone service; and because internet was piggybacking on phone services, ISPs did not own the last mile but rather offered a service on top of it, so it was much much easier to start a competing ISP without having to run new line, and that competition forced them to behave.
With the advent of phone companies themselves, and cable companies, BECOMING the ISPs, you suddenly had regional duopolies directly offering something that was not phone service and so not regulated by Title II. Then they started doing away with the until-then-defacto net neutral practices. Then laws started being passed saying they can't do that, and those laws were overturned because internet service was not categorized under Title II, so the FCC went ahead and made it that way, which it should have been all along. And now that's been reversed in turn, and this bill is just Congress ordering them to put it back.
TL;DR: This bill is Congress ordering the FCC to classify ISPs the same way that phone companies were always classified and thus how the dial-up internet was classified in the beginning, to make sure that things stay the way they always were and not how the new-ish local monopolies want to make them.
Gravity acts upon energy (or you could phrase it as energy distorts spacetime, which is the same thing). Mass is just rest energy, confined energy that's not free to be kinetic energy. (The Higgs field explains what is confining energy in the otherwise free, unconfined fundamental particles that nevertheless have mass for no other apparent reason). Where does it look like gravity and mass are at all independent?
The Higgs field is unrelated to gravity as a force. Gravity acts on energy regardless of its form. Mass is what happens when energy gets confined. Most of the mass of normal matter can be accounted for by the binding energies confined in composite particles: the forces that hold atoms together into molecules, electrons and nuclei together into atoms, nucleons together into nuclei, and quarks together into nucleons. But the fundamental particles like those quarks and electrons also have mass, which raises the question of what is confining what energy to cause that; why aren't all the fundamental particles massless? The answer to that is the Higgs field: all of the would-have-been-massless fundamental particles interact constantly with the Higgs field, confining some of what would have been their kinetic energy, giving them mass (and making them move slower than light in the process).
That's what prompted my initial question. If these sterile neutrinos don't interact with anything, then how can they be massive, since all mass arises from interactions? Someone elsewhere in the comments has said that the origin of neutrino mass is a mystery, as according to the Standard Model they should be massless, and these sterile neutrinos are part of one proposed explanation for that mystery, but I don't quite understand it yet.
So far as I understand it, every fundamental force (except possibly gravity which is yet unaccounted for in quantum field theories) is mediated by some kind of particle which is just an excitation of that field, e.g. the electromagnetic force corresponds to the electromagnetic field, which is to say the photon field as photons are just excitations of the electromagnetic field, and interaction with photons constitutes the electromagnetic force, as every electromagnetic interaction is mediated by an exchange of photons. The Higgs field seems like it would imply an equivalent Higgs force then.
Slashdot Mirror
You misunderstand Goedel. Any sufficiently expressive formal languag can formulate statements that IT cannot decide the truth of, but we can always formulate another language with which to discuss that system and the truth of the statements it cannot decide. We wouldn’t even be able to state Goedel’s theorem if that were not the case.
Because we can always just invent one as needed.
Your religious analogy is flawed in that you're talking about people claiming that some particular book defines reality, and then freely and unabashedly modifying that book to fit reality; whereas what I'm talking about is more like saying "there is some possible book that could be written that would perfectly describe the rules of reality. Whatever rules would be written in that book, those rules define reality." It's pretty much a tautology.
There is some rigorous formal (i.e. mathematical) system that would be a perfect description of reality. Whatever the rules of that system are, those are the rules of reality, because that system is defined as whichever one has the rules of reality as its rules.
What the author of the paper in question here is saying that if this math regarding octonions is part of the mathematical system that perfectly describes reality, then no further explanation for the discrete values of electrical charges is needed, because that phenomenon is just an automatic consequence of integers having discrete values, in such a system.
It's like saying that if the geometric structures called ellipses describe the motion of the planets, and the Earth is a planet whose motion is described by that structure, then no further explanation for the apparent retrograde movement of the other planets in the sky is necessary, because that relative apparent motion is just an automatic consequence of the geometry of elliptical motion.
The map is not the territory, true. Unless you have a perfectly detailed map at 1:1 scale, in which case you have just replicated the territory.
