Dear Bill McHarris,
Thank you for the comments, and for liking my essay. You surely noticed how I interpret the correlations, both between entangled particles, and between past and future, by appealing to global consistency of fields on the 4-dimensional block universe. This reduces a bit the gap between quantum and classical. Unitary evolution implies that the measurement device and the observed system are correlated prior to measurement. But if this is true, we can consider in the EPR that particles are classical, so long as we admit the correlations. And this not even require nonlinearity. So yes, I agree with you that results like Bell's theorem, are not as much about classical vs quantum, but about uncorrelated vs correlated. The reason why is usually considered that they are about classical vs quantum is that, in general, classical systems, when coming in interaction, are separated, uncorrelated. But to make them violate Bell's inequality, we have to assume them correlated prior to the measurement. And the delayed choice experiment shows that, depending on what we will be measuring, the (preexisting) correlations have to be different. In other words, the initial conditions depend on what we measure. Now, this can't be escaped, no matter what. Chaos-based or not, to exhibit the quantum correlations, any realistic interpretation has to contain the correlations already in the initial conditions. So I think we see where we agree: classical is not ruled out per se, but classical correlations, in which the initial conditions are not constrained, are ruled out. Of course people make this about quantum vs hidden variables, but, as you said, it is about correlated vs uncorrelated. To have a truly classical interpretation, the problem, in my opinion, is to obtain from uncorrelated initial conditions, correlations that depend on the future choice of the measurement settings.
You said "Also, I'd be interested in your speculations about what Wheeler might have done had he been interested in nonlinear dynamics and/or chaos theory."
That's a good question. I can only answer what I think he might have done. First, I think that if Wheeler had had a student willing to pursue this direction, he would had gladly and openly supported her, no matter if he would not agree (except, of course, if he could prove the idea wrong). If asked about the possibility to explain quantum correlations by chaos, Wheeler would ask for evidence about violations of Bell's inequality by chaotic phenomena. If he would have such evidence, of course, he would not ignore it.
Thanks again for visiting, and congratulations for your essay!
Cristi Stoica