• knowledge on this subject without qualification

    I’m a Maths teacher with a Masters - thanks for asking - how about you?

    while ignoring my larger point

    You mean your invalid point, that I debunked?

    what are conventions if not agreed upon rules?

    Conventions are optional, rules aren’t.

    here is a history of how we actually came to agree upon the aforementioned rules which you may find interesting

    He’s well-known to be wrong about his “history”, and if you read through the comments you’ll find plenty of people telling him that, including references. Cajori wrote the definitive books about the history of Maths (notation). They’re available for free on the Internet Archive - no need to believe some random crank and his blog.