It seems the assertion is that there are 2 options,
1. quantum entanglement exists
2. "Some unnoticed causal mechanism in the past may have fixed the detectors’ settings in advance, or nudged the likelihood that one setting would be chosen over another."
The human brain may or not be deterministic, but it is certainly a complex system. For the results to be so consistent for the multitude of experiments that have been performed, it seems highly unlikely that #2 is the case. I think in this case it's pretty fair to apply Occam's razor.
On a side note, I hate titles for popular physics articles. The next article titles:
"5 super simple steps to splitting the atom"
"20 crazy tips for growing high temperature superconductors"
"Make free cash farming Higgs bosons"
Option 2 is similar to the Novikov self-consistency hypothesis of time travel, which states that if an action would cause a time travel paradox, its probability is zero.
Under this hypothesis, even if entanglement does allow changes to move faster than light--essentially travelling backward in time--any action that would expose this time travel would be forbidden. The scientist is physically prevented from making the "wrong" choice when setting the detector.
The problem with this hypothesis is that it seems essentially untestable.
Another way to think of option 2 is that the universe is 100% deterministic. Under this hypothesis, the speed of entanglement is only apparent, not real--like planning with a friend to both turn on your flashlights on opposite hilltops 2 hours from now. Without knowing that it was planned in advance, an observer would wonder how you reacted to one another so fast.
This is also impossible to fully test; at best you could prove that the consistency extends as far back as we can see into the past. And that is exactly what these scientists will be testing.
The Novikov self-consistency hypothesis is pretty neat. I like the thought of the researcher travelling back in time to create the apparatus such that the result always confirms quantum entanglement. It's classical and not quantum so it's not clear to me how it relates. I'm not sure anyone (besides philosophers) takes the loopholes seriously.
Hmm. You can split atoms in 5 reasonably-simple steps but I haven't seen anyone describe how to do it recently. See C. L. Stong's Amateur Scientist column where a Van de Graaff generator is used to fire beta particles at a target. The only complicated part was the vacuum pump, which involved extensive hacking on a refrigerator compressor. Nowadays good-quality pumps are almost free for the shipping on eBay. Hmm...
I think you misunderstand. A complex system is a system with a complicated set of behaviors that emerges naturally from a large number of actors and a simple set of rules. See P.W. Anderson's article "More is different." No mysticism or religion involved.
The human brain may or not be deterministic, but it is certainly a complex system. For the results to be so consistent for the multitude of experiments that have been performed, it seems highly unlikely that #2 is the case. I think in this case it's pretty fair to apply Occam's razor.
On a side note, I hate titles for popular physics articles. The next article titles: "5 super simple steps to splitting the atom" "20 crazy tips for growing high temperature superconductors" "Make free cash farming Higgs bosons"