[Sniffnoy]

I feel like you ought to be go lower than 17, down to 9, by not counting the 3 generations of fermions as distinct (so you've just got up-type quark, down-type quark, electron-type particle, and neutrino). After all, if they can mix with one another, should they really be considered entirely different particles?

[ndsipa_pomu]

There's different behaviour between the 3 generations though as a muon will decay whereas an electron won't.

[aeonik]

We don't know that electrons don't decay for sure.

If we live in a false vacuum, for example, that could allow them to decay.

[ndsipa_pomu]

> We don't know that electrons don't decay for sure.

However, we don't expect electrons to decay as we don't know what they would decay into i.e. there doesn't seem to be anything plausible with a lower energy configuration.

> If we live in a false vacuum, for example, that could allow them to decay.

Possibly, but that's quite speculative and if our vacuum does decay, then there's a good chance we wouldn't be around to see the differences.