A deepening crisis forces physicists to rethink the structure of nature’s laws

This should not be counted as progress unless and until it actually makes experimental predictions that are confirmed.

No, saying “just” in that way is like saying any given computer program is “just” another solution to the Church-Turing thesis.

Alcubierre introduced a novel and interesting category of solutions that people hadn’t thought of before.

(Although this is still subject to Gödel's caveat, that even intentionally constructed systems end up with features that weren't part of the intention, but rather are unavoidable consequences of the design.)

But if you don't make that religious assumption, then the expectation that all features should have a purpose becomes unsupportable. There's simply no reason to expect that, and even the notion of features having a "purpose" is misleading metaphorical language at best.

Back to the subject of what Einstein would say, we should also keep in mind what he wrote in a private letter in 1954:

> “The word God is for me nothing but the expression of and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change anything about this.”

I'm not aware of Einstein having written anything attempting to reconcile this with his previously expressed pantheistic views and the related views implied by the "play dice" comment. That would be tough to reconcile.

Another relevant issue here is that Einstein's dice comment was objecting to non-determinism in quantum physics. But in the nearly 70 years since his death, everything that has been discovered still points to inherent non-determinism. There are some theories/interpretations that would eliminate this, like superdeterminism and De Broglie–Bohm theory. But even if such a theory satisfies Einstein's concern, it doesn't affect what I wrote - such theories don't address the justification for features of the universe, they simply model what we observe.

tl;dr: what I originally wrote is essentially a tautology that neither you nor Einstein can refute.

Logging is a feature that someone deliberately adds to an application. It has a purpose even if no-one uses it.

I'm talking about features that (a) were not intentionally designed and (b) have no "purpose" - i.e. do not "participate in physics necessary for the observable universe functioning," per the original commenter.

The point is that for a feature to have a purpose implies an intentional design. If you assume the universe was intentionally designed, then yes, one might expect all features of the universe to have a purpose. Although as Gödel pointed out, this may not be possible - even intentionally constructed systems end up with features that weren't part of the intention, but rather are unavoidable consequences of the design.

If you don't assume intentional design, then there's no reason to expect that all features of the universe have a purpose.

> they should lose their jobs.

is too much.

You should also study the history of string theory and how their early days are miserable (too difficult to have a career as people denies string theory as physics.)

The correct approach would be to invest in string theory but also any other proponents of "theory of everything". The main issue today is that virtually only string theorist can make a career of being theoretical particle physicists.

The very fact is that there's no any other theories beyond the standard model that are falsifiable. If you require any theory to be falsifiable then no theoretical physicists can have a job. Not even the invention of general relativity would qualifies (remember although we can now falsify GM, it wasn't initially.)