Mathematics models reality in that we don't know exactly what reality is like and we're trying to make a map of it. But whatever model it is that would perfectly map reality in every detail, would be identical to reality itself. We just don't know what model that is.
So is it like Bill Clinton said, "depends on what the meaning of "is" is?
Hah, I like making that joke/reference in this context myself. :-)
Another fun one: the field of mereology studies the relationships between parts and wholes, and the difference between continuous stuff that has no proper parts and is infinitely divisible, and discrete things that are made of other discrete things down to some atomic (indivisible) level. In that context, "stuff" and "things" are technical terms referring to those continuous and discrete kinds of beings. So what do mereologists study? Oh, you know... things, and stuff.
Bad form to reply to myself, but can't edit posts on Slashdot:
In the most restricted sense, one could say "only what I am experiencing right here right now exists": complete solipsism. Everything else is some degree of inference and abstraction. Part of what I'm experiencing right now is memory, from which I infer (intuitively, without thinking about it) the existence of other times, including projected future times. In that "movie" of my past, present, and future experiences now inferred, I seem to move around different places, so I infer (again, just intuitively; we all do this stuff without thinking about it) that other places exist too, besides just the here that I am experiencing now. Other possible worlds help to make sense of the larger world of space and time now inferred, so we can infer their existence too. Other mathematical structures help to make sense of that multiverse now inferred, so we can infer their existence too. All in more and more broad and general senses of the word "exist", true, but you're going to concede to a broader reality than just your own present experience anyway, why not go all the way?
Ontology does ask "what is?", but a possible answer to that question is "everything that could possibly be".
Even given that answer to that unqualified question, we can (and usually implicitly mean to) ask a more restricted version of it, like "What concretely exists?", "What actually exists?", or even "What presently exists?" In philosophy of time people argue about presentism vs eternalism, and one proposed resolution to that argument is just to note different senses of the word "exist", one in the present tense and one tenseless: only the present presently exists, now, but other times exist in a tenseless sense of the word "exist". Other possible worlds and other mathematical structures may likewise "exist" in increasingly broader sense of the term than the one that means "right now, in the actual configuration of this reality".
So... you're telling me that reality is defined by an abstract algebra concept?
I thought we were using abstract algebras to *model reality*--not the other way around.
Yes. Reality will be defined by some mathematical structure or another. We can invent mathematical structures to describe any possible way that reality might be. Whatever way it turns out that reality is, whichever mathematical structure accurately describes it defines its properties.
One might even say (as Max Tegmark more or less does) that concrete existence, the kind of existence that applies to rocks and trees and such, is just a special case of abstract existence, the kind that applies to mathematical structures like numbers and triangles. All mathematical structures "exist" in that abstract sense, and the things that "exist" in a more concrete sense are just the things that are part of the same mathematical structure of which we are a part, i.e. of our physical reality.
Similar to how, as David Lewis puts it, "'actual' is indexical", i.e. in a multiverse of possible worlds (which, NB, would all be part of the concrete world we're talking about above), the "actual world" is just the one that we happen to be part of, and not ontologically different from any of the other possible worlds. We might likewise say that "'concrete' is indexical"; concrete reality is just the abstract structure of which we are a part, and not ontologically different from any other abstract structures.
It's still an empirical question to figure out which possible world (configuration) of which abstract structure we are a part of. But whatever the answer will turn out to be, there's some possible math that will describe it.
Fuck women!
Not with that attitude you won't.
take a stand against globalism and the TPTB
By which you mean "The Jews", no doubt.
Surprised you didn't write "(((globalism)))".
Also, the The Powers That Be?
Thank you.
You seem really intend on harming on that meme about people seeming intent on people knowing they don't have TV, in a thread explicitly about how many people these days don't have TV.
I'm not calling attention to the fact that I, like the rest of those 33 million people under discussion, don't have TV. I'm calling attention to the fact that I, and maybe many of those others, didn't "get rid of" TV, but just never bothered to get it in the first place.
This "cord cutting" idea reminds me of the RIAA counting declining music sales as "losses". No, industry associations, not getting as many sales are you hoped for is not the same thing as losing something. People deciding not to buy TV is not the same as some mass exodus from TV-land. You can't exodus from somewhere you never were, and more and more people deciding not to go there does not a mass exodus make.
