https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_ranking

It isn't a perfect system, but it is a place to start.

Any viable F_QG must meet four intertwined criteria:

This statement is simply defining the fundamental structure of how a full theory of everything would be composed. A consistent and complete theory must meet all four criteria.

Also the core concept of F_QG is defined in a very hand-wavy way. I'd like to see a concrete example of an existing theory formalized in the way they proposed in the paper.

The above four criteria are how F_QG is defined. The author, in presenting these four criteria, provides two very specific, concrete examples of theories (String Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity) while introducing the premise of his argument. He clearly affirms that these theories do meet three of these four criteria but fail on the fourth. If there were an example of a theory that meets all four criteria than that theory would be the theory of everything and the whole issue would be resolved.

It's unclear to me how mathematical derivability from the formal system correspond to how laws of physics apply. Specifically mathematical logic is a discrete process, yet the world described by physics is generally contiguous.

The rest of the paper explains exactly this. Mainly that the only way to satisfy all four criteria is to include non-algorithmic components that bridge the discreteness of math with the observable continuity of physics. The author goes on to describe several examples where this process can apply in modern physics theory.

I do agree that the author is making a dramatic and bold statement regarding a proof of a theory of everything (that being that the theory of everything can never be computational) which requires heavy scrutiny. However, I am in no way an expert in these fields and so I have accept that the journal that published the proof can provide that scrutiny. It is easy to check on the reliability of that journal as a lay person, and in doing so doesn't seem to raise any flags about the validity of the arguments the author is presenting.

I am also not a physicist nor a logician, just interested in the subject matter.

full of assertions not backed up by arguments

Can you provide some examples from the paper of assertions that aren't being backed up by arguments so I might try and look further into it? Thanks!

These are all great questions we should be asking policy makers who cite 'economic growth' as justification for policy. In this context, 'economic growth' refers specifically to GDP growth. Who benefits most from GDP growth? Tobacco companies provide billions to GDP annually but also contribute to increased public health costs that everyone has to pay for in one way or an other. Growth for the sake of growth doesn't necessarily lead to the best outcomes for all of society.

The rate of return on capital is a macroeconomic aggregate of the overall rate of return that capital generates. Capital is any asset, so the rate of return on capital is the average rate of return on all of the machines in factories, all of the money in government bonds, all investments in the stock market, literally all capital of any form in an economy that is used for production or savings.

Western economies operate in a form of capitalism, which by definition means to maximize capital. So realistically, all producers in capitalist economies are incentivized to maximizing returns on capital, that's the goal.

But if we change the goal from maximizing capital to something else, like maximizing human well-being for example, than there would be less incentive for producers to constantly try to earn greater returns on capital and the growth rate of the economy could then surpass the rate of return on capital and inequality could decrease.

So in this case, investing money in libraries, schools, hospitals, transit, infrastructure etc. would generate growth without the expected rate of return on capital associated with that growth.

This is an other option to reduce the wealth gap, as was asked by OP.

Donate it to the library or a local food bank. Simple community building.

What are "the others"? Non-matter? Anti-matter? Non-Dark Matter? Matter is well defined by Einstein's equivalence principle: E=Mc^2, but what are "the others" it is interacting with?

"Dark matter interacts through gravity but not light"? What is implied here?? I would argue that more accurately, dark matter is observable through gravitational anomalies, which has nothing to do with interacting with anything, including gravity or light.

Just because it is called "dark matter" doesn't necessarily imply that it has anything at all to do with "matter". Presuming that the term "dark matter" would be analogous to "matter" in some theoretical way, and therefore must exist in our universe in a corresponding "anti-dark matter" theoretical way, would be removed from the process of scientific exploration or critical thinking, since that is not how dark matter has been observed in our universe.

The descriptive words humans have devised to describe our reality are just that, human derived. Matter, anti-matter, and dark matter exist regardless of whatever names humans have assigned to them. Just because 'anti-matter' exists in our scientific lexicon (having observable traits) as a word implying the 'opposite properties of matter' means nothing about the observable properties of 'anti-dark matter' whether it exists or not. The fact that we do not even have any ability, scientifically, to observe the actual properties of dark matter within our scientific understanding of reality at this time implies that no, 'anti-dark matter' doesn't exists, presumably only until someone observes or predicts it. Arguing that 'anti-dark matter' exists on the basis that 'anti-matter' exists simply ignores the scientific method.

If an electron were to become exposed to a positron in a manner within which they could become entangled, they would annihilate. The resultant photons would be entangled, but their respective energy/momentum values would depend on the incoming electron/positron momentum/energy values.

Air conditioners aren't a source of energy because they don't provide more energy to the system than they consume from the system in order to be operational.

There is no difference between a spatial dimension and a temporal one. In reality, there can be infinite spatial and infinite temporal dimensions. It just so happens that we live in a universe with 3 spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension. Doesn't it male sense to engage with that physical reality?

It isn't a medical issue, or a public health issue. It is an economic issue. Pollution is widely recognized in our capitalistic world as an externality that just is. In other words, a 'public bad'. Mandatory vaccines are a public good, in the true sense of the word. Having a central government pay the cost of administering a vaccine that will improve public health and reduce risk/remediation costs will always be more efficient than if every individual in society had to pay those costs themselves. Economies of scale.

How do quantum computers compute? What computational processes, or algorithms, do they use that are different from our conventional computers? Do they take a binary input and split it into an infinite number of things? Or is it a statistical probability based on a superposition of an infinite number of possible outcomes?

Change the goal. The French economist Thomas Piketty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Piketty) has demonstrated, using 250 years of historical data, that the wealth gap increases as long as the rate of return on capital is greater than the growth rate. Every institution in the western world (including governments who are trying to maximize tax income) are trying to maximize return on capital. Growth is good if it is in the public interest. If we only want growth because it increases our returns on capital, inequality is the result.