Sounds like you may be a Bergsonian on the question of what time is. His theory was rejected by physicists because it wasn't a mathematical equation but an argument based on phenomenological evidence.

The Forgotten Brilliance of Henri Bergson

Thank you for sharing those stories and your insights. I get so frustrated with human groupthink and the gatekeepers set up to keep critical thinking from entering the institutions. Cosmologists believe what they believe about the universe because it feels good to them to hold their imaginations as truth. Then they engage in circular reasoning to justify what they want to believe.

I've long been interested in how people manage to be openminded on some issues but closedminded on others. Prof. Loeb is an interesting case of that.