Weird Science

No - I don't mean this.

In this week's New Scientist (I have a copy shipped to Luxembourg from the UK) there was an article about a new interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Just googling I found Scientific American has a similar article with (I believe) the same title (is this morphic resonance in action again?). The crux of the articles is that much of the wierdness of QM is a mis-interpretation of our observations. I believe Bart Kosko also pointed out years ago in his book Fuzzy Thinking that uncertainty principles (as per Heisenberg's) actually occur in normal physical situations and have an easily explicable basis in our confusion over what we are actually measuring (i.e. kind of a gap between human language and thought and physical reality). Now, in a similar way, it is being argued that quantum mechanics may not be that weird at all. It all comes down to Bayesian statistics and the way measuring something resolves some, but not all, uncertainty about it.  This new take on things sounds very plausible, and quantum mechanics and its consequences have clearly worried many great minds. But all that "spooky interaction at a distance" did sound quite fun. As did Schroedinger's cat. Incidentally the latest article cited a similar thought experiment involving human observers in a big box, opening a box containing Schroedinger's cat. It did cross my mind what adding a further layer or two of boxes and larger and larger observers would do. I had to have a beer to wash that thought away...

Three questions occur to me though:
1) Does this idea lead to the conclusion that the universe is deterministic (with all the randomness QM introduced removed) or is there still an underlying random nature there?
2) Does the removal of non-determinism (if there is one) remove the possibility of free will and free thinking?
3) Does this new interpretation shrink the breadth of "the unknown" in physics leaving less room for the kinds of things Rupert Sheldrake talks about (Morphic Resonance and the like)? How astoundingly dull that would be.

Answers on a postcard please:). Rupert - I'd love to hear your thoughts on this development.