Retrocausation seems to admit of time paradoxes in which events prevent themselves from occurring and thereby create a physical instance of the liar's paradox, an event which occurs iff it does not occur. The specific version in which a retrocausal event is used to trigger an intervention which prevents its own future cause is called the bilking paradox (the event is bilked of its cause).The analysis of Echeverria, Klinkhammer, and Thorne (EKT) suggests time paradoxes cannot arise even in the presence of retrocausation. Any self‐contradictory event sequence will be replaced in reality by a closely related but noncontradictory sequence. The EKT analysis implies that attempts to create bilking must instead produce logically consistent sequences wherein the bilked event arises from alternative causes.Bilking a retrocausal information channel of limited reliability usually results only in failures of signaling. An exception applies when the bilking is conducted in response only to some of the signal values that can be carried on the channel. Theoretical analysis based on EKT predicts that, since some of the channel outcomes are not bilked, the channel is capable of transmitting data with its normal reliability, and the paradox‐avoidance effects will instead suppress the outcomes that would lead to forbidden (bilked) transmissions.A recent parapsychological experiment by Bem displays a retrocausal information channel of sufficient reliability to test this theoretical model of physical reality's response to retrocausal effects. A modified version with partial bilking would provide a direct test of the generality of the EKT mechanism.
Retrocausation seems to admit of time paradoxes in which events prevent themselves from occurring and thereby create a physical instance of the liar's paradox, an event which occurs iff it does not occur. The specific version in which a retrocausal event is used to trigger an intervention which prevents its own future cause is called the bilking paradox (the event is bilked of its cause).The analysis of Echeverria, Klinkhammer, and Thorne (EKT) suggests time paradoxes cannot arise even in the presence of retrocausation. Any self‐contradictory event sequence will be replaced in reality by a closely related but noncontradictory sequence. The EKT analysis implies that attempts to create bilking must instead produce logically consistent sequences wherein the bilked event arises from alternative causes.Bilking a retrocausal information channel of limited reliability usually results only in failures of signaling. An exception applies when the bilking is conducted in response only to some of the signal values that can be carried on the channel. Theoretical analysis based on EKT predicts that, since some of the channel outcomes are not bilked, the channel is capable of transmitting data with its normal reliability, and the paradox‐avoidance effects will instead suppress the outcomes that would lead to forbidden (bilked) transmissions.A recent parapsychological experiment by Bem displays a retrocausal information channel of sufficient reliability to test this theoretical model of physical reality's response to retrocausal effects. A modified version with partial bilking would provide a direct test of the generality of the EKT mechanism.
In 2011, Daryl Bem published a report of nine parapsychological experiments showing evidence of retrocausal information transfer. Earlier in 2016, the team of Bem, Tressoldi, Rabeyron, and Duggan published the results of a meta-analysis containing 81 independent replications of the original Bem experiments (total of 90 with the originals).[1] This much larger database continues to show positive results of generally comparable effect size, thus demonstrating that the effects claimed by Bem can be replicated by independent researchers and greatly strengthening the case for empirically observed retrocausation. Earlier (2011) work by this author showed how a modification of one of Bem’s original experiments could be used to test the mechanism implicitly proposed by Echeverria, Klinkhammer, and Thorne to explain how retrocausal phenomena can exist without any risk of self-contradictory event sequences (time paradoxes). In light of the new publication and new evidence, the current work generalizes the previous analysis which was restricted to only one of Bem’s experimental genres (precognitive approach and avoidance). The current analysis shows how minor modifications can be made in Bem’s other experimental genres of retroactive priming, retroactive habituation, and retroactive facilitation of recall to test the EKT anti-paradox mechanism. If the EKT hypothesis is correct, the modified experiments, while continuing to show replicable retrocausal phenomena, will also show a characteristic pattern of distortion in the statistics of the random selections used to drive the experiments.
