>> I'm pushing back on describing them as 'mental self-gratification'
I said "You can have a bunch of cool math, but that's not physics. It's not scientific theory by itself. You can hypothesize that it describes the real world, but until there is confirming evidence that assertion is just mental self-gratification."
The math can be cool - and often is. It's the unsubstantiated claim that it underpins reality that is whackin' ones brain.