[scotty79]

> We also make some simplifying assumptions which are known to be nonphysical but which represent very minor perturbations of black hole solutions to the Einstein Field Equations. Otherwise we would have no hope of calculating anything, and could not even approximate astrophysical candidates' behaviour.

I appreciate why we do it. It's better to have a mathematical model of something that doesn't exist but it's close enough to the real thing than not to have any model at all. What I'm objecting to is the claim that spherical cow in vacuum is the reality not just a lame appoximation of the actual state of affairs. Because if you claim that then generations of bright young people imagine that cows probably travel by rolling around.

> There's nothing special about our clocks.

Yes, there is. They are ours. The events that are not on them are physically outside of our scope of knowablility.

> The hyperbolicity comes from the geometry of the spacetime

I don't mind hyperbolicity. I mind linearizing it with the use of Kruskal coordinates and such just because we are curious what might happen after our clock runs for infinite time.