Although experimental evidence for retrocausation exists, there are clearly subtleties to the phenomenon. The bilking paradox, in which one intervenes to eliminate a subsequent cause after a preceding effect has occurred, appears on the surface to show that retrocausation is logically impossible. In a previous paper, the second law of thermodynamics was invoked to show that the entropy in each process of a psi interaction (presentience, telepathy, remote perception, and psychokinesis) cannot decrease, prohibiting psi processes in which signals condense from background fluctuations. Here it is shown, perhaps contrary to one’s intuition, that reversible processes cannot be influenced through retrocausation, but irreversible processes can. The increase in thermodynamic entropy in irreversible processes — which are generally described by Newtonian mechanics but not Lagrangian dynamics and Hamilton’s Principle — is required for causation. Thermodynamically reversible processes cannot be causal and hence also cannot be retrocausal. The role of entropy in psi interactions is extended by using the bilking paradox to consider information transmission in retroactive psychokinesis (PK). PK efficiency, ηPK, is defined. A prediction of the analysis is that ηPK ⩽ H/H0, where H is the information uncertainty or entropy in the retro‐PK agent’s knowledge of the event that is to be influenced retrocausally. The information entropy can provide the necessary ingredient for non‐reversibility, and hence retrocausation. Noise and bandwidth limitations in the communication to the agent of the outcome of the event increase the maximum PK efficiency. Avoidance of the bilking paradox does not bar a subject from using the premonition of an event to prevent it from occurring. The necessity for large information entropy, which is the expected value of the surprisal, is likely to be essential for any successful PK process, not just retro‐PK processes. Hence uncertainty in the communication process appears to be a necessary component of retrocausation in particular, and of PK in general.
PK experiments with prerecorded targets (Schmidt, 1976) are interesting because they suggest a variety of new test arrangements to study the basic PK mechanism. In addition, they permit the inclusion of independent observers who, with little time investment, can obtain first-hand evidence of any anomalous effects that may occur. Four such experiments with different independent observers, different subject populations, and minor variations have been performed previously (Schmidt & Braud, 1993; Schmidt, Morris, & Hardin, 1990; Schmidt, Morris, & Rudolph, 1986; Schmidt & Schlitz, 1988) with the first author as main experimenter and the other one or two authors acting as independent observers. The results of PK experiments with prerecorded random events appear most interesting and most puzzling because the subject's mental effort is made long after the random events to be affected have occurred. One tentative viewpoint (Schmidt, 1978; Walker, 1979) is that the subject's mental effort could act backward to the time when the random events were generated and recorded. This would imply a noncausal mechanism in the sense that the effect (the biasing of the random events) occurs before the cause (the mental effort). It might be this element of noncausality that makes psychic phenomena so intuitively implausible and at odds with the known principles of physics. Another viewpoint (Schmidt, 1982) is based on the quantum theoretical notion that there is no if there is no observer. Thus, the decisions of the random generator might become reality only when the subject observes the outcome during the test session. The subject's effort would not have to act into the past because the decision on the outcome would not yet be made until the subject received feedback during the PK test session. In this case, a preobservation of the recorded events should inhibit the subject's success, because the preobservation would make the random decisions real so that the subject's subsequent mental effort would come too late. For this reason it seemed particularly interesting to conduct an experiment in which half of the prerecorded random events had been preinspected so that one could compare the possible PK effects on the preobserved and not-observed events. One previous study (Schmidt, 1985) has indicated an inhibition of the PK effect by preobservation. In view of the central role of the question, however, further studies of the preobservation effect seem most important. In this and the four previous studies, the question of highest priority was whether a PK effect could be demonstrated under tightly controlled conditions. Because preobservation might inhibit the PK effect, we decided in advance to base the possible evidence for the existence of PK only on the results from the not-preobserved events. Although the independent observer was somewhat skeptical about the existence of PK, he was very interested in a possible preobservation effect because of its possible implications for quantum theory. Our subject pool consisted primarily of martial arts students as a matter of practical convenience. This population was relatively easily accessible and one that the experimenter had not yet explored. No attempt was made, however, to compare martial arts training and skill with PK performance systematically. METHOD The study was structured into 20 units such that a unit could be considered as a mini-experiment. Each unit was subdivided into 100 blocks of binary data. The sequence of binary data in each block determined two partial results, an even result and an odd result, arising from the even- or odd-numbered bits in the sequence. The partial results were defined so that by inverting the bits in the sequence (interchanging 1s and 0s) the signs of the partial results were inverted. In following the procedure for each unit, the experimenter used a true random generator to record the random bit-sequences for the 100 blocks on floppy disk. …
This paper discusses experimental findings from the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research project supporting the existence of retrocausal information flow. Possible alternative explanations to retrocausation are examined for each experiment. In each case it can be shown that retrocausal information flow is either a parsimonious explanation, or the only currently available explanation, for the observational data. Gedankenexperiments are then examined to demonstrate that regardless of observational effect size, empirical phenomena of the type seen in these experiments cannot produce time paradoxes.The theoretical discussion pursuant to the experimental data covers some of the basic problems in the physical representation of time. Human perception of time incorporates a dichotomy: the past is known but cannot be changed, the future is presumed to be indeterminate and hence controllable but unknowable in advance. Physical formalisms have difficulty in representing this dichotomy, arriving in the most extreme case at the completely deterministic Einsteinian block universe view of spacetime. Strict physical determinism, however, currently seems implausible due to apparently essential indeterminism at the quantum scale.Retrocausal phenomena attack the dichotomy on empirical rather than theoretical grounds, since if past events can be causally influenced by future events either the past is malleable or the future is knowable. This approach allows a resolution of the past/future dichotomy by additional approaches other than strict determinism: the past may be indeterminate, or both past and future can contain a mixture of deterministic and indeterminate events.
