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In light of the wave of novel ideas we’re getting, most likely fueled by AI, I think I/we have to jump in more quickly to demand specific predictions/falsifiability and math where appropriate. We’re getting walls o’ text that are pretty much all blather and responses are more of the same.

Hey guys! This is Hal1776! I've recently decided to abandon social media in favor of forums and email, and would like to formally introduce myself. I'm 30 years old from Tennessee, and a huge science nerd. I love astronomy, paleontology, evolutionary biology, and astrophysics. I also like 90s and 2000s shows, with Daria, DBZ, and Avatar the last airbender being among my favorite shows. I like playing Halo, call of duty, zelda and mario. It's nice to meet everyone here!

The Calvin and Hobbes take on DEI - one of the most succinct

He’s Nazi. The salute, numerous anti-semitic remarks, promoting nazi apologists, appearing at an AfD campaignevent.

As some of you may already know, the SFN server hardware is currently located in the UK. I will quote from what was announced to the staff: “This year the UK government passed a bill called the Online Safety Act. A brief description of the Act is set out here, but the tl;dr of it is that there are now a set of laws in place in the UK that put a duty of care on operators of social media sites in order to make them accountable for the things that are posted on those sites, which could be harmful to children and other users. The focus in the media has mostly been around the larger sites like Facebook, but actually, the act is extremely broad” The upshot of this is that a modest operation like ours can’t be hosted in the UK on servers run by SFN; the requirements are too onerous and no individuals should be asked to take on the liability should someone find that weren’t compliant in some detail. It’s not enough to think we’re taking the right steps, and we don’t have lawyers on retainer to make sure of things. (Small UK bulletin board sites might be shuttering by the end of this week if their owners are aware of what’s going on) Shifting to a hosting option that avoids this is moving forward. This might end up being completely transparent to our members and visitors, but Murphy always seems to pop up and invoke their law, so there might be disruptions. We will keep you apprised as more information becomes available.

Today I saw a meme that said: "Live your life in such a way that if the escalator stops, you don't assume it's because people hate you."

This cocky, aggressive tone of yours is something of a red flag. Serious scientists don't speak like that when their ideas are subjected to scrutiny. Trying to push a scientific theory like a foot-in-the-door vacuum cleaner salesman doesn't work. Neither the principle of Ockham's Razor, nor standard modern physics, are due to me personally. So let's cut out this crap about you cleaning up my mess. If your theory is not just an uncashable cheque, let's see the cash, i.e. what predictions does it make that distinguish it from standard physics? So far, all I see is a lot of angry noise - and nothing.

It appears that Ash trees are evolving resistance to the dieback that has swept Europe. BBC NewsShoots of hope for Britain's cherished ash treesScientific evidence suggests ash trees are ‘fighting back’ against a deadly disease.

A woman walked into a pet shop and was instantly drawn to a large, colorful parrot perched in a cage with a sign that read: “Parrot – £50.” Surprised by the low price, she asked the store owner, “Why is this beautiful parrot so cheap?” The owner hesitated, then said, “Well… I should be upfront. This parrot used to live in a brothel. He’s perfectly healthy and intelligent—but his language can be… let’s just say, colorful.” The woman paused, then shrugged. “I’ve heard worse. I’ll take him.” She brought the parrot home and placed the cage in her living room. Curious, she waited to see what it would say. The bird looked around its new surroundings, nodded, and said, “New house, new madam.” The woman blinked, caught off guard—but chuckled. “Okay… not too bad.” A few hours later, her two teenage daughters came home from school. The parrot perked up and said, “New house, new madam, new girls.” The daughters looked at their mom, wide-eyed. The woman gave an awkward smile… then all three burst out laughing. Just then, the husband walked through the front door, setting down his briefcase. The parrot glanced at him and chirped, “Hi Keith.”

