> I strongly suspect we literally can’t begin to imagine what’s really going on.
I also happen to believe that might be true. In the same way a dog will never understand single variable calculus, there probably are concepts that are out of reach for us.
Is it? That’s basically what a conscious AI would be and I have a hard time coming up with reasons why a software brain couldn’t replace a biological brain.
It's more likely all physics is argument by analogy from limited human experiences, and math is just a culturally consistent subset of that.
What look like genius predictions are mostly (Einstein aside...) generations of post docs throwing equations at their whiteboards to see what sticks.
A few happen to be confirmed by experiment. Most are quietly forgotten.
I strongly suspect we literally can't begin to imagine what's really going on.