Dear Don,
You write
---"As soon as you postulate a Universe you are stuck with an outside of the universe [..] I believe that when the universe and not universe are equal in magnitude it is a good time to have lunch."---
As to my reason to insist that it has no outside, doesn't exist as a whole but only to an inside observer who's part of it: If there would be only one single electron in the universe so it wouldn't be able to express its charge, then it couldn't be charged itself. If to have charge requires the existence of other charged particles, then charge, any property, only exists as far it can be communicated, is shared, existing only within their interactions. If in a self-creating universe particles have to create themselves, each other, then (the properties of) particles must be as much the product as the source of their interactions.
For particles, 'to be' then is not a state, a noun, but a verb, an activity without which they would stop to exist to each other. So if, in our imagination, we look from outside the universe in but we aren't 'charged' ourselves, then we wouldn't 'see' electrons and experience their charge even if we might able to infer that property from their behavior. The problem with a statement like "The mass of the Universe is 1.8x10^54 kg" is that it presumes mass to be a property of inside objects which is independent of their interactions. This statement doesn't make any sense if there's nothing outside of it with respect it can have any property as a whole, as it cannot be expressed in interactions, if the precise quantity doesn't matter one way or the other. The widespread misconception that such statements do make sense, is coupled to the assumption that particles only are the source of their properties, as if they would exist even if they wouldn't interact at all, thereby making their properties incomprehensible and corrupting physics to metaphysics. The idea of the universe as an object, as something which has properties as a whole reflects a classical way of looking at and thinking about things. Indulging in our incomprehension, we know no better to do than dream up unnecessary nonsense like Higgs bosons and string theory, theories of an ever-increasing complexity. Though a complexity which so far hasn't solved a single problem should make us suspicious that that something may be amiss with these theories, their complexity instead grants them a respectability which makes the problems they're supposed to solve even worse. These problems aren't only unsolvable because they are of our own making, they've damaged physics beyond recognition.
---"Physics is like playing golf, you swear allegiance to the rule book, and then proceed to cheat as much as you can without getting caught."---
I think that physics isn't so much about following the rule book, but trying to find out why the rules are what they are, and to keep checking whether they still hold in the light of new discoveries or need to be revised. I'm afraid that physics has become too opaque a mess of truths, half-truths and contradictions to blindly follow its conclusions. The fact that no fundamental discoveries have been made, nor any important problem has been solved in physics these last 70-odd years says enough. Perhaps things may become clear if you take the trouble to read my essay.
Regards, Anton