It's not well regarded. Most research rather suggests that because social ineptitude is not tolerated in girls and girls are made to focus on developing nurturing and empathising skills from a very young age that female autists simply learn to mask much earlier and better than male autists. As someone who was only diagnosed at 37, I can offer my own anecdotal opinion that this is very much the case. I was made to play with dolls and kitchen sets and babysit even when I had no interest. It was made clear to me that not doing so made me a bad daughter and bad sister and bad girl. Even as adults we are assigned caretaking responsibilities by default even when we have no inclination to the role, and declining is met with confusion at best and spite at worst. Not being able to read social cues and respond appropriately among girls and women very quickly leads to ostracisation and often even bullying. In other words, women are underdiagnosed for autism because the diagnostic criteria was developed by studying men and we are great at masking our symptoms because it is very much more socially unacceptable for us to display such traits as compared to men. https://www.asdhelpinghands.org.uk/women-and-girls-with-autism-why-diagnosis-is-often-missed/ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/understanding-the-diversity-in-neurodiversity/202202/why-autism-has-been-underdiagnosed-in https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/understanding-undiagnosed-autism-adult-females

Wow. You lasted almost 4-1/2 whole hours

Jester's license in Germany: Zölle = Trade Tariffs Klima ... = climate change(?) Massendeportationen (?) = Mass deportations And no, Annex-Ionen are no ions of annex, but annexations It is said jesters say the truth... And yes, I am very angry and very worried. WW2 is forgotten...

If Zelensky has no, or few, cards to play that is solely because Trump has chosen to betray him and side with the aggressor in this war. So it is pretty rich for Trump to tell Zelensky he has no cards, when it is Trump who has taken them away! I actually think this dust-up in the Oval Orifice was a manufactured publicity stunt by Vance and Trump to try to weaken Zelensky personally, in the hope he will stand aside and allow a more Russia-friendly leader to replace him. That has always been Putin's desire. Putin wants Ukraine to hold an election (preposterously, in the middle of a war with parts of the country under enemy occupation) which he can interfere with and cast doubt on. This can provide a pretext for a further invasion later on if the new leader is insufficiently subservient to Russia. The row was televised and no doubt carefully selected clips will now be circulated to depict Zelensky as ungrateful and unreasonable, when he has been fighting for the life of his country for the last three years, against a massively powerful foe. Trump has furthermore overturned the entire military posture of the USA since WW2 in the European theatre. He has wrecked the deterrent value of NATO, which has been the centrepiece of military strategy ever since WW2. This leaves Europe exposed to military conquest by Putin's revanchist Russia. It is absolutely plain now that Trump and Vance are Russian stooges, wanting to carve the world up into spheres of influence without regard to borders or law. It is also plain that they hate the EU deeply and want it to fail. What better way of achieving that than to neuter NATO and thereby encourage Russia to nibble off bits its eastern frontier, sapping its energy and resources? Meanwhile Vance and Musk try to destabilise it on the political front by encouraging far-right authoritarian movements. The USA is now, suddenly, the adversary of Europe, not its ally. "The West" is now dead. What we have now is the free democracies vs. the rest. Those comprise the EU, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and a few others. The USA is not a member of this group.

It's good, but it needs more accordion.

The Einstein tensor describes a certain aspect of overall spacetime curvature, in the sense that it determines the values of a certain combination of components of the Riemann tensor (it fixes 10 out of its 20 independent components). But unlike the Riemann tensor, it is not a complete description of the geometry of spacetime. Thus, the Einstein equations provide only a local constraint on the metric, but don’t determine it uniquely. Physically speaking, mass and energy have of course a gravitational effect, but neither appear as quantities in the source term of the field equations - there’s only the energy-momentum tensor field \(T_{\mu \nu}\). Here’s the thing with this - the Einstein equations are a purely local statement. So for example, if you wish to know the geometry of spacetime in vacuum outside some central body, the equation you are in fact solving is the vacuum equation \[G_{\mu \nu}=0\] which implies \[R_{\mu \nu}=0\] There is in the first instance no reference here to any source term, not even the energy-momentum tensor, because you are locally in a vacuum. During the process of solving these equations, you have to impose boundary conditions, one of which will be that sufficiently far from the central body the gravitational field asymptotically becomes Newtonian; it’s only through that boundary condition that mass makes an appearance at all. Only in the interior of your central body do you solve the full equations \[G_{\mu \nu}=\kappa T_{\mu \nu}\] wherein the energy-momentum tensor describes the overall distribution of energy density, momentum density, stresses, strains, and shear (note that “mass” is again not part of this). By solving this equation along with boundary conditions you can find the metric. You can work this backwards - you can start with a metric, and calculate the energy-momentum tensor. But here’s the thing: if the tensor comes out as zero, this does not mean that there’s no mass or energy somewhere around, it means only that the metric you started with describes a vacuum spacetime. If it’s not zero, you’re also out of luck, because the energy-momentum tensor alone is not a unique description of a classical system. Knowing its components tells you nothing about what physical form this system actually takes - two physically different systems in terms of internal structure, time evolution etc can in fact have the same energy-momentum tensor. That’s because this tensor is the conserved Noether current associated with time-translation invariance, so what it reflects are a system’s symmetries, but not necessarily or uniquely its physical structure. There’s no unique 1-to-1 correspondence between this tensor and a particular configuration of matter and energy, since all it contains are density distributions. IOW, a given matter-energy configuration will have a unique energy-momentum tensor associated with it, but the reverse is not true - any given energy-momentum tensor can correspond to more than one possible matter-energy configuration. Thus it is not useful to try and define matter-energy by starting with spacetime geometry. Yes, they are of course closely related, but the relationship is not just a trivial equality; there’s many subtleties to consider. A zero cosmological constant does not imply a static universe, only that expansion happens at a constant rate. Matter and antimatter have the same gravitational affects, they are not opposite in terms of curvature.

