Otherness can be diminished by empathy, but there will still be differences; but those differences end up becoming more defining than similarities due to our tendency to define by noting exceptions. It is somewhat of a techno-trick, that taxonomies proliferate and jargon needs to keep up, so rhetoric is generated that resonates for some, but may vilify others. Perhaps our logic is so obsessed with cause, that we populate sources with bias to calm dissonance.

Typically, punishment is little more than wishing to will away a past affront to a socially constructed convention. Since we can't change the past, we try to affect the future by steering society by using harm, which generates fear. This seems more prominent than rewarding people for not doing bad things, since resources are limited and the value of state issued hugs have somehow lost value. When someone does do something they think is bad to another, and wish to be forgiven, penance must be accepted by the harmed party AND the person must be able to forgive themselves, to be able to find respite from remorse. It isn't enough for someone to forgive themselves if they are not forgiven; just as it is not enough for someone to be forgiven but still haunt themselves. Although, it should be mentioned that remorse may be healthy, and self-forgiveness may just be something of a luxury for the forever sinful. As an aside, I believe in penance. I think that people can change and that self-grief is capable of modifying someones actions and beliefs. I think that burning bridges is an overall detriment to society, but also value individual rights to steer clear of violators. Losing trust in each other and in ourselves does not tend to increase the agency of the whole; but getting a faction to distrust another faction does seem to make divisions more clear in order to root out the latter faction; which seems like increasing agency if the premise is that the latter faction are decreasing agency of the former faction.

Humanism was brought up quite a bit at the beginning of the thread. Perhaps we can do a better job of humanism if we look towards post-humanism. If we open empathetic channels to animals and computers, we may include other humans along the way.

When trying to define justice, I came to the conclusion that no one deserves anything, unless a contract was made. The closest thing to justice might be making choices that are wise; which to me means that given all the correct information, one would have the least regret (assuming plural empathy) if the most wise choice was made. In order to have as much correct information as possible (otherwise wisdom would be purely retrospect) information should be available (voiced) and true (honest).

Although, these definitions could easily be replaced by individual justice and wisdom, which would be concerned with betterment of an individuals standing and ability to increase agency through choice. In this case your own betterment would be dependent on correct information, which would require others to be honest (assuming they are not misinformed), and have a voice (ability to communicate).

I think we need to recognize hormones and pheromones for what they are: chemicals; and make room for varying desired levels and expressions of these chemicals. I also think that what Kinsey did for the gay straight continuum should be done for gender identity.Even the work of Kinsey is not yet widely known, so it will take time for society to catch up to any paradigm changing worldviews pertaining to gender identity, as it has for sexual orientation.

I've only read a handful of the pages in this thread, but I waned to posit the ideas of Godel and Turning here, since, if we were to find natural laws we would want them to be self consistent and capable of modeling measured phenomena. The difficulty is adding events to the Turing machine such that all phenomena are accounted for. In lieu of all event, we can only have a sample of events to put into the machine. The machine would analyze the events and try to develop axioms by which future events can be modeled. If an event disagrees with an axiom, the axiom would be thrown out and a new one fashioned (events permitting).

Another thing to note here is a common phrase in particle physics, which is "That which is not forbidden, is required."

To answer the questions more directly (and sadly, less informative):
What are natural laws? Natural laws are models of phenomena, if one concedes they are constructs. If one supposes natural laws are immutable truths, then natural laws would then be the mechanics of reality; providing a map of tendencies.

What are natural laws made of? Statements about events and processes. The language of the statement is typically developed through trying to get a model to match witnessed phenomena.

How do natural laws work? One way to think of it, as Sean Carroll stated, is the chain of explanations stops at the natural law, and that's how they work. Another way to think of it would be suggesting that the chain never stops, because one could ask why they work as they do (which is close to how the question was posed), which science is woefully unable to deal with in a manner satisfying to many thinkers.

One thing that may interest you might be the difference between the Newtonian schema and a Lagrangian one. Under the Newtonian schema the world is thought of a a computer that takes the state of a system and evolves it. Under a Lagrangian schema, the world evolves assuming an initial and final state. I think this is similar to the it from bit versus bit from it arguments.

It does not prove anything. A professor once said "There are as many theories as there are theorists," and I tend to agree. There are many interpretations of quantum mechanics that are vying for popularity, all of them with their own explanation of entanglement and the measurement collapse problem.

DeBroglie-Bohm is one interpretation (Bohm was quoted in your article), in which pilot waves guide the particles, and is considered a hidden variable theory. Interestingly enough, hidden variables were put to test by John Bell, in experiments called Bell tests, which relate to Bell inequalities, which state the bounds of joint probabilities for a given quantum setup. The assumptions were locality, causality, realism, hidden variables and a variety of other things that would later be called loopholes. Experimenters such as Aspect conducted experiments which showed violation of Bell inequalities, which means that one of the assumptions does not hold. Oddly enough, Bell was somewhat of a fan of Bohmian mechanics because of its holistic properties (there is not measurement collapse because the entire universe is a single wavefunction), so Bell and Bohm were willing to give up locality to keep hidden variables. There are other loopholes to these experiments that experimenters are trying to close. In 2015 there was an experiment that showed Bell violation while closing three loopholes, namely detection, memory and locality (Hansen et al.).

Back to the topic at hand, the experiment you quoted does not prove anything other than Bell's inequalities were violated, which can be explained by there being no causality, or no locality, or no realism, or no hidden variables. A more grounded understanding of where Bohm is coming from can be gleaned from his books on the topic of quantum mechanics, such as " Wholeness and the Implicate Order" or "The Undivided Universe". Based on your reaction to his quote, I think you might dig them, so to speak.

The second article starts with aether and ESP, so I'm not going to touch that.