As a preamble, just for clarity as far as I can remember (I was awfully drunk) I have a degree in physics, math and comp sci: my point is "here's a probably stupid question at the level of person of keen hobbyist interest, rather than, person of minimal interest", so,
My understanding, and I've hearseend this capsulized dozens of times on youtube channels and in popular science books, is that
Einstein and others pointed out that the idea of gravity being "a force" is whacky and problematic, since, it means it acts magically at distances
Einstein came along and sorted out this (and other major issues) by explaining that gravity is not! a force, but rather, what's happening is mass "bends"† space ... voila!
This all sounds fine.
We have utterly not a clue what space is, but that's ok, we're saying that, here's the Sun, and at various points a, b, c we are "curving" "space" in various specific ways, the phrase "curving space" being a storytelling stand in for something like "objects will, as it happens, when moving in a straight line, not do so, they'll move in a not-straight line, at a, b, c."
Great so far.
There's plain NO force, so we no longer have to figure out why forces are magically acting at a distance, no strings attached.
But instead:
are we not now simply, instead, saying "so, the Sun 'bends' (whatever that means) 'space' (whatever that is) . . . and by the way it does so magically at any distance! But, hooray, we no longer have to worry about force acting magically at a distance!"
What's the deal on this?
† the 3D analogy of "bends" ... tightens, sucks in, compresses, en-gradients, whatever works.