Uhhh, it only mentions one aspect that could be a liberal policy and that would be I mean, if trying to get folks equal rights results in autocracies, I would imagine that the democratic principles ain't that strong to begin with. Also I find it very interesting how that is phrased. Right-wing conservatives have worked very had to undermine democratic principles ranging from spreading blatant misinformation to incite culture and race wars, forming think tanks and societies that undermine checks and balances and putting anti-democratic forces into key positions, sowing mistrust into systems and also attempting the odd coups. And yet it is somehow liberal policies that caused all that? I mean come on, at least try to find Ockham's razor here. I will also note again that part of the autocratic playbook is to blame others for their actions. "Look what [they] make me do? Because of them I just had to overthrow democratic principles and build concentration camps. And taking away your rights is the only way to protect you from [them]." This has been best explored in fascism, where fascination with victimhood served as justification for the committed atrocities (and it is a common element in the identification of the rather diffuse characteristics of fascism). Also, how about I cite a few points from the book you mentioned and see if you can spot some overlap (BTW the book was published sometime around the first Trump administration): Why do we have something as stupid as the culture wars? Because some kind of enemy had to be found. And in recent times our lives have to be become so comfortable that folks decided to make up enemies and/or revive old tropes, such as immigrants. Again, there are no new ideas here.

Let's be crystal clear about this. We don't attack people here, we attack ideas to see if they're strong enough. I gave no opinion about you or your ego. When I said, "It makes you feel pretty special", I was not only paraphrasing what you've already said, I was speaking from experience. I joined this site more than 20 years ago chasing an idea I had about String Theory, after reading some Michio Kaku. I was not a STEM student in school, so it was a pleasant surprise when I thought I could decipher cutting edge physics without having studied its foundation. Almost immediately some early members came to my rescue, and instead of rejecting their advice, I studied their explanations. I read the threads they started. I asked questions and got great answers, which helped me with reasoning skills and researching the next steps. I still wish I'd had a better background in science, or had the time in life to go back to school. I found that learning what others have rigorously tested is more beneficial to me and less intellectually dishonest than criticizing what I imagine to be wrong with something I've only studied as an amateur. Does that make sense? I'm so sorry if all this seems harsh. I want to encourage your interest in science, and science is all about the methodology you use to reach your conclusions. They have to be good enough to base future predictions on, otherwise it's all sand castles.

No, I read it. They did not say they wished to debate the beliefs (with or without scare quotes). They did say they had debated “religionists” (somewhere else, obviously) but did not say it was on any kind of science forum. They also said they disagreed with “the supernatural stuff” but not that they wanted to debate it. What they asked to discuss was pretty clearly spelled out in the post and thread title. The introduction, which gave the backdrop for the question, was presumably there for context. I wonder how much disagreement online is from failure of reading comprehension and how much is from deliberate misinterpretation used to try and justify indignation. (one way to tell the difference is when it’s pointed out that the scenario that was objected to is a straw man, are they relieved or do they just get more indignant)

