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David,

You insist that I “accept the field equations of General Relativity, in which case [you] can show [me] how one finds that these ‘ripples’ in spacetime do indeed have ‘energy’-like characteristics…”, otherwise you “don't believe it's worth [your] time,” and it would “would involve the entire derivation of General Relativity, and, then from there the derivation of models of Gravitational Waves.” The burden of the showing would be the same regardless of my initial position, of course, so it seems clear you’re demanding my acceptance before you’ll endeavor to show me why I should accept.

You “haven't bothered to read the reference [I] link to” as you’ve decided it’s irrelevant to your challenge. My challenge precedes yours, and you’ve continued to avoid it - to show how uniform motion/geodesic motion (choose whatever term you wish, it’s the state in the physical world revealed by a gravitiometer) transforms into energy, other than by an interpretive mathematical formalism. You not only ignore my challenge, you insist I make one of two choices that presume my challenge doesn’t exist, or that it isn’t more fundamental, or that it has already been addressed.

The mathematics of gravitational phenomena can follow from an implicit interpretation of gravity’s association with some sort of energy, or it can follow the physical evidence of the geometric distortion of spacetime in the presence of mass. An excessive absorption in mathematics can obscure the dilemma you refuse to acknowledge, that the mathematics of physics should depend upon an explicit physical interpretation. (There is no problem with a mathematical characterization of free-fall as an acceleration presumed to be due to a gravitational force, for example.) The mathematics of gravitation is uniquely ambiguous with respect to the basis of gravitation. The physical evidence of gravitation as a geometric phenomenon is however not ambiguous – provided, of course, there is an interest in isolating the evidence. And on the other hand there’s no unambiguous physical evidence of “gravitational energy.”

We live in different worlds. Yours and your colleagues’ is abstract mathematics, with occasional reference to the observable physical world. I’m reminded of a discussion by Hawking, where he concludes from the fact that the equation for entropy is indifferent to sign that entropy may arbitrarily go backwards somewhere, sometime. In my world, such leaps of abstraction are unpersuasive, and literally nonsensical. It suggests an implicit neo-Pythagorean philosophy that exceeds the bounds of science while claiming the special standing of science.

Despite your framing of my “two-choice dilemma” I’m questioning your interpretation, the standard interpretation, of the field equations. That’s my choice, and it makes your framing irrelevant. Your refusal to recognize the issue as such is what makes our conversation circular and fruitless.

Huff and puff all you like, I don’t believe you can form an explicit, coherent explanation of how force-free gravitation can produce radiant energy. To me, that’s a problem, a critical problem, no matter how many physicists say it isn’t.

So yes, farewell.