All in the same basket? Hardly.... I tried... not well enough it seems... to refer to a sub-current of academic posturing which can come in the disguise of "conceptual cosmology" with no immediate content. I am not accusing anyone of dishonesty or fakery...the entire community of theoretical physics & cosmology has developed a self-perpetuating system of rewarding the most interesting attempts, no matter how far out. It's not 'quite' "The Emperors New Clothes", as no one planned to deceive anyone, but there is lots of nodding wisely and weaving patterns on imaginary looms, which they explain to each other and occasionally give interviews to science writers to reinforce the public's belief that they are 'onto a new notion about everything'.... and who is in a position to argue? *I* certainly can't follow the math... I am limited to puzzling over the language and wondering if they have, like economists, as many answers as required to justify being an economist.

Theoreticians like Lemaître, Hubble and Gamow worked on ...umm... problems. They measured, calculated and applied their theories. Likewise, all the examples in your link dealt with seeing what quantum physics could suggest in application to known phenomena. Many of the recent ideas feel a bit like solutions in search of a problem, in that they postulate entities which then require other entities to be postulated in order to support each other. (Lordy, I am having trouble with my own metaphors. I think I see it as a bit like theology. Once one believes in a basic set of postulates, there's no end to the rationalizations required to juggle all the 'what ifs'.)