This paper presents a conceptual and analytical investigation into the limits of temporal access through the combined perspectives of causality, relativity, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, and information theory. The work introduces the concept of the “Temporal Causality Barrier,” a selective and logically grounded framework that distinguishes between passive temporal observation and active temporal intervention. The paper argues that passive observation of the past is both physically permissible and continuously occurring through ordinary causal processes such as light propagation, memory, historical records, and astronomical observation. In contrast, active intervention into the past including backward information transfer, causal alteration of previous events, and closed causal loops is shown to generate logical contradictions and violations of causal consistency. The analysis critically examines major theoretical approaches related to time travel and retrocausality, including closed timelike curves, Novikov’s self-consistency principle, Deutsch’s quantum closed timelike curve model, and the two-state vector formalism in quantum mechanics. The paper argues that while some interpretations may mathematically describe retrocausal correlations, none currently provide an operational mechanism for backward information transmission without encountering paradoxes or information-theoretic inconsistencies. The framework further connects the causal structure of spacetime with the thermodynamic arrow of time, emphasizing the role of entropy, light cone geometry, and information propagation in preserving temporal coherence. The work also explores broader philosophical implications concerning the nature of time, consciousness, causality, and agency within a causally structured universe. Rather than proposing a new physical force or replacing existing theories, this paper provides a logically structured analysis of why temporal observation is compatible with known physics while active temporal intervention remains fundamentally constrained by both physical law and logical consistency.
Beyond Causality: Temporal Geometry, Informational Consistency, and the Foundations of Physical Time What if the deepest mystery of time is not whether the past can be reached, but whether causality itself is more fundamental than the physical laws through which we describe it? For more than a century, modern physics has transformed our understanding of space, time, matter, and information. General relativity revealed that temporal order is inseparable from spacetime geometry. Quantum theory challenged classical intuitions about measurement, correlations, and physical reality. Information theory provided a mathematical language for describing what can be known, transmitted, and recovered. Yet a profound question remains: must every physically consistent universe possess a globally ordered sequence of causes and effects? Beyond Causality investigates this question through an extended mathematical and conceptual study of temporal geometry, informational dependence, retrocausal feedback, and global consistency. Organized into six interconnected parts, this 430-page research monograph develops a framework for examining causal structures beyond conventional temporal ordering. It brings together established results from general relativity, quantum information, causal modeling, and fixed-point theory, while exploring additional mathematical constructions designed to clarify the conditions under which temporally nonstandard information networks can remain internally consistent. Particular attention is devoted to distinguishing mathematical self-consistency from physical realizability, statistical correlation from controllable communication, and unconventional temporal descriptions from genuine violations of operational causality. Among its principal investigations are the geometric and energetic constraints associated with localized chronology-violating spacetime models, the existence and stability of globally consistent informational feedback networks, the behavior of finite stochastic systems under intervention, and the relationship between quantum causal structures and hypothetical retrocausal channels. The work also extends the theoretical research program introduced in Eon Reverser: Toward Temporal Bubble Radio Communication, examining what additional mathematical, physical, and experimental conditions would be required before communication with an earlier receiver record could be considered a meaningful scientific possibility. Analytical derivations, formal propositions, computational examples, and reproducibility materials accompany the discussion. The proposed constructions are explicitly distinguished from established physical results, and no experimental evidence for backward-in-time communication is claimed. The central ambition of this monograph is neither to declare that causality can be violated nor to assume that temporal paradoxes admit a universal resolution. It is to ask a more precise question: what mathematical structures, consistency principles, and observable constraints would a physical theory have to satisfy if causal order were not universally fixed? The possibility that time, information, and causality may possess a deeper relationship than our present formulations reveal remains an open intellectual frontier. Exploring that frontier requires imagination disciplined by mathematics, speculation constrained by physical principles, and theoretical proposals that remain accountable to observation. Beyond Causality is offered as a contribution to that exploration: an attempt to extend the questions we can rigorously formulate, identify the limits of existing models, and provide a foundation for further investigation into the nature of physical time. Keywords: Causality; Temporal Geometry; General Relativity; Retrocausality; Closed Timelike Curves; Quantum Causal Structures; Information Theory; Global Consistency; Fixed-Point Theory; Chronology Protection; Advanced Electromagnetic Response; Eon Reverser.