John,
To be more precise ... you state "The causal process can be modeled in terms of scalars; temperature, pressure, weight, speed." In the scope of geometric algebra, these are the scalar, vector, bivector, trivector and pseudoscalar information structures - information structure - the Clifford algebra elements. Everything measurable can be reduced to elements and combination thereof of these elements.... right to the general relativistic principles ... from the quantum combinations of space/spin eigenstates through the expansion rate of the universe ... and visa versa ie., information flows in both directions and is equivalent information once the limit of each outer bound is reached (ADS/CFT).
Also, you state "What is causal is energy transfer. Me tapping on these keys requires some form of energy transfer for the words to appear on the screen. The sun shining on a rotating planet is the sources of energy which create the sequence of events called days." OK, You are simply stating that we collect data in the moment, and, we control the information within the moment physically (measure) from one event to the next. It is your "will" applied to create action to stroke the key. Your mind geared up in Feynminian thoughts to do the miraculous event of stroking each key ... and in a coherent, deliberate fashion such to create information that has deep context (which I may add is rather brilliant).
Your comment "Much as economic statistics are a measure of the cumulative human activity of lots of people traveling their particular vectors." Yes, our measures are measures of the thermodynamic average, however, each molecule, at any moment, can partake in an event that is a once in a lifetime event ... and possibly tunnel out from the thermodynamic enclosure (like a hot electron in Peltier ... STM, etc.) It is "WE the individual" that controls the knob to the tunneling, for, energetically, geometrically, everything had to be physically correct to achieve the classically impossible event ... and yes... doing this in the midst of the ever changing pull of the thermodynamic average make it a rather rare event..... similar to giving up one's ego and allowing one to become the central element in all that he or she measures... which implies taking the bull by the horns and accepting we are responsible for our own lives .. and the information has always been there but we lost the proper context that allows us to tunnel!
Also, a quick FYI on your comment "I think the left, linear side of the brain is a form of clock, the vector of time, counting out sequence, while the right, intuitive side is more of a scale, weighing all the possibilities and seeing what emerges/rises to the top."
A few years back, my dad had a stroke that destroyed the RHS of his brain. He remembers all past events, BUT, had no clue on the time the event occurred (this information came soon thereafter the stroke event). He speaks of things 60 years ago as if they were yesterday, if a computer, a time stamp was scrambled or lost in his FAT ("event" file allocation table). I therefore would not rule out that time (event ordering) plays a big part in the RHS of the brain. What I also observed was that in a full, center page news paper article the two words "Banana Republic" were written - that's it. Banana was on the left most page and Republic on the right. When asked to read this article, my dad simply stated ... with utmost confidence ... "Republic" .... there was NO mention of Banana ... this, and many more LHS optical information losses places the brain RHS as controlling optical image information from the images physical LHS - no doubt here.
Anyway, it's been a pleasure to converse w/ you. Thank you!
Tony