This author has serious cases of both my-intuitions-trump-your-predictive-models and lack-of-joy-in-the-merely-real. > The most obvious assault on space is ana

This author has serious cases of both my-intuitions-trump-your-predictive-models and lack-of-joy-in-the-merely-real. > The most obvious assault on space is analogous to that which time has had to suffer: reduction to a pure quantity. Space is translated into points, lines, surfaces, and volumes; to dimensions or quantitative parameters x y, z. Places – habitats – are stripped down to decimal places. Much is lost in consequence. It's really ironic when people use written examples to complain about symbolic representations being inadequate. My viewpoint is directly opposite to the author's here; their modus tollens is my modus ponens. Because points and lines and formulas can be used to predict things in the real world, they are clearly not lacking-of-the-original-essence w.r.t. what they represent. Math is not a muted version of reality lacking the core substance, it is unreasonably effective [2]. > The putative curvature of non-Euclidean space is intrinsic: it is present at every level above that of an infinitesimally small spatial point. So resistance to the idea of curved space does not arise from a superficial misunderstanding that can be cured with the help of a simple analogy. Rather, it is resistance to the odd idea that emptiness can have any topology, curved or straight. The author seems to be assuming that the lack of any topology is equivalent to flat space, i.e. Euclidean topology. Why would that be the case? They have no actual grounds for expecting space to "default to" the L2-norm. Why wouldn't it default to the much simpler L1-norm (i.e. taxicab geometry [3]), or just a disconnected set of points with no distance relationship between them at all? > The unintelligible idea of ‘curved space’ is the product of misidentifying a system of representation with that which is represented. This habit has a long history. [...] However, the immense power of mathematical physics – which requires abstracting from phenomenal reality and the reduction of experienced and experienceable reality to mere parameters to which numerical values are assigned – does not justify uncritically accepting concepts such as ‘curved space’ that attempt to re-insert phenomenal appearances into its abstractions. Curved space is a concept so well defined that you can explain it to a computer. It is the opposite of unintelligible. The reason we think it's a good model of actual reality, thus justifying the statement "space is curved", is that it makes new, different, and confirmed predictions. If you think it's so easy to come up with an interpretation of general relativity that doesn't involve mixing space and time, why don't you learn it and try to do that? (Fun fact: it's easy to do in special relativity; just pick a preferred rest frame [4].) 1: http://lesswrong.com/lw/or/joy_in_the_merely_real/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/or/joy_in_the_merely_real/ 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness... 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicab_geometry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicab_geometry 4: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/what-is-the-pfs-policy-on-lorentz-ether-theory-and-block-universe.772224/ https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/what-is-the-pfs-policy...