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Dear Ed
Thanks for your kind and thoughtful comments. You are right, it is just a conjecture, a question not an answer, but one that I do feel needs airing. When I started this I also thought it would soon fall apart, so am also surprised it still hangs together. Maybe someone here will change that!
Re that "the floodgates are open to let anything convenient through" - it isnt so, as long as we stay scientific - logic, data, make predictions, falsifiability, etc. It is a theory of this world, not an imaginary metaphysical world made up. The basic idea is just that the physical world is a processing output, with reverse engineering it the "grounded theory" method of science applied to physics. It doesnt advocate (or deny) new age or religious ideas, i.e. you can still believe what you want to believe. Some may use these ideas to justify their pet theories - but thats life isnt it? If it is a world of choice, then let them!
Your Bell experiment logic is interesting. If the properties of a photon can change en route, without physical interaction, or just before it is observed, isn't the objective reality hypothesis conceded? That a physical photon "thing" can change its properties for no physical reason, is indeed a floodgate. So I think I support Zeilinger. This model just says what others say, including Copenhagen, that in science we are allowed to assume beyond the physical, e.g. quantum fields or your idea of a universal field. This model then just goes all the way, and lets quantum field assumptions be real, i.e. not just mathematical fictions!
By D'Espagnat, the Bell experiment logic assumes physical realism, Einstein locality and logical induction. By the experimental results, one of these three must be wrong. The VR conjecture moves the word "physical" from the realism to the locality definition. So realism is that there is a (deleted the word physical here!) reality whose existence is independent of human observers and locality becomes that no physical influence of any kind can propagate faster than the speed of light (added the word physical). It drops universal locality but keeps physical locality, i.e. limits Einsteins logic to physical objects. It drops physical realism but keeps realism, i.e. permits a non-physical quantum reality. The reason to give up "localism" is not flimsy, but the results of Bell's experiment.
The localism assumption targeted is specifically that two photons locally separated in space are necessarily two "things". In this model, photons entangle when photon entity programs generating spreading instantiations co-process to ensure a constant spin zero. The two photons are like two pixels on a screen whose programs are co-processing to keep one black ifthe other is white. See chapter 3, p 29 for details, and for the beam splitter expt details, see p27. Please note, these ideas are very much still in development, so your comments are very helpful.
kind regards
Brian Whitworth