I've always disliked the term "cord-cutting", because it presumes that having a cable TV subscription is the normal default state of affairs, and that it's some weird deviance from that norm to not buy a service that you would normally not have if you didn't go out of your way to buy it.
When I first moved out on my own, and had to start paying my own utilities and such, I was really tight for cash and so decided that I didn't need to spend my very limited money just to watch TV. Fast forward a decade or two and I still don't have TV. I never have had TV, at least not since it could rightly be said that *I* did or didn't have it, rather than my parents.
I'm not a cord-cutter, because I never had a cord to cut.
How many of the tallied "cord-cutters" in these figures are like me? Especially younger people, who increasingly see TV as unnecessary, and who are increasingly strapped for cash they are unlikely to waste even starting up service for an unnecessary entertainment package when they could just as well do without.
To clarify the possible source of confusion here, copyright has only been automatic, and registration unnecessary, since the Copyright Act of 1976. Older people may have learned different laws before they changed, and not be aware of the change.
I'm assuming the "non-sexual" part of "certified non-sexual massage therapist" is descriptive, just letting us know that they're not a "happy endings" kind of massage therapist, not that they're certified in something called "non-sexual massage".
But given that this is just an ordinary massage therapist, what is their connection to FOSTA and why are they part of this case?
Who clicks a link without hovering first, and who doesn't recognize goatse from the URL?
I think I'm missing how that connects to the prior conversation.
Though I'm kind of one of those people myself, except I never really bought into the hope hype, being more of a wait-and-see type, but I was still unimpressed with what I saw compared to what could've been. More the lack of undoing much if any of the harm done by the Bush administration than the lack of progress beyond the status quo ante. I had thought "hey, maybe things will go back to how they were" at the start, and ended up thinking "well, at least it stopped getting continually worse" by the end.
Do the hosts on Fox News complain about Fox News having a liberal bias? (Honest question because I don't watch it, but I expect the answer is "no").
Are non-conservatives a minority here? I seem to see conservatives here constantly complaining about the liberal bias of this place.
The last mile problem is the big problem there. Even ignoring the competition-prohibitive costs of just physically running the wiring, you effectively need the government's cooperation to do it, because you need the local government's authority to let you run wire across public land, and eminent domain to run it across a whole lot of private parties' land. And the people of an area aren't going to want a zillion different set of wires crossing their land, which is why networking like this (and roads, and sewers, and natural gas, etc) are natural monopolies. So that last mile is either a public utility, in which case you have the government involved there, or it's a private monopoly, which gets you exactly the problems we're fighting now, unless the government regulates it.
This is basically the exact conundrum that faced telephone service, and the solution to that conundrum was Title II. The internet was built on top of the telephone network and so inherited that last-mile neutrality, and the otherwise free competition between the last miles enforced neutrality there. Now the internet providers are the last-mile owners and because the internet isn't built on top of telephone service anymore (the other way around, in fact; telephone runs on the internet now), the old Title II solution isn't in effect. All the 2015 decision said was to put it back into effect by acknowledging that internet service today is the same type of thing as phone service always was, and so should follow the same rules.
FWIW, way the hell back a decade or two ago there were lots of people here on Slashdot, when the ISPs first started dicking around and new laws were being passed to stop them, saying "Why is this even an issue? Why the hell isn't internet service just regulated as a common carrier like phones are?" Well now they are. Or were, between 2015 and today.
Things were fine without NN regulation in the beginning because of two factors: ISPs didn't own the last mile of telephone wire that they operated on top of, and so competition was much easier, and competition kept the ISPs playing nicely with consumers; and that last mile of telephone wire was sold to consumers as telephone service, and so regulated under Title II as common carriers.
When the phone (and cable) companies became the ISPs, all of that changed. Now the owners of the last mile, who thus had little to no competition, were directly selling something that was not telephone service and so was not regulated under Title II.
Little surprise, in due time they started trying to abuse that unregulated monopoly power. Only then were laws passed trying to curtail that behavior and restore the status quo ante.
Those laws were eventually repealed with the justification that as internet service was not classified under Title II, there was no requirement that it be treated like a common carrier, the way it always had been in the beginning but ISPs no longer wanted it to be.
