Franklin
I am surprised that at MIT students don't know what is R^3. Even in Italy at high schools students know it! Besides, I clearly defined R^3 in my essay as "the usual Euclidean space", and I personally studied Euclidean spaces at a Literature high school. I have many friends at MIT since ages (and even got my PhD students having a postdoc there), and you do not seem a standard MIT-educated person. You are just kidding.
Anyway, talking more seriously. I wrote an essay deliberately with many levels of reading, to satisfy all different kinds of audience. I devoted only one page to the technical level, and used the most standard notation and most elementary notions. (Every science-graduated should know notions as field, dimension, metric, isometry, isotropy. Maybe he is not required to know GR, but he definitely must know the basics of quantum theory.) Having in mind the possibility of a Scientific American publication, I also put the technical part between definite boundaries within the essay.
If we want to talk about serious real physics here--not mere random speculations--at least, there must be a page giving the precise technical definitions. Not only this is allowed by the rules of the contest, but also it is logically mandatory. Otherwise, one can e.g. claim gravity as a force between dipoles, forgetting that it would not go as the inverse square law.
Paradoxically, the Corda paper (which is not an essay, but a technical paper that needs a long list of references to be read) found the consensus of the Community. Therefore, it seems to me that not only you are not a standard MIT-educated person, but not even a standard member of this Community.
I understand your frustration.
Don't worry, be happy
With my best regards
Mauro