Surely time reversal and closed timelike curves are just too ridiculous to consider as explanations of quantum theory?

Quantum theory is so weird that any explanation will have to involve a dramatic change to our ideas of causality. Both experimentally and theoretically it is known that quantum theory cannot be explained like any other classical theory (it is incompatible with any local hidden variable theory). It is worth noting that quantum gravity (a mainstream approach to unification of GR and Quantum Theory) also has a weird causal structure at short distance - they expect time to emerge as a large scale phenomenon and not to have any meaning at plank length scales.

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I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.