Like a number of other contributors here, I would recommend borrowing compilations of short stories from the library and follow up on other works by writers in those compendiums that appeal to you. There used to be excellent yearly anthologies of the Hugo and Nebula award winning stories. Science Fiction writers have to be versatile to survive, and most of them are equally adept at writing short stories or novellas, as well as churning out vast shelf-bending series of novels set in some imaginary universe. It might also help to clarify what types of scientific disciplines or themes intrigue you, and then look into the biographies and backgrounds of SciFi writers to check for matches. For example Larry Niven mentioned by TheVat is an American author who took maths and psychology at University - allegedly because he thought it was the fastest way to graduate. Isaac Asimov was a professor of biochemistry at Boston University, Fred Hoyle was an astronomer at Cambridge University, Arthur C. Clarke was a radar specialist with the RAF during WW2 who subsequently took first class honours in mathematics from Kings College London. Some writers are indelibly marked by their life experiences. Frank Herbert the author of the Dune series for example was born in Tacoma Washington, but left a troubled parental home to live with an uncle and aunt near Salem in Oregon in his teens and became fascinated with unique sand dune landscapes there. He wrote one entirely factual account about the work of the US Department of Agriculture to stabilise the dunes “They Stopped The Moving Sand Dunes”, as well as a collection of fantasy short stories that later turned into Dune. British author J.G. Ballard was born in Shanghai, and was interned at the age of 8 by the Japanese (along with his parents) in the notorious Lung Hwa prison camp for the duration of WW2. He saw the flash of the second atom bomb explode over Nagasaki from 500 miles away, and witnessed numerous other atrocities at a formative age, which lends his dystopian futurist fiction an unnerving edge. Philip K. Dick was a deeply serious and highly gifted American author who found himself typecast and trapped by the fact that his earliest writing was published in pulp-fiction SciFi magazines. Nobody would take him seriously as a literary writer thereafter, and he was forced to overwrite at atrociously low rates of pay for most of his life just to put food on the table for his family, and he developed a dangerous amphetamine habit in the process. Anyway, I hope you have fun discovering themes and authors that appeal to you - It’s all highly subjective.

Science has been wrong, but it’s corrected by better science — better evidence showing the flaws of the original theory, and a better model arises. Religion and mysticism didn’t step in with the better theory. As for acceptance, yes. Scientists are human, not robots. We do have personal biases and other weaknesses. New ideas take time to sink in. But even that doesn’t fully address the issue. Scientists are skeptics, and so it’s not just evidence, but the amount of evidence, because statistical flukes happen, and you want to be convinced that it’s not a fluke, or that there’s not some other explanation for the data.

Sounds to me as if they may be falling into what I think of as the "Dawkins Trap" of treating religion and science as alternative accounts of the physical world, whereas their roles in human thought are in my opinion quite different. Science provides an account of the natural, physical world. Religion is not about that but is a guide to help human beings live their lives. So the undeniable fact that science can and does make errors is beside the point. Of course it does, like any human enterprise. But it isn't trying to guide people as to how to live their lives. Its methodology depends on scepticism in its older sense (e.g. as in Robert Boyle's "The Sceptical Chymist"), that is, requiring observational confirmation of phenomena to justify hypotheses, before accepting them as explanations. It is undeniable that applying this principle has met with enormous success. Without it, we would not have modern science at all. Moreover this reliance on confirmed observation is the mechanism by which the inevitable errors and false leads are corrected, over time. Conversely, if and when religion strays from its purpose and purports to explain the physical world, it is often shown by observation either to be wrong or else to be proposing ideas that can't be tested by observation. In the latter case such ideas are ipso facto not scientific, so science has nothing to say about them one way or the other. You, by the sound of it may be a physicalist, that is, one whose worldview is that the physical world as portrayed and investigated by science is all there is. That's a point of view, but it is not the only position that followers of science can take. Many scientists are also religious believers. In fact historically this was normal. Quite a number of scientists in the c.19th and c.18th were clergymen.

This actually made me burst out laughing. How can you tell there is any difference if you don't compare them?

Anyone who has worked in IT will understand what I mean when I say that LLMs do not reason but rather just generate outputs by building predictable word patterns (in a limited sense of predicting the next token) from an input query and running that through its training datasets. It is like a rudimentary kind of perception (word frequencies and proximities) divorced from a mind that would reason on those perceptions. If you are far into the weeds on this stuff...LLMs work by embedding tokens (numerical values of text) into vectors, where each dimension represents a different aspect of potential meaning. One dimension might be city heat. Kuwait City gets a nine, Amarillo gets a six, Anchorage gets one. LLMs convert text into vectors using a process called embedding. This allows the model to quantify the relationships between different pieces of text. It is crunching numbers which, if Amarillo is really hotter than Anchorage, will be able to output something that represents that relationship. It didn't reason anything, it just executed a mathematical operation that makes a sort of rudimentary perception of two places, in terms of temperature. That's all it does.

