When there's some issue that's polarized, people tend to model this mentally in "black and white," ie, binary. That mistake drives a lot of polarization. And it usually is, in fact, a mistake.

I'd say when you're considering A or B, it would be much better to think of it as a qubit rather than a bit.

It isn't ALL A, NO B versus ALL B, NO A, usually. Not necessarily. It could be A. It could be B. It could be A and B in different amounts or at different times (or for different entities or goals). It could be neither A nor B. It could be 50% A, 1% B. It could be 100% A, 100% B. It could be 0% A, 0% B. Get it? This is how qubits work.

Even if the reality is 0% A, 100% B, it helps to understand why A might appear true, might seem like a more compelling explanation, might be easier to understand or remember. Just as we shouldn't think only in binary, when we explain why an incorrect view is maintained by some people, we shouldn't only ascribe malicious motives, or only ascribe innocent ones.

When you smash particles together, sometimes you get bigger particles. In effect, this is how all the elements are formed by stars.

It doesn't seem counterintuitive to me that when you smash *enough* together, what you get is new spacetime. In other words, spacetime would be a little analogous to diamond versus charcoal - smoosh together enough under enough pressure and heat, and you get this special result - not just a new form of matter, this time, but spacetime itself.

That's what I think. Black holes synthesize spacetime, and then all that stuff that fell together bounces out into the new spacetime created, and it looks - or can look - kinda like what we see around us in the universe.

It's only one hypothesis but I've never seen one that makes more sense to me.

Bonus 1: The math of black holes says that spacetime inside the event horizon is stretched just about infinitely, so the volume inside is much larger than the volume (as seen from) outside.

Bonus 2: When scientists estimate the amount of mass-energy in the observable universe and put it into the equation for the event horizon of a black hole, they get a radius that's about as big as that of the current observable universe. (That seems a little tricky or coincidental, though, because the observable universe is expanding fast, yet its mass-energy is believed to be constant. However, maybe all is not lost for that line of argument, because while the universe is expanding, so is the observable universe - that is, over time, we will catch photons from parts of the universe we cannot yet observe. If the correspondence between estimated mass-energy within the observable universe and radius of observation were to tighten up with better data and stay consistent over time, that would seem like a strong argument.)