What if math is fundamentally emergent, as opposed to platonically ideal? Would that explain why it seems to build out ever greater complexities, more than coalescing into clear proofs.

For instance, space is described as three dimensional, but isn't that descriptive, rather than explanatory? Essentially a mapping device, like longitude, latitude and altitude.

Two non-physical qualities space seems to have are infinity and equilibrium. Infinity, as there is nothing to bound it and equilibrium is implicit in Special Relativity, as the frame with the fastest clock and longest ruler would be closest to the equilibrium of the vacuum. The unmoving void of absolute zero.

So space is the absolute and the infinite. The parameters of the number line.

The primal physical effect seems to be a fluctuation of this vacuum. Which gives us positive and negative. Then quantities. Numbers.

In terms of complexity, looking out across the universe we see many spheres, circles, spirals, but no squares, as Euclidian geometry is based on the apparently flat surface of this relatively large sphere. Squares are more complex than circles.

We are mobile organisms on the surface of this sphere, which necessitates this sequential process of perception. So our experience of time is as the point of the present, moving past to future, which physics codifies as measures of duration, though the physical reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Duration is the present, as the events unfold.

There is no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

This property called energy is conserved, because it is the present. It creates time, as well as temperature, pressure, color, sound. Frequencies and amplitudes. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.

Ideal gas laws correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but they are not referred to as the 5th and 6th dimensions of space, because they are only foundational to our emotions and bodily functions, not the sequence of thought.

Sequence is not causal, rather energy exchange/transformation is causal. Yesterday doesn't cause today, the sun shining on a spinning planet creates this cycle of days and nights.

So energy, as process, goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past. With a wave, the energy drives it, while the fluctuations rise and fall, back to equilibrium.

It would seem energy and any information it generates effectively go opposite directions of time.

With galaxies, energy radiates out, toward infinity, while form coalesces in, toward equilibrium. At which point, all energy is radiated back out.

Consciousness goes past to future, while thoughts and emotions go future to past. Though it is the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy, while the central nervous system sorts the information.

So when we try to understand everything in terms of the information, are we missing something?

Could it be the excess gravitational effect is not due to some missing mass, but that mass is part of the spectrum of this inward curvature, that starts all the way out where light first starts to wave.

We don't need strings, if it's all either energy or information.