And you still ignore Swansont's suggestion. Another misunderstanding ?? Its getting to the point that whenever ( much more often lately ) someone presents a groundbreaking fundamental new 'theory', and they refer to it as a 'framework', I immediately think it was a crackpot idea, developed with considerable ( but incorrect help ) from an AI, and I refuse to read it, much less follow any provided links. Maybe I'm getting jaded, but I can't get excited or interested in the many new fundamental ideas presented in the last several months.

Interesting that AI trained on Newton’s laws couldn’t deduce the gravitation law when given orbit data Why “vibe physics” is the ultimate example of AI slop “But did the model take that leap, and discover Newton’s laws? Did it find the underlying foundational model? Or, perhaps even better, did it find a superior model to Newton’s? The answer, quite definitively, was no.” https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/vibe-physics-ai-slop/ Article points out how the chatbot aspect of LLMs are a problem. They aren’t going to tell you you’re wrong We’ve run across folks who insist an idea is theirs but an AI helped, but I think this is still a problem - any AI taints the idea.

Missed that question. I think the issue is quite a bit bigger than finding suitable words. Assuming the goal is to come up with an acceptable model for "pre-geometry" with properties such as: Recovers known physics Mathematically rigorous Avoids metaphysical slippage Then (with my background and current level of knowledge) I would probably need to do at least the following: 1. Study Philosophy Purpose: Understand scientific realism, instrumentalism, model-theoretic realism, ... Why: need conceptual clarity to avoid building metaphysical assumptions into a pre-geometric theory that claims to avoid them. Also need to understand the "big picture" where this kind of science fits into other areas and their solved or unsolved questions. 2. Study Mathematics Purpose: Build mathematical fluency in both quantum and geometric formalisms. Why: Pre-geometric models, as far as I know, often rely on non-standard mathematical structures that I think removes many standard tools. 3. Study Physics; the Established Theories Purpose: Gain full technical command of existing frameworks. Why: understand what needs to emerge from the model 4. Study Pre-Geometry: History, Branches, Key Issues Purpose: Avoid reinvention and engage existing debates. Understand known pitfalls; Recovering Lorentz invariance from discrete models, Matching semiclassical limit to GR, Preserving unitarity and causality 5. Study current Status of the Field, for instance researchers* such as Leonard Susskind Juan Maldacena Carlo Rovelli, Abhay Ashtekar Rafael Sorkin, Fay Dowker Renate Loll, Jan Ambjørn Daniele Oriti Brian Swingle, Mark Van Raamsdonk Programming and Simulation (One of the few areas where I to some degree could rely on existing knowledge) I believe (but I do not know) that numerical models, simulations and tests are needed I estimate this would span several years of full time work. The result is a knowledge level that allows one to choose between competing models and where to try to contribute. Part of it may require re-location and looking for a position at a university or similar institution. As far as I know no generally accepted and tested model exists for "Pre-spacetime" or "pre-geometry" despite all the efforts by researchers so far this phase of the work could be a life-long endeavour. I also do not expect the result to contain any "chortons". Note: this post is not meant to intimidate, it's just an honest attempt at describing the situation. Also, I do not think any current LLM or chatbot could significantly reduce the time and effort required. *) list from a quick googling of the scientific concepts I think is relevant.

But coal mining was in truth an awful job, much though it is glamorised in hindsight now, Hovis ad style. Not to mention the terrible effect of coal burning on the climate. It's a good thing the pits are closed. Shell Haven refinery, where working conditions were pretty good, lasted quite a while. (In the early 80s it boasted the first women refinery technologists in the company. I was lucky enough to go out with the prettiest of them for a while - memories.) Not many people will be aware that the refinery, though owned by Shell, was actually named after a location on the Thames called Shell Haven, an inlet in which there were a lot of shells. Nothing to do with the company name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Haven Anyway now it's a container port - and no longer called Shell Haven. But refineries are obviously going to die out and that too is no bad thing. The world moves on. No I have enough souvenirs already, including one of a N African guy sitting on a bench in some village, strumming a home-made guitar constructed out of a 5 litre can of Shell Rimula (an old brand of diesel engine oil) and a neck of wood. Sometimes I used to feel like that guy.

