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"Information in Formation, Formally", a paper I wrote for a contest at FQXI (Fundamental Questions Institute)
In that FQXI paper I describe my philosophy that it's rather startling that there are "laws of physics" at all. That there should be these mathematically rigid regularities, and yet WHICH laws of physics out of everything mathematically expressible apply to our world seems arbitrary. In the view I expressed, laws of physics are more like "axiom schemas" in a formal mathematical system, in which substitutions can be made into the formulas.
Given that the possibilities for constructing a physics theory seem almost endless, this guides me towards one restriction I make to cut down on the possibilities to explore. The "rules" for altering the structures I deal with must be global reversible substitutions.
Has physics hit a dead end?: my review of Sabine Hossenfelder's Lost in Math.
I wanted to highlight here that there's no clear path towards a theory given experimental results, but that one must rely on intuition, conjecture, etc.