dhw: Towards the end of the article, the author comments: “Even if Hogan [the quantum mechanics champion] is right, his space-chunks have to average out to the smooth reality we experience every day. Even if Smolin is wrong, there is an entire cosmos out there with unique properties that need to be explained - something that, for now at least, quantum mechanics alone cannot do.”
> 
> All Is Smooth, or All Is Chunky? Order or Disorder? Planned or Higgledy-Piggledy? I guess we'll just have keep watching that space....-Great article. Thanks. I see stuff like this all the time. "Strings" were an attempt to solve this, but they don't work except in theoretical math, not experiments. We need another Einstein, but he is nowhere to be found. Ruth Kastner comes close with her conjecture about transactional analysis across a quantum-membrane-like relationship between our reality and the quantum layer of reality.

A couple of passages struck me as particularly relevant to the discussion with BBella:
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> QUOTE: “In Smolin's terms, quantum mechanics is merely “a theory of subsystems of the universe”. A more fruitful path forward, he suggests, is to consider the universe as a single enormous system [....] general relativity allows no place for an observer or external clock, because there is no “outside”. Instead, all of reality is described in terms of relationships between objects and between different regions of space. Even something as basic as inertia [...] can be thought of as connected to the gravitational field of every other particle in the universe.”
> 
> This seems very much in line with BBella's ALL THAT IS being a unified whole. However, Sean Carroll, an expert in cosmology, field theory and gravitational physics, tends to favour quantum mechanics, and points out that: “Einstein was optimistic that some deeper discoveries would uncover a classical, deterministic reality hiding beneath quantum mechanics, but no such order has yet been found. The demonstrated reality of spooky action at a distance argues that such order does not exist.” 
> -Not sure why it has to be one or the other. The "demonstrated reality of spooky action at a distance" speaks to me of order as well as intelligence and in no way cancels out general relativity.