Excellent article, well written and logically argued.
I completely agree with your premise that living organisms, unlike machines, possess genuine creativity and that a physics theory needs to accommodate that. I particularly resonate with your description of phenomena such as premonitions, synchronicity and intuitive hunches being the very opposite of the mechanistic "engineer's narrative" as I coincidentally was a mechanical engineer and statistician for 30 years only to experience a sudden intuitive awakening (for lack of a better term) about 5 years ago. This includes frequent clairvoyant images, intuitive insights and premonitions.
Although very unsettling at first (for a former hard-core skeptic), I have come to embrace this and explore it as rationally as I can to see where the rabbit hole leads. Although having next to zero training in physics and only a casual interest, I immediately became fascinated with the field as well as prime numbers, base-12 and ancient numerology for some reason. Eventually the connection made sense over the next few years as I pieced together a consciousness-inclusive model not unlike yours (my article is called "Primarily True" if you're interested in a look). I didn't even know about FXQi or the article contest until a week ago when I "happened upon" mention of it in a book I was reading by Dean Radin about Psi research. As I had just put together my model, the timing was perfect to submit an article. Ta-da!
Based on my somewhat unique perspective, I thought I would share a few comments that might be informative for your consideration... or at least amusing.
First, I now define a "living organism" as that which is consciously self-aware, thus not only limited to being physically embodied. I also consider the present as our 100% probable future with all other potentials as lesser probabilities of becoming. Like you say, our future can still be influenced by our actions, which to me amounts to altering which next outcome is most probable. And although our past has already been determined, I feel its memory is not necessarily fixed - i.e. our future re-informs how we perceive the past, effectively altering our perception (consciousness) of what really happened.
From my own experience, my ability to access a specific outcome from my "future memory" per se seems limited to the extent to which undecided free will (mine and others potentially affected by it) may influence it. In other words, the more inevitable and significant the event (such as a major forest fire), the earlier and more clearly I tend to pick up on it. Still, it is also because of free will I suspect that I am not generally able to avoid unpleasant events even if I sense them coming. I get the feeling too that we sometimes experience unpleasant circumstances if it serves the greater good of all involved... almost like taking one for the team!
Lastly, I don't believe all such future memory phenomena have a common physical origin but rather a common non-physical one - consciousness. I am confident both the physical and non-physical can all eventually be explained by a single physics model, once we treat consciousness-reality duality as the wave-particle duality of that theoretical approach. That's my take on things anyway... subject to continuous revision no doubt!
Sorry for the long-winded post and thanks again for the thought provoking article.
All the best,
Michael