In this turbocharged internet age we live in — where everyone thinks they’re a genius and money has become the new religion — anyone trying to build software independently is basically signing a certificate of irrelevance. The world is overflowing with inflated egos and companies that worship profit above all else. And as if that weren’t bad enough, now we have these so-called 'intelligent machines.' They devour the code we write, spit out recycled versions, and somehow manage to convince a bunch of clueless people that they’re better than us — the real programmers. It’s like we’re being replaced by cheap knockoffs of our own brilliance — and the crowd is giving them a standing ovation. 
It began as 'expert systems' back in 80s. There was a lot of concern over skilled factory workers retiring and that's where it got its kick start. (analog computers with non-linear feedback sort of pre-dated) It was touted as a way to transfer human knowledge and way of thinking into a machine. Then 'fuzzy logic' came soon after. I thought fuzzy was great but was never able to convince the corporation I worked for to use it. I used it anyway in deep embedded, it's simply a different way of writing code but we all know that. I've moved on but the goals are way different working by myself in physics (metaphysics?) assuming anything using relativistics is a dead end. I guess you could say niche freelancing new-old physics.
You've lived through the whole arc firsthand, which is rare. Expert systems were genuinely exciting for that reason: the idea that you could *externalize* expertise, make it transferable, institutional. The problem, as most found out the hard way, was that real expertise is messier than rules, full of context-dependence and intuition that resists formalization. <br>Fuzzy logic was the honest fix for that, acknowledging that the world doesn't run on crisp Boolean edges. The fact that corporations resisted it says more about organizational conservatism than the technology. Those of us who used it quietly in embedded systems knew it just *worked*, often more naturally than classical control logic. <br>Your skepticism about relativistics is interesting and not without precedent. There's a long tradition of physicists who've found the standard frameworks elegant but incomplete, particularly when it comes to what they *assume away*. Working outside institutions has costs, but it also means you're not hostage to what's fundable or publishable this cycle. <br>What's the core assumption you're working against, if you don't mind me asking? Spacetime as the fundamental substrate, or something deeper upstream of that?