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Retrocausality
Retrocausality, or backwards causation, is a concept of cause and effect in which an effect precedes its
cause in time and so a later event affects an earlier one.[1][2] In quantum physics, the distinction between
cause and effect is not made at the most fundamental level and so time-symmetric systems can be viewed as
causal or retrocausal.[3] Philosophical considerations of time travel often address the same issues as
retrocausality, as do treatments of the subject in fiction, but the two phenomena are distinct.[1]

Philosophy
Philosophical efforts to understand causality extend back at least to Aristotle's discussions of the four
causes. It was long considered that an effect preceding its cause is an inherent self-contradiction because, as
18th century philosopher David Hume discussed, when examining two related events, the cause is by
definition the one that precedes the effect.[4]

In the 1950s, Michael Dummett wrote in opposition to such definitions, stating that there was no
philosophical objection to effects preceding their causes.[5] This argument was rebutted by fellow
philosopher Antony Flew and, later, by Max Black.[5] Black's "bilking argument" held that retrocausality is
impossible because the observer of an effect could act to prevent its future cause from ever occurring.[6] A
more complex discussion of how free will relates to the issues Black raised is summarized by Newcomb's
paradox. Essentialist philosophers have proposed other theories, such as the existence of "genuine causal
powers in nature" or by raising concerns about the role of induction in theories of causality.[7][8]

Physics
The ability to affect the past is sometimes taken to suggest that causes could be negated by their own
effects, creating a logical contradiction such as the grandfather paradox.[9] This contradiction is not
necessarily inherent to retrocausality or time travel; by limiting the initial conditions of time travel with
consistency constraints, such paradoxes and others are avoided.[10]

Aspects of modern physics, such as the hypothetical tachyon particle and certain time-independent aspects
of quantum mechanics, may allow particles or information to travel backward in time. Logical objections to
macroscopic time travel may not necessarily prevent retrocausality at other scales of interaction.[11] Even if
such effects are possible, however, they may not be capable of producing effects different from those that
would have resulted from normal causal relationships.[12]

Relativity

Closed timelike curves, in which the world line of an object returns to its origin, arise from some exact
solutions to the Einstein field equation. Although closed timelike curves do not appear to exist under normal
conditions, extreme environments of spacetime, such as a traversable wormhole or the region near certain
cosmic strings, may allow their formation, implying a theoretical possibility of retrocausality. The exotic
matter or topological defects required for the creation of those environments have not been observed.[13][14]
Furthermore, the chronology protection conjecture of Stephen Hawking suggests that any such closed
timelike curve would be destroyed before it could be used.[15] These objections to the existence of closed
timelike curves are not universally accepted.[16]

Quantum physics

Retrocausality is associated with the Double Inferential state-Vector Formalism (DIVF), later known as the
two-state vector formalism (TSVF) in quantum mechanics, where the present is characterised by quantum
states of the past and the future taken in combination.[17][18]

Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory, proposed by John

Archibald Wheeler and Richard Feynman, uses
retrocausality and a temporal form of destructive
interference to explain the absence of a type of
converging concentric wave suggested by certain
solutions to Maxwell's equations.[19] These advanced
waves have nothing to do with cause and effect: they
are simply a different mathematical way to describe
normal waves. The reason they were proposed is that a
charged particle would not have to act on itself, which,
in normal classical electromagnetism, leads to an Time runs left to right in this Feynman diagram of
infinite self-force.[20] electron–positron annihilation. When interpreted to
include retrocausality, the electron (marked e−)
Ernst Stueckelberg, and later Richard Feynman, was not destroyed, instead becoming the positron
proposed an interpretation of the positron as an
(e+) and moving backward in time.
electron moving backward in time, reinterpreting the
negative-energy solutions of the Dirac equation.
Electrons moving backward in time would have a positive electric charge.[21] Wheeler invoked this
concept to explain the identical properties shared by all electrons, suggesting that "they are all the same
electron" with a complex, self-intersecting world line.[22] Yoichiro Nambu later applied it to all production
and annihilation of particle-antiparticle pairs, stating that "the eventual creation and annihilation of pairs that
may occur now and then is no creation or annihilation, but only a change of direction of moving particles,
from past to future, or from future to past."[23] The backwards-in-time point of view is nowadays accepted
as completely equivalent to other pictures,[24] but it has nothing to do with the macroscopic terms "cause"
and "effect", which do not appear in a microscopic physical description.

Retrocausality is sometimes associated with the nonlocal correlations that generically arise from quantum
entanglement, including for example the delayed choice quantum eraser.[25][26] However accounts of
quantum entanglement can be given which do not involve retrocausality. They treat the experiments
demonstrating these correlations as being described from different reference frames that disagree on which
measurement is a "cause" versus an "effect", as necessary to be consistent with special relativity.[27][28]
That is to say, the choice of which event is the cause and which the effect is not absolute but is relative to
the observer. The description of such nonlocal quantum entanglements can be described in a way that is
free of retrocausality if the states of the system are considered.[29] Physicist John G. Cramer has explored
various proposed methods for nonlocal or retrocausal quantum communication and found them all flawed
and, consistent with the no communication theorem, unable to transmit nonlocal signals.[30]

Quantum gravity
Quantum gravity requires a reconciliation of both relativity and quantum physics. It has been suggested that
"A classical notion of a causal structure is ... untenable in any framework compatible with the basic
principles of quantum mechanics and classical general relativity," along with a Bell-type theorem
providing a basis by which this could in principle be experimentally tested.[31]

Tachyons

Hypothetical superluminal particles called tachyons have a spacelike trajectory, and thus can appear to
move backward in time, according to an observer in a conventional reference frame. Despite frequent
depiction in science fiction as a method to send messages back in time, tachyons do not interact with
normal tardyonic matter in a way that would violate standard causality. Specifically, the Feinberg
reinterpretation principle means that ordinary matter cannot be used to make a tachyon detector capable of
receiving information.[32]

Parapsychology
Retrocausality is claimed to occur in some psychic phenomena such as precognition. J. W. Dunne's 1927
book An Experiment with Time studied precognitive dreams and has become a definitive classic.[33]
Parapsychologist J. B. Rhine and colleagues made intensive investigations during the mid-twentieth
century. His successor Helmut Schmidt presented quantum mechanical justifications for retrocausality,
eventually claiming that experiments had demonstrated the ability to manipulate radioactive decay through
retrocausal psychokinesis.[34][35] Such results and their underlying theories have been rejected by the
mainstream scientific community and are widely accepted as pseudoscience, although they continue to have
some support from fringe science sources.[36][37][38]

Efforts to associate retrocausality with prayer healing have been similarly rejected.[39][40]

From 1994, psychologist Daryl J. Bem has argued for precognition. He subsequently showed experimental
subjects two sets of curtains and instructed them to guess which one had a picture behind it, but did not
display the picture behind the curtain until after the subject made their guess. Some results showed a higher
margin of success (p. 17) for a subset of erotic images, with subjects who identified as "stimulus-seeking"
in the pre-screening questionnaire scoring even higher. However, like his predecessors, his methodology
has been strongly criticised and his results discounted.[41]

See also
Advanced potential
Reversal of temporal order judgment
Transactional interpretation
Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point - a 1996 book by philosopher Huw Price which argues
that retrocausality can resolve philosophical issues in quantum mechanics

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