I doubt that Scott will reply to this, 5 years later and on a different site, so let me try instead.
there are only three objects you can write in terms of the metric tensor which transform the “right” way (G, T, and g itself).
Hindsight bias? There are plenty of such objects. Google f(R) gravity, for example. There are also many different contractions of powers of products of R, T and G that fit. There is also torsion, and probably other things (supergravity and string theory tend to add a few).
You might want to argue that G=T is “the simplest”, but it is anything but, for the reasons Scott explained. Once you find something that works, you call it G and T, write G=T and call it “simple”. That’s what Einstein did, since his first attempt, R=T, did not work out.
I doubt that Scott will reply to this, 5 years later and on a different site, so let me try instead.
Hindsight bias? There are plenty of such objects. Google f(R) gravity, for example. There are also many different contractions of powers of products of R, T and G that fit. There is also torsion, and probably other things (supergravity and string theory tend to add a few).
You might want to argue that G=T is “the simplest”, but it is anything but, for the reasons Scott explained. Once you find something that works, you call it G and T, write G=T and call it “simple”. That’s what Einstein did, since his first attempt, R=T, did not work out.
Interesting...