So in 2015 Obama's FCC classified internet service under Title II, justifying the laws requiring that things be kept the same as they had always been.
What's happened now is that that classification has been repealed, once again overturning the laws that require that ISPs behave the way they always used to, giving them free reign to go ahead and change things for the worse.
This whole decade-plus battle has been a fight to keep things the way that they always were. So far we the consumers have been winning that fight, which is why it wasn't just shit until 2015: the 2015 decision was just the latest victory over those who wanted to turn it to shit.
Now it looks like we the consumers are losing. That means things can turn to shit now, unless this latest attempt is once again defeated somehow.
If congress passes a law overturning this decision, it will be a law ordering the FCC to classify ISPs in a way that requires them to behave the way they always used to. Net Neutrality is not a change to the internet, it's the way it always used to be, that the big monopoly ISPs are trying to change away from, that they have thus far (until perhaps now) been unsuccessful at doing.
Saying that that net neutrality laws are unncessary because the internet wasn't shit before is like saying sending the army to defend from invaders is unnecessary because we haven't been overrun by invaders before. No shit, when you haven't been invaded yet you don't need to send the army to defend yourself. But now that the invaders are at the door, you either send the army to turn them back, or prepare to have your way of life changed.
The internet became ubiquitous WITH net neutrality, which was enforced at the beginning by two factors: the telecoms that owned the last mile were regulated by Title II as common carries for the phone service they provided, and internet piggybacked on that phone service; and because internet was piggybacking on phone services, ISPs did not own the last mile but rather offered a service on top of it, so it was much much easier to start a competing ISP without having to run new line, and that competition forced them to behave.
With the advent of phone companies themselves, and cable companies, BECOMING the ISPs, you suddenly had regional duopolies directly offering something that was not phone service and so not regulated by Title II. Then they started doing away with the until-then-defacto net neutral practices. Then laws started being passed saying they can't do that, and those laws were overturned because internet service was not categorized under Title II, so the FCC went ahead and made it that way, which it should have been all along. And now that's been reversed in turn, and this bill is just Congress ordering them to put it back.
TL;DR: This bill is Congress ordering the FCC to classify ISPs the same way that phone companies were always classified and thus how the dial-up internet was classified in the beginning, to make sure that things stay the way they always were and not how the new-ish local monopolies want to make them.
Gravity acts upon energy (or you could phrase it as energy distorts spacetime, which is the same thing). Mass is just rest energy, confined energy that's not free to be kinetic energy. (The Higgs field explains what is confining energy in the otherwise free, unconfined fundamental particles that nevertheless have mass for no other apparent reason). Where does it look like gravity and mass are at all independent?
The Higgs field is unrelated to gravity as a force. Gravity acts on energy regardless of its form. Mass is what happens when energy gets confined. Most of the mass of normal matter can be accounted for by the binding energies confined in composite particles: the forces that hold atoms together into molecules, electrons and nuclei together into atoms, nucleons together into nuclei, and quarks together into nucleons. But the fundamental particles like those quarks and electrons also have mass, which raises the question of what is confining what energy to cause that; why aren't all the fundamental particles massless? The answer to that is the Higgs field: all of the would-have-been-massless fundamental particles interact constantly with the Higgs field, confining some of what would have been their kinetic energy, giving them mass (and making them move slower than light in the process).
That's what prompted my initial question. If these sterile neutrinos don't interact with anything, then how can they be massive, since all mass arises from interactions? Someone elsewhere in the comments has said that the origin of neutrino mass is a mystery, as according to the Standard Model they should be massless, and these sterile neutrinos are part of one proposed explanation for that mystery, but I don't quite understand it yet.
So far as I understand it, every fundamental force (except possibly gravity which is yet unaccounted for in quantum field theories) is mediated by some kind of particle which is just an excitation of that field, e.g. the electromagnetic force corresponds to the electromagnetic field, which is to say the photon field as photons are just excitations of the electromagnetic field, and interaction with photons constitutes the electromagnetic force, as every electromagnetic interaction is mediated by an exchange of photons. The Higgs field seems like it would imply an equivalent Higgs force then.