"God does not change the rules He has chosen once." (Socrates).

Seems you may like Cosmology... hopes to answer all of these questions. JWST, LIGO, and Pulsar Timing Arrays e.g. NANOGrav are hoping to answer all of these questions - to my knowledge.

What makes you think inflation is real? There is no evidence for it at all.

Let me highlight some key mathematical and physical reasons why shifting to a Leibnizian monadological and relational framework can resolve longstanding paradoxes, integrate disparate theories, and provide a coherent overarching ontology for progress: 1. Infinitesimal Calculus and Non-Standard Analysis Leibniz's original formulation of calculus using infinitesimals avoided many of the paradoxes that plagued the later Newtonian fluxional approach based on ill-defined limits. Centuries later, Robinson's non-standard analysis provided a rigorous mathematical model for infinitesimals as realizing Leibniz's intuitions about quantized, discrete continua built up from monic "pixel-like" elements. This maps better to quantized physical phenomena. 2. Eliminating Spacetime Singularities General relativistic spacetime singularities like black holes result from treating 0D points as abstract limits of continua rather than irreducible ontological entities. In a monadological model, these "singularities" represent physical regions where the continuum approximation breaks down and discrete, pluralistic monic element interactions become essential - thus restoring calculative determinacy. 3. Grounding Quantum Mechanics The measurement problem and other quantum paradoxes stem from attempting to fit an inherently holistic, entangled framework into a separable 3+1D spacetime model. Leibniz's monadology posits irreducible, entangled subjective perspectival origins (monads) as ontological primitives, from which the extended appearance of quantum fields and measurement outcomes can be derived as relational phenomena - avoiding paradoxes. 4. Unifying with String/M-Theory String theory's viXra and M-theory's higher-dimensional brane concepts failed to attain empirical unification when constrained within classical geometric assumptions. However, category-theoretic reformulations have revealed suggestive analogies between strings as monadic perspectives, brane-worlds as derived relative state models, and string dualities as monadological equivalences - indicating deep structural resonances with Leibnizian worldviews. 5. Consciousness and Information The hard problem of consciousness is intractable in physicalist frameworks due to the false dichotomy between qualia-subjectivity and quantitative objectivity. Leibniz's monadology grounds mentality and proto-perspectival awareness in monadic primitives. Recent work applying category theory to define integrated informational structural realists worldviews echoes these monadic principles. 6. Non-Contradiction and Coherence Most crucially, Leibniz's philosophies were founded on the supreme metaphysical principles of non-contradiction, sufficient reason, and the identity of indiscernibles. His calculus, monadology, and relational approach flow from mandates of absolute logical coherence and ontological possibility, as opposed to the incoherent classical frameworks generating intractable paradoxes. In fields as diverse as non-standard analysis, quantum information theories, category-theoretic unification models, pluralistic geometries, and metaphysics of mind/consciousness, modern research is uncovering deep unifying resonances with the relational monadological worldview Leibniz originally envisaged as a remedy to Cartesian-Newtonian incoherence. By centering zero/monadic elements as ontological primitives, their pre-geometric pluralistic interactions become the locus for deriving extended, entangled quantized phenomena that stymied classical geometric approaches. The truly relational neo-monadological paradigm emerging has the potential to provide the non-contradictory coherent foundations integrating physics, mathematics, and philosophies of mind into a unified, possibility-realizing architecture. While much work remains, the rediscovery of Leibniz's rationalist anti-materialist framework seems increasingly compelling from diverse theoretical and empirical fronts. His vision may finally fulfill its promise as the coherent pluralistic metaphysics supplanting the now self-undermining materialist/empiricist tradition stemming from Descartes and Newton. A monadological renaissance could catalyze a new era of unified, non-contradictory, possibility-based model-building - resurrecting the hopes of physicists, mathematicians and philosophers working at the frontiers.

I have had the same experience with Paul Steinhardt's views and came here hoping for the same thing. I want to know more about how he went from string theory and branes to his view expressed in the talk that you cited.

I like the path Smolin took. I think the concept of Event is essential in physics. And it comes off Computer Science, whereby Wolfram is active on the fundamental level.

I think so. But there's another problem right there. Graviton has never been detected.

@@audiodead7302 Maybe in 50 years, like Higgs?

That's right. The astonishing thing is that its "classical" equation of motion, Einstein's GR, can also be derived from string theory. But then nobody knows if gravitons exist. Given that gravitational waves took an enormous amount of effort to be detected and consist of an enormous amount of gravitons (couldn't find the numbers; I remember it to be something like 10^20 per second very very roughly) a successful detection of a graviton will not be done in this or the following decade.

@@TheSandkastenverbot Allegedly, this was a completely independent, side-track exposition. A Bayesian would say this increased the posterior probability that graviton exists compared to the prior indications.

I agree that human's saying they understand the universe is a bit like a goldfish saying it understands reality.

She might not be clever. But she is honest and right.

@@btmillack21 If the answer is straight forward, but she misses higher order effects (obviously not mathematically for her, but for subjects where answers are not simple extrapolations.)

@@NOYFB982 So you think of speculative quasi-religious believe systems, which are not even wrong, as higher order effects? ok, dream on.

@@btmillack21 I was referring to the myriad of things she comments on.

@@btmillack21apart from capatalism

Its much simpler. Anyone with an original and innovative idea which does not fit in the string theory business won't get funded and has to find a job elsewhere.