This is too stupid to argue with.

Just a suggestion ... If you don't understand Evolution and how its processes work, ask questions; don't make absurd proclamations and put your ignorance of the subject on display for everyone to see. ( looking at you Wigberto and m_m )

Anytime I see consciousness mentioned in a thread about QM, I stop reading, and post a sarcastic comment, as obviously the OP doesn't even understand the 'interpretations', never mind the mathematical theory.

Gypsum is a form of hydrated calcium sulphate, which is not a carbonate. Heat treatment to drive off some of the water gives you plaster of Paris, which mixed with water sets hard. Gypsum also has other used, detailed on the internet. Clay minerals are not carbonates either, but aluminosilicates, variously hydrated and with other cations present. Many uses. Hydrated lime , or slaked lime is not a carbonate but calcium hydroxide, which can be derived from calcium carbonate by driving off CO2 to produce calcium oxide or quicklime, and then adding water. Sodium carbonate is washing soda, an alkali. Chalk is a relatively soft form of calcium carbonate compared to limestone. The multifarious uses of all these minerals are too long to list but are readily available on the internet.

So a massively hypothetical propulsion mechanism could be made with a hypothetical device powered by another hypothetical device, and there’s no actual physics being cited. That’s like saying you asked a drunk person at a bar. The what? Is this named after you? I can’t find a reference for it. And you can only claim it works after you build one and show that it works Since there’s no actual science here, it doesn’t meet the threshold for discussion here. Maybe try a science fiction discussion site?

They are also used in face recognition. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenface

I'm not sure what changed, but you should see that quote boxes are working again. The JavaScript file that wasn't loading now loads correctly, despite nothing obvious changing. For LaTeX, we're using a very old version of MathJax. At some point I'll experiment with switching to the latest version and then see why it might sometimes not work. I wonder if it works when content is loaded fresh, but when it's loaded dynamically (like when you go to the next page of a thread) it's not re-run to convert all the math code. Also, there was a problem with our email sending setup that Invision has now fixed for us. You should receive email notifications and password resets correctly now.

Not an actual Turkish proverb apparently, but comes in handy nonetheless,

Don’t be a jerk. The issue has been explained to you. The precaution of recalling the product is perfectly sensible as there is a risk, to immunocompromised users of the product, if to no one else.

I use it in the formal sense as defined in differential geometry, ie as a structure that allows you to meaningfully define the inner product of tangent vectors at points on the manifold, which in turn gives a meaningful notion of lengths, angles, areas and volumes. Yes. You need to be careful here - the Christoffel symbols and the connection are not the same thing. A connection allows you to relate tangent spaces at different points on the manifold to one another, ie it provides a notion of parallel transport. This is quite independent of any metric, which is to say you can meaningfully have a manifold that is endowed with a connection, but not a metric. The Christoffel symbols then give you the connection coefficients, ie they tell you what effects your connection has in a particular coordinate basis. They do this by describing what happens to basis vectors as you transport them between neighbouring points, which is something you can calculate from the metric and its derivatives. Without a metric you can still do parallel transport, but you can’t tell what happens to lengths and angles when you do it. Long story short - you can have a connection without a metric. See above. Having a different metric changes the Christoffel symbols (they are not tensors!), but not the connection. Ok, but in the context of physics (SR/GR) the term “metric” is most often used in the differential geometry sense. Physically speaking, equivalence then means a diffeomorphism, so that both metrics describe the same spacetime and thus physical situation. But here’s the thing - as explained above, you’re still on the same manifold endowed with the Levi-Civita connection. By changing the metric like this, you’re doing one of two things: 1. You’re describing a different spacetime, ie a different physical situation, since the two metrics aren’t related by any valid diffeomorphism; or 2. You’re describing the same physical situation, but the coordinates you are using no longer have the same physical meaning. I think what you are trying to do is (2). But the thing is that now measurements on your mathematical manifold (ie in the model) no longer correspond to measurements in the real world, so anything you calculate from this - eg the length of a world line - must first be mapped back into suitable physical coordinates to compare them to real-world measurements. Such a mathematical map may or may not exist, depending on the specifics of the setup. This will also change the form of physical laws, so all the various equations etc will be different for each choice of transformation you make. In either case, this creates a lot of additional work and confusion, for no discernible benefit. It would look for differences in the outcomes of experiments if you vary direction of relative motion, as mentioned previously. For example, if a uranium atom decays if you move it in one direction, but doesn’t decay if you move it at a 90° angle to that direction (everything else remains the same), then you have anisotropic space. This has nothing to do with conventions.

