Dear Georgina,
I read your essay. It is a fine recount of some of the ideas circulating amongst curious minds in the past hundred years. I did see the diagram about input/output. In cases like this I prefer the simplest explanations.
It also helps if this simplest explanation is directly compatible with the way humans observe reality. That way, there is no need for having 'physical' reality versus 'observable' one.
Einstein and QM aren't different things (as you put it, deterministic versus non-deterministic). Time dilation can be explained as slowing down of information processing. QM can be explained as loss of information in processing. They come from the exact same place: overload of information due to movement or proximity.
The apparent inability of us mortals to fully predict future comes from a simple fact: there is more information then we can process. The big idea is that everything in Nature (say particles) face the same problem. Particles may be computers, but they have limits of processing. When faced with those limits, something gives, and that is the reason for 'weirdness' of Einstein and QM. But weirdness exists only if you don't know why it's happening. If you can have a trivial reason to explain it, it's no longer weird.
And I can express that in simple mathematical terms. I can obtain Einstein's time dilation and Heiseinberg's uncertainty in the same fell swoop (see http://msg2act.com/physics/ComputivityOnline.pdf ).
Can you honestly say that you truly understand how time slows down? It's easy to understand why a computer with too much information to process will slow down. The point is, if slowing-down can be explained by means of processing information, do we really need to go over the deep end and say that time slows down? I call time dilation a 'performance hit' because that's what it is. When your computer works slower because it's overloaded with information, would you say time slowed down for your computer? Nonsense of course. But for men and women who observed the Nature and saw the same effect, that's exactly what they said. The magic was born.
I would say that if we have to introduce something we can't truly comprehend, we should look for simpler solutions.
Consider the space-time. It panics the human mind to conceive it as such (since we see them as separates). Saying that it warps on top of that sounds like a joke de jour of the Gods.
If there aren't simpler explanations, perhaps such things should be accepted for a time.
Ptolemaic system explained motion of celestial objects for over 1500 years with great accuracy. That's nearly unimaginable success of science. Yet it is utterly wrong.
Just because something can be used as a forecasting tool today, it doesn't mean it's right.
And if it employs concepts that claim something above the level of axiomatic acceptance, it should be suspect.
My point is, Einstein's and QM contain magic. It has been fought, but finally accepted because no one offered a simpler way.
This magic gives way to million questions. By the very virtue of the foundations being magic, all these questions are wrong. No matter how ingenious answers we may offer to these questions, it doesn't erase the uneasy feeling of essay writers. And that feeling is being lost. And a little scared of this reality that seems to get weirder and weirder with each passing year. Maybe it's not reality that's getting weirder. Maybe it's the people. It's happened before.
Einstein said: "Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the physical world.". Touche.
There's magic in the air.
Ptolemy would be proud. The magic of a photon having this amazing ability to move at the same speed relative to anyone is the same magic as Earth moving in the dead center of everything out there.
If we'd start with concepts that simply aren't magic, Occam's razor can slice through the fog of enchantment. The foundations of reality shouldn't be magic. Not only because history teaches us that simple way wins the day, but because ultimately progress can't happen.
