While it is true that constancy of the speed of light is an axiom in Special Relativity, it is a thorough misunderstanding of how physics works to contend that physicists believe it BECAUSE it is structurally an axiom in the theory. Physicists believe it because it corresponds to the way nature is observed to behave. We don't dismiss alternative theories because they would break all our theoretical structures (although they do that), but because they almost always immediately fall into contradiction with measurements. We have looked really hard for violations of Lorentz invariance, and the experimental bounds are brutal. If it's there, it is extraordinarily tiny. It is also a misunderstanding to contend that physicists are unwilling to consider alternatives. There are lots of papers on variable speed of light theories, and even some cosmological observations supporting time-dependence of the fine structure constant. I have personally written multiple papers on superluminal aethers that allow FTL signal propagation without violation of relativity. The papers are out there, but knowing that requires actual work, whereas portraying physicists as dogmatic, closed-minded sheeple on social media is free.

I'll tell you why so many people upset about the "no hallucinated citations" ban on the arxiv: because they've all been copying citation lists from each other without checking them since the beginning of time. And why did they do this? Because half of the citations in scientific papers are politics and not to the benefit of the reader. If you don't list the right papers, your paper doesn't look 'right' and reviewers will complain that you didn't cite this-and-that other unrelated work. For what I am concerned, these are all bullshit citations that shouldn't be in the papers in the first place. They can easily be automated by "related papers" links, that are (wait for it) provided by... AI...

And when we teach like John Keating in Dead Poets Society, we create a future generation that cannot read that poetry, let alone write it. 🙄 Damn Hollywood for romanticising teaching and destroying all that is required for a classroom to succeed! 🤯

Why do Physicists still talk about a "Theory of Everything? Isn’t the history of Physics almost a warning against that phrase? Newton looked final until General Relativity changed what space, time, mass, and gravity meant. Classical Physics looked complete until Quantum Mechanics forced a completely different language for nature at small scales. Even our best theories now work by domain. General Relativity for gravity and Spacetime, Quantum Field Theory for particles and forces.