Just to elaborate a bit more. When we speak of the invariance (not constancy!) of the speed of light, what this physically means is that the outcome of experiments is always the same in all inertial frames, ie uniform relative motion has no bearing on the outcome of experiments. This has nothing much to do with units or numerical values. Yes, it is always possible to describe the same physical situation in terms of different “geometries”, if you so will. You can eg forego any reference to curvature completely by choosing a different connection on your spacetime - the geometry is now curvature-flat, and instead contains all information about gravity in the form of torsion. But all this is saying is that one can draw different types of maps over the same territory, like having a topographical map vs a road map over the same region. That way you emphasise different information, but the actual experience of physically crossing that terrain is always the same, irrespective of what map you use to navigate. This is not revolutionary or mysterious, and reveals nothing new about the world. It’s “kind of trivial” as the poster in your screenshot correctly said. So I think if you put enough thought into it, it may perhaps be possible to come up with a mathematical description of spacetime in which c is explicitly a function of something. The reason why no one uses such a description is that any measurements of space and time obtained from this description won’t directly correspond to what clocks and rulers physically measure in the real world - you’d have to first map them into real-world measurements, which means additional work and complications without any discernible benefit. Irrespective of what description you use, the outcome of experiments will still be the same in all inertial frames, and this is what we actually observe in the real world.

Except again, he is business man, but not a scientist. Bezos founded Blue Origin, but no one calls him a scientist because of that. It is fine to say that one admires his entrepreneurship and his business sense (until recently, perhaps). But I don't think it helps your argument by describing him as something he isn't.

Yes it can be confusing. Notice these groups are described as Main Groups, and also that the block in between (often called the d-block) is described as being for the Transition Metals. The "transition" metals were historically viewed as being in the transition from the simpler rules of chemical behaviour of the light elements of the 1st 3 rows to the more complex behaviour of the heavier ones from the 4th row onward. (As with so many things in science, history has a lot to do with how things end up being named.) Nowadays, it is really better to speak of the s-block, for the 1st 2 main groups, the p-block for groups 3-7 and 0, the d-block for the transition metals (and the f-block for the so-called lanthanides and actinides that are usually represented below the d-block.) But over the years there have been many different ways to display the table and also a variety of different numbering systems and naming conventions. So inevitably you will come across a few different ones in your reading. Just keep the shape in your mind: 2 columns of s-block metals on the left, 6 columns of p-block elements on the right, with the metal/non-metal diagonal running obliquely through them like a staircase, and the d- and f- block metals in the middle. The reason for the rather ungainly shape of the table is to do with the order in which electrons build up* in layers within the atom, as one moves through the table from lighter elements to heavier ones. Remember that It is the outer electrons (called the "valence" electrons) that are responsible for the chemical behaviour of the elements. The shape of the outermost layer, and how strongly or weakly bound the electrons in it are, is what determines how the element will behave in chemical reactions. * from the German Aufbauprinzip or building up principle, which explains how the behaviour of the outermost electrons is determined by quantum theory. You will get to that in due course. It's rather cool.

Anyway, it starts now here.

I'd be tempted myself to take a more direct approach. First, who deems life to be "impossible" without supernatural intervention, and on what basis? There are many highly complex structures in the universe, both at macro and micro scale, for which we have good models accounting for their formation. Why should life be uniquely different? Is there a logic to this judgement, or is it just the Argument from Personal Incredulity? Such statements are normally made by people without any knowledge of the relevant pre-biotic chemistry, so there is at the very least room to question whether they should think themselves authorities on the matter. Second, science is in fact making a lot of progress in understanding how life may have arisen. So, although abiogenesis is probably the hardest unsolved problem in modern science, it has by no means met a brick wall. There is every reason to have faith that science will in time uncover one or more likely pathways by which life may have arisen. Unlike people promoting a naïve religious agenda, science is patient: the fact we have no answer yet does not mean there won't be one in time.